In his world there were no longer any master ideas, there was no sacred architecture of the ideal. The brute fact or the particular did not demand elucidation. It was generally considered better to simply tie a collection of these unscrutinised facts together, and employ statistics for comprehension, for drawing out a contingent and acceptable generality. This was a way of appropriating the movement from particular to ideal and however the mechanism might be debated, and the debates were the most lively thing about it, what was not debated was its direction. But for those whose desire was to find the extension of the particular in contemplation the progression was to the event, embracing seer and seen in ever greater particularity. This was seen as a cunning evasion of the idea, and yet was itself a refinement of an idea, one whose initial blossoming in the world of art had led, by its very celebrated thoughtlessness, to catastrophic consequences.