Its Minor Key

Chapter XXXV of Volume II of The World As Will and Representation concludes

Now when I see how this unbelieving age so diligently finishes the Gothic churches left uncompleted by the believing Middle Ages, it seems to me as if were desired to embalm a Christianity that has expired.

Schopenhauer did not much care for Gothic architecture, "the negative pole of architecture, or  even its minor key." He offered his reasons for the judgment, summarized by

For only the ancient style of architecture is conceived in a purely objective sense; the Gothic is more in the subjective. We have recognized the real, aesthetic, fundamental idea of the ancient architecture to be the unfolding of the conflict between rigidity and gravity; but if we try to discover an analogous fundamental idea in Gothic architecture, it will have to be that the entire subjugation and conquest of gravity by rigidity are there to be exhibited.

He did grant that the Gothic looks better from inside than the the classic does, and suggested obliquely that it was better suited to a northern climate that encourages one to go indoors.