THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY
Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture
by CLAUDE BRAGDON, F.A.I.A.
MCMXXII
"Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity"
--EMERSON
By the Same Author:
Episodes From An Unwritten History
The Golden Person In The Heart
Architecture And Democracy
A Primer Of Higher Space
Four Dimensional Vistas
Projective Ornament
Oracle
CONTENTS
I THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE
II UNITY AND POLARITY
III CHANGELESS CHANGE
IV THE BODILY TEMPLE
V LATENT GEOMETRY
VI THE ARITHMETIC OF BEAUTY
VII FROZEN MUSIC
CONCLUSION
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
_The Beautiful Necessity_ was first published in 1910. Save for a slim
volume of privately printed verse it was my first book. I worked hard
on it. Fifteen years elapsed between its beginning and completion;
it was twice published serially--written, rewritten and
tre-written--before it reached its ultimate incarnation in book form.
Confronted now with the opportunity to revise the text again, I find
myself in the position of a surgeon who feels that the operation he
is called upon to perform may perhaps harm more than it can help.
Prudence therefore prevails over my passion for dissection: warned by
eminent examples, I fear that any injection of my more mature and less
cocksure consciousness into this book might impair its unity--that I
"never could recapture the first fine careless rapture."
The text stands therefore as originally published save for a few
verbal changes, and whatever reservations I have about it shall
be stated in this preface. These are not many nor important: _The
Beautiful Necessity_ contains nothing that I need repudiate or care to
contradict.
Its thesis, briefly stated, is that art in all its manifestations is
an expression of the cosmic life, and that its symbols constitute a
language by means of which this life is published and represented. Art
is at all times subject to the _Beautiful Necessity_ of proclaiming
the _world order_.
In attempting to develop this thesis it was not necessary (nor as
I now think, desirable) to link it up in so definite a manner with
theosophy. The individual consciousness is colored by the particular
medium through which it receives truth, and for me that medium was
theosophy. Though the book might gain a more unprejudiced hearing,
and from a larger audience, by the removal of the theosophic
"color-screen," it shall remain, for its removal now might seem to
imply a loss of faith in the fundamental tenets of theosophy, and such
an implication would not be true.
The ideas in regard to time and space are those commonly current
in the world until the advent of the Theory of Relativity. To a
generation brought up on Einstein and Ouspensky they are bound to
appear "lower dimensional." Merely to state this fact is to deal
with it to the extent it needs to be dealt with. The integrity of my
argument is not impaired by these new views.
The one important influence that has operated to modify my opinions
concerning the mathematical basis of the arts of space has been the
discoveries of Mr. Jay Hambidge with regard to the practice of the
Greeks in these matters, as exemplified in their temples and their
ceramics, and named by him _Dynamic Symmetry_.
In tracing everything back to the logarithmic spiral (which embodies
the principle of extreme and mean ratios) I consider that Mr. Hambidge
has made one of those generalizations which reorganizes the old
knowledge and organizes the new. It would be only natural if in his
immersion in his idea he overworks it, but Mr. Hambidge is a man of
such intellectual integrity and thoroughness of method that he may be
trusted not to warp the facts to fit his theories. The truth of the
matter is that the entire field of research into the mathematics of
Beauty is of such richness that wherever a man plants his metaphysical
spade he is sure to come upon "pay dirt." _The_ _Beautiful Necessity_
represents the result of my own prospecting; _Dynamic Symmetry_
represents the result of his. If at any point our findings appear to
conflict, it is less likely that one or the other of us is mistaken
than that each is right from his own point of view. Be that as it may,
I should be the last man in the world to differ from Mr. Hambidge,
for if he convicted me of every conceivable error his work would still
remain the greatest justification and confirmation of my fundamental
contention--that art is an expression of the _world order_ and
is therefore orderly, organic; subject to mathematical law, and
susceptible of mathematical analysis.
CLAUDE BRAGDON
Rochester, N.Y.
April, 1922
I
THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE
One of the advantages of a thorough assimilation of what may be called
the theosophic idea is that it can be applied with advantage to every
department of knowledge and of human activity: like the key to a
cryptogram it renders clear and simple that which before seemed
intricate and obscure. Let us apply this key to the subject of art,
and to the art of architecture in particular, and see if by so
doing we may not learn more of art than we knew before, and more of
theosophy too.
The theosophic idea is that everything is an expression of the
Self--or whatever other name one may choose to give to that immanent
unknown reality which forever hides behind all phenomenal life--but
because, immersed as we are in materiality, our chief avenue of
knowledge is sense perception, a more exact expression of the
theosophic idea would be: Everything is the expression of the Self
in terms of sense. Art, accordingly, is the expression of the Self in
terms of sense. Now though the Self is _one_, sense is not one, but
manifold: and therefore there are _arts_, each addressed to some
particular faculty or group of faculties, and each expressing some
particular quality or group of qualities of the Self. The white light
of Truth is thus broken up into a rainbow-tinted spectrum of Beauty,
in which the various arts are colors, each distinct, yet merging one
into another--poetry into music; painting into decoration; decoration
becoming sculpture; sculpture--architecture, and so on.
In such a spectrum of the arts each one occupies a definite place, and
all together form a series of which music and architecture are the two
extremes. That such is their relative position may be demonstrated in
various ways. The theosophic explanation involving the familiar idea
of the "pairs of opposites" would be something as follows. According
to the Hindu-Aryan theory, Brahma, that the world might be born, fell
asunder into man and wife--became in other words _name and form_[A]
The two universal aspects of name and form are what philosophers call
the two "modes of consciousness," one of time, and the other of space.
These are the two gates through which ideas enter phenomenal life; the
two boxes, as it were, that contain all the toys with which we play.
Everything, were we only keen enough to perceive it, bears the mark of
one or the other of them, and may be classified accordingly. In such a
classification music is seen to be allied to time, and architecture to
space, because music is successive in its mode of manifestation, and
in time alone everything would occur successively, one thing following
another; while architecture, on the other hand, impresses itself upon
the beholder all at once, and in space alone all things would exist
simultaneously. Music, which is in time alone, without any relation to
space; and architecture, which is in space alone, without any relation
to time, are thus seen to stand at opposite ends of the art spectrum,
and to be, in a sense, the only "pure" arts, because in all the others
the elements of both time and space enter in varying proportion,
either actually or by implication. Poetry and the drama are allied to
music inasmuch as the ideas and images of which they are made up are
presented successively, yet these images are for the most part
forms of space. Sculpture on the other hand is clearly allied to
architecture, and so to space, but the element of _action_, suspended
though it be, affiliates it with the opposite or time pole. Painting
occupies a middle position, since in it space instead of being
actual has become ideal--three dimensions being expressed through
the mediumship of two--and time enters into it more largely than into
sculpture by reason of the greater ease with which complicated action
can be indicated: a picture being nearly always time arrested in
midcourse as it were--a moment transfixed.
In order to form a just conception of the relation between music and
architecture it is necessary that the two should be conceived of not
as standing at opposite ends of a series represented by a straight
line, but rather in juxtaposition, as in the ancient Egyptian symbol
of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth, the head in this case
corresponding to music, and the tail to architecture; in other words,
though in one sense they are the most-widely separated of the arts, in
another they are the most closely related.
Music being purely in time and architecture being purely in space,
each is, in a manner and to a degree not possible with any of
the other arts, convertible into the other, by reason of the
correspondence subsisting between intervals of time and intervals of
space. A perception of this may have inspired the famous saying
that architecture is _frozen music_, a poetical statement of a
philosophical truth, since that which in music is expressed by means
of harmonious intervals of time and pitch, successively, after the
manner of time, may be translated into corresponding intervals of
architectural void and solid, height and width.
In another sense music and architecture are allied. They alone of
all the arts are purely creative, since in them is presented, not
a likeness of some known idea, but _a thing-in-itself_ brought to
a distinct and complete expression of its nature. Neither a musical
composition nor a work of architecture depends for its effectiveness
upon resemblances to natural sounds in the one case, or to natural
forms in the other. Of none of the other arts is this to such a degree
true: they are not so much creative as re-creative, for in them all
the artist takes his subject ready made from nature and presents it
anew according to the dictates of his genius.
The characteristic differences between music and architecture are the
same as those which subsist between time and space. Now time and space
are such abstract ideas that they can be dealt with best through
their corresponding correlatives in the natural world, for it is a
fundamental theosophic tenet that nature everywhere abounds in such
correspondences; that nature, in its myriad forms, is indeed the
concrete presentment of abstract unities. The energy which everywhere
animates form is a type of time within space; the mind working in
and through the body is another expression of the same thing.
Correspondingly, music is dynamic, subjective, mental, of one
dimension; while architecture is static, objective, physical, of three
dimensions; sustaining the same relation to music and the other
arts as does the human body to the various organs which compose, and
consciousnesses which animate it (it being the reservatory of these
organs and the vehicle of these consciousnesses); and a work of
architecture in like manner may and sometimes does include all of the
other arts within itself. Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting
adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama
awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like
the very spirit of life tingling through the body's fibres.
Such being the relation between them, the difference in the nature of
the ideas bodied forth in music and in architecture becomes apparent.
Music is interior, abstract, subjective, speaking directly to the soul
in a simple and universal language whose meaning is made personal and
particular in the breast of each listener: "Music alone of all the
arts," says Balzac, "has power to make us live within ourselves."
A work of architecture is the exact opposite of this: existing
principally and primarily for the uses of the body, it is like the
body a concrete organism, attaining to esthetic expression only in
the reconciliation and fulfilment of many conflicting practical
requirements. Music is pure beauty, the voice of the unfettered
and perpetually vanishing soul of things; architecture is that soul
imprisoned in a form, become subject to the law of causality, beaten
upon by the elements, at war with gravity, the slave of man. One is
the Ariel of the arts; the other, Caliban.
Coming now to the consideration of architecture in its historical
rather than its philosophical aspect, it will be shown how certain
theosophical concepts are applicable here. Of these none is more
familiar and none more fundamental than the idea of reincarnation. By
reincarnation more than mere physical re-birth is meant, for physical
re-birth is but a single manifestation of that universal law of
alternation of state, of animation of vehicles, and progression
through related planes, in accordance with which all things move,
and as it were make music--each cycle complete, yet part of a larger
cycle, the incarnate monad passing through correlated changes,
carrying along and bringing into manifestation in each successive arc
of the spiral the experience accumulated in all preceding states,
and at the same time unfolding that power of the Self peculiar to the
plane in which it is momentarily manifesting.
This law finds exemplification in the history of architecture in the
orderly flow of the building impulse from one nation and one country
to a different nation and a different country: its new vehicle of
manifestation; also in the continuity and increasing complexity of
the development of that impulse in manifestation; each "incarnation"
summarizing all those which have gone before, and adding some new
factor peculiar to itself alone; each being a growth, a life, with
periods corresponding to childhood, youth, maturity and decadence;
each also typifying in its entirety some single one of these
life-periods, and revealing some special aspect or power of the Self.
For the sake of clearness and brevity the consideration of only one
of several architectural evolutions will be attempted: that which,
arising in the north of Africa, spread to southern Europe, thence to
the northwest of Europe and to England--the architecture, in short, of
the so-called civilized world.
This architecture, anterior to the Christian era, may be broadly
divided into three great periods, during which it was successively
practiced by three peoples: the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans.
Then intervened the Dark Ages, and a new art arose, the Gothic, which
was a flowering out in stone of the spirit of Christianity. This was
in turn succeeded by the Renaissance, the impulse of which remains
to-day unexhausted. In each of these architectures the peculiar genius
of a people and of a period attained to a beautiful, complete and
coherent utterance, and notwithstanding the considerable intervals
of time which sometimes separated them they succeeded one another
logically and inevitably, and each was related to the one which
preceded and which followed it in a particular and intimate manner.
The power and wisdom of ancient Egypt was vested in its priesthood,
which was composed of individuals exceptionally qualified by birth
and training for their high office, tried by the severest ordeals
and bound by the most solemn oaths. The priests were honored and
privileged above all other men, and spent their lives dwelling
apart from the multitude in vast and magnificent temples, dedicating
themselves to the study and practice of religion, philosophy, science
and art--subjects then intimately related, not widely separated as
they are now. These men were the architects of ancient Egypt: theirs
the minds which directed the hands that built those time-defying
monuments.
The rites that the priests practiced centered about what are known
as the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. These consisted of
representations by means of symbol and allegory, under conditions
and amid surroundings the most awe-inspiring, of those great truths
concerning man's nature, origin and destiny of which the priests--in
reality a brotherhood of initiates and their pupils--were the
custodians. These ceremonies were made the occasion for the initiation
of neophytes into the order, and the advancement of the already
initiated into its successive degrees. For the practice of such rites,
and others designed to impress not the elect but the multitude, the
great temples of Egypt were constructed. Everything about them was
calculated to induce a deep seriousness of mind, and to inspire
feelings of awe, dread and even terror, so as to test the candidate's
fortitude of soul to the utmost.
The avenue of approach to an Egyptian temple was flanked on both
sides, sometimes for a mile or more, with great stone sphinxes--that
emblem of man's dual nature, the god emerging from the beast. The
entrance was through a single high doorway between two towering
pylons, presenting a vast surface sculptured and painted over with
many strange and enigmatic figures, and flanked by aspiring obelisks
and seated colossi with faces austere and calm. The large court thus
entered was surrounded by high walls and colonnades, but was open
to the sky. Opposite the first doorway was another, admitting to a
somewhat smaller enclosure, a forest of enormous carved and painted
columns supporting a roof through the apertures of which sunshine
gleamed or dim light filtered down. Beyond this in turn were other
courts and apartments culminating in some inmost sacred sanctuary.
Not alone in their temples, but in their tombs and pyramids and
all the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians, there is the same
insistence upon the sublimity, mystery and awefulness of life,
which they seem to have felt so profoundly. But more than this, the
conscious thought of the masters who conceived them, the buildings of
Egypt give utterance also to the toil and suffering of the thousands
of slaves and captives which hewed the stones out of the heart of the
rock, dragged them long distances and placed them one upon another, so
that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them
no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt
presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law.
In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul
awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once
of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope.
Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilical cord to
nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the
strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those
gigantic colossi flanking the entrance to some rock-cut temple, which
though entire are yet part of the living cliff out of which they were
fashioned.
In the architecture of Greece the note of dread and mystery yields to
one of pure joyousness and freedom. The terrors of childhood have been
outgrown, and man revels in the indulgence of his unjaded appetites
and in the exercise of his awakened reasoning faculties. In Greek art
is preserved that evanescent beauty of youth which, coming but once
and continuing but for a short interval in every human life, is yet
that for which all antecedent states seem a preparation, and of
which all subsequent ones are in some sort an effect. Greece typifies
adolescence, the love age, and so throughout the centuries humanity
has turned to the contemplation of her, just as a man all his life
long secretly cherishes the memory of his first love.
An impassioned sense of beauty and an enlightened reason characterize
the productions of Greek architecture during its best period. The
perfection then attained was possible only in a nation whereof the
citizens were themselves critics and amateurs of art, one wherein
the artist was honored and his work appreciated in all its beauty
and subtlety. The Greek architect was less bound by tradition and
precedent than was the Egyptian, and he worked unhampered by any
restrictions save such as, like the laws of harmony in music, helped
rather than hindered his genius to express itself--restrictions
founded on sound reason, the value of which had been proved by
experience.
The Doric order was employed for all large temples, since it possessed
in fullest measure the qualities of simplicity and dignity, the
attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas
were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order,
the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding
masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman it was more
supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender
and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate
and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these,
infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was
used sometimes for small monuments and temples, such as the Tower of
the Winds, and the monument of Lysicrates at Athens.
[Illustration 1]
Because the Greek architect was at liberty to improve upon the work of
his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other,
and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the
Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation
to its position and function, but in regard to its intrinsic beauty as
well, so that the merest fragment, detached from the building of which
it formed a part, is found worthy of being treasured in our museums
for its own sake.
Just as every detail of a Greek temple was adjusted to its position
and expressed its office, so the building itself was made to fit
its site and to show forth its purpose, forming with the surrounding
buildings a unit of a larger whole. The Athenian Acropolis is an
illustration of this: it is an irregular fortified hill, bearing
diverse monuments in various styles, at unequal levels and at
different angles with one another, yet the whole arrangement seems as
organic and inevitable as the disposition of the features of a face.
The Acropolis is an example of the ideal architectural republic
wherein each individual contributes to the welfare of all, and at the
same time enjoys the utmost personal liberty (Illustration 1).
Very different is the spirit bodied forth in the architecture of
Imperial Rome. The iron hand of its sovereignty encased within the
silken glove of its luxury finds its prototype in buildings which were
stupendous crude brute masses of brick and concrete, hidden within a
covering of rich marbles and mosaics, wrought in beautiful but often
meaningless forms by clever degenerate Greeks. The genius of Rome
finds its most characteristic expression, not in temples to the high
gods, but rather in those vast and complicated structures--basilicas,
amphitheatres, baths--built for the amusement and purely temporal
needs of the people.
If Egypt typifies the childhood of the race and Greece its beautiful
youth, Republican Rome represents its strong manhood--a soldier filled
with the lust of war and the love of glory--and Imperial Rome its
degeneracy: that soldier become conqueror, decked out in plundered
finery and sunk in sensuality, tolerant of all who minister to his
pleasures but terrible to all who interfere with them.
The fall of Rome marked the end of the ancient Pagan world. Above
its ruin Christian civilization in the course of time arose. Gothic
architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is
manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man's
spiritual nature, awakening in a body worn and weakened by
debaucheries, longs ardently and tries vainly to escape. Of some such
mood a Gothic cathedral is the expression: its vaulting, marvelously
supported upon slender shafts by reason of a nicely adjusted
equilibrium of forces; its restless, upward-reaching pinnacles and
spires; its ornament, intricate and enigmatic--all these suggest the
over-strained organism of an ascetic; while its vast shadowy interior
lit by marvelously traceried and jeweled windows, which hold the eyes
in a hypnotic thrall, is like his soul: filled with world sadness,
dead to the bright brief joys of sense, seeing only heavenly visions,
knowing none but mystic raptures.
Thus it is that the history of architecture illustrates and enforces
the theosophical teaching that everything of man's creating is made in
his own image. Architecture mirrors the life of the individual and of
the race, which is the life of the individual written large in time
and space. The terrors of childhood; the keen interests and appetites
of youth; the strong stern joy of conflict which comes with manhood;
the lust, the greed, the cruelty of a materialized old age--all these
serve but as a preparation for the life of the spirit, in which the
man becomes again as a little child, going over the whole round, but
on a higher arc of the spiral.
The final, or fourth state being only in some sort a repetition of
the first, it would be reasonable to look for a certain correspondence
between Egyptian and Gothic architecture, and such a correspondence
there is, though it is more easily divined than demonstrated. In
both there is the same deeply religious spirit; both convey, in some
obscure yet potent manner, a sense of the soul being near the surface
of life. There is the same love of mystery and of symbolism; and in
both may be observed the tendency to create strange composite figures
to typify transcendental ideas, the sphinx seeming a blood-brother to
the gargoyle. The conditions under which each architecture flourished
were not dissimilar, for each was formulated and controlled by small
well-organized bodies of sincerely religious and highly enlightened
men--the priesthood in the one case, the masonic guilds in the
other--working together toward the consummation of great undertakings
amid a populace for the most part oblivious of the profound and subtle
meanings of which their work was full. In Mediæval Europe, as in
ancient Egypt, fragments of the Ancient Wisdom--transmitted in the
symbols and secrets of the cathedral builders--determined much of
Gothic architecture.
The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the
Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek
architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as
the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive Classical
antiquity. Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a Classical
style, sculptors modeling Pagan deities, and architects building
according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods succeeded
in producing works like, yet different from the originals they
followed--different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the
ancients, they embodied a new ideal.
In all the productions of the early Renaissance, "that first
transcendent springtide of the modern world," there is the evanescent
grace and beauty of youth which was seen to have pervaded Greek art,
but it is a grace and beauty of a different sort. The Greek artist
sought to attain to a certain abstract perfection of type; to build
a temple which should combine all the excellencies of every similar
temple, to carve a figure, impersonal in the highest sense, which
should embody every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other
hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it.
Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul--a sense of
which was Christianity's gift to Christendom--he endeavored to portray
that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely
conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he
made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The
history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed out,
is the history of a few eminent individuals, each one moulding and
modifying the style in a manner peculiar to himself alone. In the
hands of Brunelleschi it was stern and powerful; Bramante made
it chaste, elegant and graceful; Palladio made it formal, cold,
symmetrical; while with Sansovino and Sammichele it became sumptuous
and bombastic.
As the Renaissance ripened to decay its architecture assumed more and
more the characteristics which distinguished that of Rome during the
decadence. In both there is the same lack of simplicity and sincerity,
the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is
an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by
surface decoration.
The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still
in the future. It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement
toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the
spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an
architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a
return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods,
and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world,
without violating ancient verities.
In studying these crucial periods in the history of European
architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding
as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks
derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in
turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal
descendant from a Roman basilica.
[Illustration 2]
[Illustration 3]
The Egyptians in their constructions did little more than to place
enormous stones on end, and pile one huge block upon another. They
used many columns placed close together: the spaces which they spanned
were inconsiderable. The upright or supporting member may be said to
have been in Egyptian architecture the predominant one. A vertical
line therefore may be taken as the simplest and most abstract symbol
of Egyptian architecture (Illustration 2). It remained for the Greeks
fully to develop the lintel. In their architecture the vertical
member, or column, existed solely for the sake of the horizontal
member, or lintel; it rarely stood alone as in the case of an Egyptian
obelisk. The columns of the Greek temples were reduced to those
proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the
intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples.
It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect
equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these
only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore
be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line (Illustration 3). The
Romans, while retaining the column and lintel of the Greeks, deprived
them of their structural significance and subordinated them to the
semicircular arch and the semi-cylindrical and hemispherical vault,
the truly characteristic and determining forms of Roman architecture.
Our symbol grows therefore by the addition of the arc of a circle
(Illustration 4). In Gothic architecture column, lintel, arch and
vault are all retained in changed form, but that which more than
anything else differentiates Gothic architecture from any style which
preceded it is the introduction of the principle of an equilibrium of
forces, of a state of balance rather than a state of rest, arrived at
by the opposition of one thrust with another contrary to it. This fact
can be indicated graphically by two opposing inclined lines, and
these united to the preceding symbol yield an accurate abstract of the
elements of Gothic architecture (Illustration 5).
[Illustration 4]
[Illustration 5]
All this is but an unusual application of a familiar theosophic
teaching, namely, that it is the method of nature on every plane and
in every department not to omit anything that has gone before, but to
store it up and carry it along and bring it into manifestation later.
Nature everywhere proceeds like the jingle of _The House that Jack
Built_: she repeats each time all she has learned, and adds another
line for subsequent repetition.
[Footnote A: The quaint Oriental imagery here employed should not
blind the reader to the precise scientific accuracy of the idea of
which this imagery is the vehicle. Schopenhauer says: "Polarity, or
the sundering of a force into two quantitively different and opposed
activities striving after re-union,... is a fundamental type of almost
all the phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal to man
himself."]
II
UNITY AND POLARITY
Theosophy, both as a philosophy, or system of thought, which discovers
correlations between things apparently unrelated, and as a life,
or system of training whereby it is possible to gain the power to
perceive and use these correlations for worthy ends, is of great value
to the creative artist, whose success depends on the extent to which
he works organically, conforming to the cosmic pattern, proceeding
rationally and rhythmically to some predetermined end. It is of value
no less to the layman, the critic, the art amateur--to anyone in
fact who would come to an accurate and intimate understanding and
appreciation of every variety of esthetic endeavor. For the benefit of
such I shall try to trace some of those correlations which theosophy
affirms, and indicate their bearing upon art, and upon the art of
architecture in particular.
One of the things which theosophy teaches is that those transcendent
glimpses of a divine order and harmony throughout the universe
vouchsafed the poet and the mystic in their moments of vision are not
the paradoxes--the paronomasia as it were--of an intoxicated state of
consciousness, but glimpses of reality. We are all of us participators
in a world of concrete music, geometry and number--a world of
sounds, odors, forms, motions, colors, so mathematically related and
coordinated that our pigmy bodies, equally with the farthest star,
vibrate to the music of the spheres. There is a _Beautiful Necessity_
which rules the world, which is a law of nature and equally a law of
art, for art is idealized creation: nature carried to a higher power
by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and
emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably as does
the frost on a window pane. Art therefore in one of its aspects is the
weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to
the material or medium employed. Although no masterpiece was ever
created by the conscious following to set rules, for the true artist
works unconsciously, instinctively, as the bird sings or as the bee
builds its honey-cell, yet an analysis of any masterpiece reveals the
fact that its author (like the bird and the bee) has "followed the
rules without knowing them."
Helmholtz says, "No doubt is now entertained that beauty is subject
to laws and rules dependent on the nature of human intelligence. The
difficulty consists in the fact that these laws and rules, on whose
fulfilment beauty depends, are not consciously present in the mind of
the artist who creates the work, or of the observer who contemplates
it." Nevertheless they are discoverable, and can be formulated,
after a fashion. We have only to read aright the lessons everywhere
portrayed in the vast picture-books of nature and of art.
The first truth therein published is the law of _Unity_--oneness; for
there is one Self, one Life, which, myriad in manifestation, is yet
in essence ever _one_. Atom and universe, man and the world--each is
a unit, an organic and coherent whole. The application of this law to
art is so obvious as to be almost unnecessary of elucidation, for to
say that a work of art must possess unity, must seem to proceed from a
single impulse and be the embodiment of one dominant idea, is to state
a truism. In a work of architecture the coördination of its various
parts with one another is almost the measure of its success. We
remember any masterpiece--the cathedral of Paris no less than the
pyramids of Egypt--by the singleness of its appeal; complex it may be,
but it is a coordinated complexity; variety it may possess, but it is
a variety in an all-embracing unity.
The second law, not contradicting but supplementing the first is the
law of _Polarity_, i.e., duality. All things have sex, are either
masculine or feminine. This too is the reflection on a lower plane
of one of those transcendental truths taught by the Ancient Wisdom,
namely that the Logos, in his voluntarily circumscribing his infinite
life in order that he may manifest, encloses himself within his
limiting veil, _maya_, and that his life appears as spirit (male), and
his _maya_ as matter (female), the two being never disjoined during
manifestation. The two terms of this polarity are endlessly repeated
throughout nature: in sun and moon, day and night, fire and water, man
and woman--and so on. A close inter-relation is always seen to subsist
between corresponding members of such pairs of opposites: sun, day,
fire, man express and embody the primal and active aspect of the
manifesting deity; moon, night, water, woman, its secondary and
passive aspect. Moreover, each implies or brings to mind the others
of its class: man, like the sun, is lord of day; he is like fire, a
devastating force; woman is subject to the lunar rhythm; like water,
she is soft, sinuous, fecund.
The part which this polarity plays in the arts is important, and the
constant and characteristic distinction between the two terms is a
thing far beyond mere contrast.
In music they are the major and minor modes: the typical, or
representative chords of the dominant seventh, and of the tonic (the
two chords into which Schopenhauer says all music can be resolved): a
partial dissonance, and a consonance: a chord of suspense, and a chord
of satisfaction. In speech the two are vowel, and consonant sounds:
the type of the first being _a_, a sound of suspense, made with the
mouth open; and of the second _m_, a sound of satisfaction, made by
closing the mouth; their combination forms the sacred syllable Om
(_Aum_). In painting they are warm colors, and cold: the pole of
the first being in red, the color of fire, which excites; and of the
second in blue, the color of water, which calms; in the Arts of design
they are lines straight (like fire), and flowing (like water); masses
light (like the day), and dark (like night). In architecture they are
the column, or vertical member, which resists the force of gravity;
and the lintel, or horizontal member, which succumbs to it; they are
vertical lines, which are aspiring, effortful; and horizontal lines,
which are restful to the eye and mind.
It is desirable to have an instant and keen realization of this sex
quality, and to make this easier some sort of classification and
analysis must be attempted. Those things which are allied to and
partake of the nature of _time_ are masculine, and those which are
allied to and partake of the nature of _space_ are feminine: as
motion, and matter; mind, and body; etc. The English words "masculine"
and "feminine" are too intimately associated with the idea of physical
sex properly to designate the terms of this polarity. In Japanese
philosophy and art (derived from the Chinese) the two are called _In_
and _Yo_ (In, feminine; Yo, masculine); and these little words, being
free from the limitations of their English correlatives, will be found
convenient, Yo to designate that which is simple, direct, primary,
active, positive; and In, that which is complex, indirect, derivative,
passive, negative. Things hard, straight, fixed, vertical, are Yo;
things soft, curved, horizontal, fluctuating, are In--and so on.
[Illustration 6: WILD CHERRY; MAPLE LEAF]
[Illustration 7: CALLAS IN YO]
In passing it may be said that the superiority of the line, mass, and
color composition of Japanese prints and kakemonos to that exhibited
in the vastly more pretentious easel pictures of modern Occidental
artists--a superiority now generally acknowledged by connoisseurs--is
largely due to the conscious following, on the part of the Japanese,
of this principle of sex-complementaries.
Nowhere are In and Yo more simply and adequately imaged than in the
vegetable kingdom. The trunk of a tree is Yo, its foliage, In; and
in each stem and leaf the two are repeated. A calla, consisting of
a single straight and rigid spadix embraced by a soft and tenderly
curved spathe, affords an almost perfect expression of the
characteristic differences between Yo and In and their reciprocal
relation to each other. The two are not often combined in such
simplicity and perfection in a single form. The straight, vertical
reeds which so often grow in still, shallow water, find their
complement in the curved lily-pads which lie horizontally on its
surface. Trees such as pine and hemlock, which are excurrent--those in
which the branches start successively (i.e., after the manner of time)
from a straight and vertical central stem--are Yo; trees such as
the elm and willow, which are deliquescent--those in which the trunk
dissolves as it were simultaneously (after the manner of space) into
its branches--are In. All tree forms lie in or between these two
extremes, and leaves are susceptible of a similar classification. It
will be seen to be a classification according to time and space,
for the characteristic of time is _succession_, and of space,
_simultaneousness_: the first is expressed symbolically by elements
arranged with relation to axial lines; the second, by elements
arranged with relation to focal points (Illustrations 6,7).
The student should train himself to recognize In and Yo in all
their Protean presentments throughout nature--in the cloud upon the
mountain, the wave against the cliff, in the tracery of trees against
the sky--that he may the more readily recognize them in his chosen
art, whatever that art may be. If it happens to be painting, he will
endeavor to discern this law of duality in the composition of every
masterpiece, recognizing an instinctive obedience to it in that
favorite device of the great Renaissance masters of making an
architectural setting for their groups of figures, and he will
delight to trace the law in all its ramifications of contrast between
complementaries in line, color, and mass (Illustration 8).
[Illustration 8: THE LAW OF POLARITY CLEOPATRA MELTING THE PEARL. BY
TIEPOLO]
With reference to architecture, it is true, generally speaking,
that architectural forms have been developed through necessity, the
function seeking and finding its appropriate form. For example, the
buttress of a Gothic cathedral was developed by the necessity of
resisting the thrust of the interior vaulting without encroaching upon
the nave; the main lines of a buttress conform to the direction of the
thrust, and the pinnacle with which it terminates is a logical shape
for the masonry necessary to hold the top in position (Illustration
9). Research along these lines is interesting and fruitful of result,
but there remains a certain number of architectural forms whose origin
cannot be explained in any such manner. The secret of their undying
charm lies in the fact that in them In and Yo stand symbolized and
contrasted. They no longer obey a law of utility, but an abstract
law of beauty, for in becoming sexually expressive as it were, the
construction itself is sometimes weakened or falsified. The familiar
classic console or modillion is an example: although in general
contour it is well adapted to its function as a supporting bracket,
embedded in, and projecting from a wall, yet the scroll-like ornament
with which its sides are embellished gives it the appearance of
not entering the wall at all, but of being stuck against it in some
miraculous manner. This defect in functional expressiveness is
more than compensated for by the perfection with which feminine
and masculine characteristics are expressed and contrasted in the
exquisite double spiral, opposed to the straight lines of the moulding
which it subtends (Illustration 10). Again, by fluting the shaft of a
column its area of cross-section is diminished but the appearance of
strength is enhanced because its masculine character--as a supporting
member resisting the force of gravity--is emphasized.
[Illustration 9: CROSS SECTION OF BUTTRESS.]
The importance of the so-called "orders" lies in the fact that they
are architecture epitomized as it were. A building consists of a wall
upholding a roof: support and weight. The type of the first is the
column, which may be conceived of as a condensed section of wall; and
of the second, the lintel, which may be conceived of as a condensed
section of roof. The column, being vertical, is Yo; the lintel, being
horizontal, is In. To mark an entablature with horizontal lines in the
form of mouldings, and the columns with vertical lines in the form
of flutes, as is done in all the "classic orders," is a gain
in functional and sex expressiveness, and consequently in art
(Illustration 11).
[Illustration 10: CORINTHIAN MODILLION; CLASSIC CONSOLE; IONIC CAP]
The column is again divided into the shaft, which is Yo; and the
capital, which is In. The capital is itself twofold, consisting of a
curved member and an angular member. These two appear in their utmost
simplicity in the _echinus_ (In) and the _abacus_ (Yo) of a
Greek Doric cap. The former was adorned with painted leaf forms,
characteristically feminine, and the latter with the angular fret
and meander (Illustration 12). The Ionic capital, belonging to a more
feminine style, exhibits the abacus subordinated to that beautiful
cushion-shaped member with its two spirally marked volutes. This,
though a less rational and expressive form for its particular office
than is the echinus of the Doric cap, is a far more perfect symbol of
the feminine element in nature. There is an essential identity between
the Ionic cap and the classic console before referred to--although
superficially the two do not resemble each other--for a straight line
and a double spiral are elements common to both (Illustration 10).
The Corinthian capital consists of an ordered mass of delicately
sculptured leaf and scroll forms sustaining an abacus which though
relatively masculine is yet more curved and feminine than that of any
other style. In the caulicole of a Corinthian cap In and Yo are again
contrasted. In the unique and exquisite capital from the Tower of the
Winds at Athens, the two are well suggested in the simple, erect, and
pointed leaf forms of the upper part, contrasted with the complex,
deliquescent, rounded ones from which they spring. The essential
identity of principle subsisting between this cap and the Renaissance
baluster by San Gallo is easily seen (Illustration 13).
[Illustration 11]
[Illustration 12]
This law of sex-expressiveness is of such universality that it can
be made the basis of an analysis of the architectural ornament of any
style or period. It is more than mere opposition and contrast. The egg
and tongue motif, which has persisted throughout so many centuries and
survived so many styles, exhibits an alternation of forms resembling
phallic emblems. Yo and In are well suggested in the channeled
triglyphs and the sculptured metopes of a Doric frieze, in the
straight and vertical mullions and the flowing tracery of Gothic
windows, in the banded torus, the bead and reel, and other familiar
ornamented mouldings (Illustrations 14, 15, 16).