of Gothic architecture in France, this sex-distinction became a
recognized principle, moulding and modifying the design of a cathedral
in much the same way that sex modifies bodily structure. The masonic
guilds of the Middle Ages were custodians of the esoteric--which is
the theosophic--side of the Christian faith, and every student of
esotericism knows how fundamental and how far-reaching is this idea of
sex.
[Illustration 13: CAPITAL FROM THE TOWER OF THE WINDS, ATHENS;
CORINTHIAN CAP FROM HADRIAN BUILDINGS, ATHENS; ROSETTE FROM TEMPLE OF
MARS, ROME; CAULICULUS OF CORINTHIAN CAP; BULUSTER BY SAN GALLO]
[Illustration 14: EGG AND TONGUE; BEAD AND REEL; BANDED TORUS]
The entire cathedral symbolized the crucified body of Christ; its two
towers, man and woman--that Adam and that Eve for whose redemption
according to current teaching Christ suffered and was crucified. The
north or right-hand tower ("the man's side") was called the sacred
male pillar, Jachin; and the south, or left-hand tower ("the woman's
side"), the sacred female pillar, Boaz, from the two columns flanking
the gate to Solomon's Temple--itself an allegory to the bodily temple.
In only a few of the French cathedrals is this distinction clearly
and consistently maintained, and of these Tours forms perhaps the most
remarkable example, for in its flamboyant façade, over and above the
difference in actual breadth and apparent sturdiness of the two towers
(the south being the more slender and delicate), there is a clearly
marked distinction in the character of the ornamentation, that of the
north tower being more salient, angular, radial--more masculine in
point of fact (Illustration 17). In Notre Dame, the cathedral of
Paris, as in the cathedral of Tours, the north tower is perceptibly
broader than the south. The only other important difference appears to
be in the angular label-mould above the north entrance: whatever may
have been its original function or significance, it serves to define
the tower sexually, so to speak, as effectively as does the beard on
a man's face. In Amiens the north tower is taller than the south, and
more massive in its upper stages. The only traceable indication of
sex in the ornamentation occurs in the spandrels at the sides of the
entrance arches: those of the north tower containing single circles,
and those of the south tower containing two in one. This difference,
small as it may seem, is significant, for in Europe during the Middle
Ages, just as anciently in Egypt and again in Greece--in fact wherever
and whenever the Secret Doctrine was known--sex was attributed to
numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine, and even, as
feminine. Two, the first feminine number, thus became a symbol of
femininity, accepted as such so universally at the time the cathedrals
were built, that two strokes of a bell announced the death of a woman,
three, the death of a man.
[Illustration 15: FRIEZE OF THE FARNESE PALACE; ROMAN CONSOLE. VATICAN
MUSEUM; FRIEZE IN THE EMPIRE STYLE BY PERCIER AND FONTAINE.
FRIEZE FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. (ROMAN); ROMAN DORIC
FRIEZE--VIGNOLE]
[Illustration 16]
[Illustration 17]
The vital, organic quality so conspicuous in the best Gothic
architecture has been attributed to the fact that necessity determined
its characteristic forms. Professor Goodyear has demonstrated that
it may be due also in part to certain subtle vertical leans and
horizontal bends; and to nicely calculated variations from strict
uniformity, which find their analogue in nature, where structure is
seldom rigidly geometrical. The author hazards the theory that still
another reason why a Gothic cathedral seems so living a thing is
because it abounds in contrasts between what, for lack of more
descriptive adjectives, he is forced to call masculine and feminine
forms.
[Illustration 18]
[Illustration 19]
Ruskin says, in _Stones of Venice_, "All good Gothic is nothing more
than the development, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale,
of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below,
and the gable for the protecting line above, and from the huge, gray,
shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults
beneath, to the crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of
its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. The
modes of support and of decoration are infinitely various, but the
real character of the building, in all good Gothic, depends on the
single lines of the gable over the pointed arch endlessly rearranged
and repeated." These two, an angular and a curved form, like the
everywhere recurring column and lintel of classic architecture,
are but presentments of Yo and In (Illustration 18). Every Gothic
traceried window, with straight and vertical mullions in the
rectangle, losing themselves in the intricate foliations of the arch,
celebrates the marriage of this ever diverse pair. The circle and the
triangle are the In and Yo of Gothic tracery, its Eve and Adam, as
it were, for from their union springs that progeny of trefoil,
quatrefoil, cinquefoil, of shapes flowing like water, and shapes
darting like flame, which makes such visible music to the entranced
ear.
[Illustration 20: SAN GIMIGNANO S. JACOPO.]
By seeking to discover In and Yo in their myriad manifestations, by
learning to discriminate between them, and by attempting to express
their characteristic qualities in new forms of beauty--from
the disposition of a façade to the shaping of a moulding--the
architectural designer will charge his work with that esoteric
significance, that excess of beauty, by which architecture rises
to the dignity of a "fine" art (Illustrations 19, 20). In so doing,
however, he should never forget, and the layman also should ever
remember, that the supreme architectural excellence is fitness,
appropriateness, the perfect adaptation of means to ends, and the
adequate expression of both means and ends. These two aims, the one
abstract and universal, the other concrete and individual, can always
be combined, just as in every human countenance are combined a type,
which is universal, and a character, which is individual.
III
CHANGELESS CHANGE
TRINITY, CONSONANCE, DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY, BALANCE, RHYTHMIC CHANGE,
RADIATION
The preceding essay was devoted for the most part to that "inevitable
duality" which finds concrete expression in countless pairs of
opposites, such as day and night, fire and water, man and woman;
in the art of music by two chords, one of suspense and the other of
fulfilment; in speech by vowel and consonant sounds, epitomized in _a_
and in _m_; in painting by warm colors and cold, epitomized in red
and blue; in architecture by the vertical column and the horizontal
lintel, by void and solid--and so on.
TRINITY
This concept should now be modified by another, namely, that in every
duality a third is latent; that two implies three, for each sex so
to speak is in process of becoming the other, and this alternation
engenders and is accomplished by means of a third term or neuter,
which is like neither of the original two but partakes of the nature
of them both, just as a child may resemble both its parents. Twilight
comes between day and night; earth is the child of fire and water;
in music, besides the chord of longing and striving, and the chord of
rest and satisfaction (the dominant seventh and the tonic), there is
a third or resolving chord in which the two are reconciled. In the
sacred syllable Om (_Aum_), which epitomizes all speech, the _u_ sound
effects a transition between the _a_ sound and the _m_; among the
so-called primary colors yellow comes between red and blue; and in
architecture the arch, which is both weight and support, which is
neither vertical nor horizontal, may be considered the neuter of the
group of which the column and the lintel are respectively masculine
and feminine. "These are the three," says Mr. Louis Sullivan, "the
only three letters from which has been expanded the architectural art,
as a great and superb language wherewith man has expressed, through
the generations, the changing drift of his thoughts."
[Illustration 21: THE LAW OF TRINITY. A ROMAN IONIC ARCADE, BY
VIGNOLE.--THE COLUMN, THE ENTABLATURE, AND THE ARCH CORRESPOND TO LINES
VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL AND CURVED.]
It would be supererogatory to dwell at any length on this "trinity
of manifestation" as the concrete expression of that unmanifest and
mystical trinity, that _three-in-one_ which under various names occurs
in every world-religion, where, defying definition, it was wont
to find expression symbolically in some combination of vertical,
horizontal and curved lines. The anstated cross of the Egyptians
is such a symbol, the Buddhist wheel, and the fylfot or swastika
inscribed within a circle, also those numerous Christian symbols
combining the circle and the cross. Such ideographs have spelled
profound meaning to the thinkers of past ages. We of to-day are not
given to discovering anything wonderful in three strokes of a pen,
but every artist in the weaving of his pattern must needs employ these
mystic symbols in one form or another, and if he employs them with
a full sense of their hidden meaning his work will be apt to gain
in originality and beauty--for originality is a new and personal
perception of beauty, and beauty is the name we give to truth we
cannot understand.
In architecture, this trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved
lines finds admirable illustration in the application of columns and
entablature to an arch and impost construction, so common in Roman and
Renaissance work. This is a redundancy, and finds no justification in
reason, because the weight is sustained by the arch, and the "order"
is an appendage merely; yet the combination, illogical as it is,
satisfies the sense of beauty because the arch effects a transition
between the columns and the entablature, and completes the trinity
of vertical, horizontal and curved lines (Illustration 21). In the
entrances to many of the Gothic cathedrals and churches the same
elements are better because more logically disposed. Here the
horizontal lintel and its vertical supports are not decorative merely,
but really perform their proper functions, while the arch, too, has
a raison d'être in that it serves to relieve the lintel of the
superincumbent weight of masonry. The same arrangement sometimes
occurs in classic architecture also, as when an opening spanned by a
single arch is subdivided by means of an order (Illustration 22).
Three is pre-eminently the number of architecture, because it is the
number of space, which for us is three-dimensional, and of all the
arts architecture is most concerned with the expression of spatial
relations. The division of a composition into three related parts is
so universal that it would seem to be the result of an instinctive
action of the human mind. The twin pylons of an Egyptian temple with
its entrance between, for a third division, has its correspondence in
the two towers of a Gothic cathedral and the intervening screen
wall of the nave. In the palaces of the Renaissance a threefold
division--vertically by means of quoins or pilasters, and horizontally
by means of cornices or string courses--was common, as was also the
division into a principal and two subordinate masses (Illustration
23).
[Illustration 22: THE LAW OF TRINITY. THE TRINITY OF HORIZONTAL VERTICAL
AND CURVED LINES.]
The architectural "orders" are divided threefold into pedestal or
stylobate, column and entablature; and each of these is again divided
threefold: the first into plinth, die and cornice; the second into
base, shaft and capital; the third into architrave, frieze and
cornice. In many cases these again lend themselves to a threefold
subdivision. A more detailed analysis of the capitals already shown to
be twofold reveals a third member: in the Greek Doric this consists
of the annulets immediately below the abacus; in the other orders, the
necking which divides the shaft from the cap.
CONSONANCE
"As is the small, so is the great" is a perpetually recurring phrase
in the literature of theosophy, and naturally so, for it is a succinct
statement of a fundamental and far-reaching truth. The scientist
recognizes it now and then and here and there, but the occultist
trusts it always and utterly. To him the microcosm and the macrocosm
are one and the same in essence, and the forth-going impulse
which calls a universe into being and the indrawing impulse which
extinguishes it again, each lasting millions of years, are echoed and
repeated in the inflow and outflow of the breath through the nostrils,
in nutrition and excretion, in daily activity and nightly rest, in
that longer day which we name a lifetime, and that longer rest in
_Devachan_--and so on until time itself is transcended.
[Illustration 23]
In the same way, in nature, a thing is echoed and repeated throughout
its parts. Each leaf on a tree is itself a tree in miniature, each
blossom a modified leaf; every vertebrate animal is a complicated
system of spines; the ripple is the wave of a larger wave, and that
larger wave is a part of the ebbing and flowing tide. In music this
law is illustrated in the return of the tonic to itself in the octave,
and its partial return in the dominant; also in a more extended sense
in the repetition of a major theme in the minor, or in the treble and
again in the bass, with modifications perhaps of time and key. In
the art of painting the law is exemplified in the repetition with
variation of certain colors and combinations of lines in different
parts of the same picture, so disposed as to lead the eye to some
focal point. Every painter knows that any important color in his
picture must be echoed, as it were, in different places, for harmony
of the whole.
[Illustration 24]
In the drama the repetition of a speech or of an entire scene, but
under circumstances which give it a different meaning, is often most
effective, as when Gratiano, in the trial scene of _The Merchant
of Venice_ taunts Shylock with his own words, "A Daniel come to
judgment!" or, as when in one of the later scenes of _As You Like It_
an earlier scene is repeated, but with Rosalind speaking in her proper
person and no longer as the boy Ganymede.
These recurrences, these inner consonances, these repetitions with
variations are common in architecture also. The channeled triglyphs of
a Greek Doric frieze echo the fluted columns below (Illustration 24).
The balustrade which crowns a colonnade is a repetition, in some sort,
of the colonnade itself. The modillions of a Corinthian cornice are
but elaborated and embellished dentils. Each pinnacle of a Gothic
cathedral is a little tower with its spire. As Ruskin has pointed out,
the great vault of the cathedral nave, together with the pointed roof
above it, is repeated in the entrance arch with its gable, and the
same two elements appear in every statue-enshrining niche of the
doorway. In classic architecture, as has been shown, instead of the
arch and gable, the column and entablature everywhere recur under
different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the
cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare
the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central
pavilion of the Château Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the
entire façade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it
introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere
(Illustration 26).
[Illustration 25]
[Illustration 26]
[Illustration 27]
This law of Consonance is operative in architecture more obscurely
in the form of recurring numerical ratios, identical geometrical
determining figures, parallel diagonals and the like, which will be
discussed in a subsequent essay. It has also to do with style and
scale, the adherence to substantially one method of construction and
manner of ornament, just as in music the key, or chosen series of
notes, may not be departed from except through proper modulations, or
in a specific manner.
Thus it is seen that in a work of art, as in a piece of tapestry,
the same thread runs through the web, but goes to make up different
figures. The idea is deeply theosophic: one life, many manifestations;
hence, inevitably, echoes, resemblances--_Consonance_.
DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY
Another principle of natural beauty, closely allied to the foregoing,
its complement as it were, is that of _Diversity in Monotony_--not
identity, but difference. It shows itself for the most part as a
perceptible and piquant variation between individual units belonging
to the same class, type, or species.
No two trees put forth their branches in just the same manner, and no
two leaves from the same tree exactly correspond; no two persons
look alike, though they have similiar members and features; even the
markings on the skin of the thumb are different in every human hand.
Browning says,
"As like as a hand to another hand!
Whoever said that foolish thing,
Could not have studied to understand--"
Now every principle of natural beauty is but the presentment of some
occult law, some theosophical truth; and this law of Diversity in
Monotony is the presentment of the truth that identity does not
exclude difference. The law is binding, yet the will is free: all men
are brothers united by the ties of brotherhood, yet each is unique, a
free agent, and never so free as when most bound by the Good Law. This
truth nature beautifully proclaims, and art also. In architecture it
is admirably exemplified in the metopes of the Parthenon frieze: seen
at a distance these must have presented a scarcely distinguishable
texture of sunlit marble and cool shadow, yet in reality each is
a separate work of art. So with the capitals of the columns of the
wonderful sea-arcade of the Venetian Ducal palace: alike in general
contour they differ widely in detail, and unfold a Bible story.
In Gothic cathedrals, in Romanesque monastery cloisters, a teeming
variety of invention is hidden beneath apparent uniformity. The
gargoyles of Notre Dame make similiar silhouettes against the sky,
but seen near at hand what a menagerie of monsters! The same spirit of
controlled individuality, of liberty subservient to the law of all, is
exemplified in the bases of the columns of the temple of Apollo near
Miletus--each one a separate masterpiece of various ornamentation
adorning an established architectural form (Illustration 28).
[Illustration 28]
[Illustration 29]
The builders of the early Italian churches, instinctively obeying this
law of Diversity in Monotony, varied the size of the arches in the
same arcade (Illustration 29), and that this was an effect of art and
not of accident or carelessness Ruskin long ago discovered, and the
Brooklyn Institute surveys have amply confirmed his view. Although
by these means the builders of that day produced effects of deceptive
perspective, of subtle concord and contrast, their sheer hatred of
monotony and meaningless repetition may have led them to diversify
their arcades in the manner described, for a rigidly equal and regular
division lacks interest and vitality.
BALANCE
If one were to establish an axial plane vertically through the center
of a tree, in most cases it would be found that the masses of foliage,
however irregularly shaped on either side of such an axis, just about
balanced each other. Similarly, in all our bodily movements, for every
change of equilibrium there occurs an opposition and adjustment of
members of such a nature that an axial plane through the center of
gravity would divide the body into two substantially equal masses,
as in the case of the tree. This physical plane law of Balance
shows itself for the most part on the human plane as the law of
Compensation, whereby, to the vision of the occultist, all accounts
are "squared," so to speak. It is in effect the law of Justice, aptly
symbolized by the scales.
The law of Balance finds abundant illustration in art: in music by
the opposition, the answering, of one phrase by another of the same
elements and the same length, but involving a different sequence of
intervals; in painting by the disposition of masses in such a way that
they about equalize one another, so that there is no sense of "strain"
in the composition.
In architecture the common and obvious recognition of the law of
Balance is in the symmetrical disposition of the elements, whether of
plan or of elevation, on either side of axial lines. A far more subtle
and vital illustration of the law occurs when the opposed elements do
not exactly match, but differ from each other, as in the case of the
two towers of Amiens, for example. This sort of balance may be said to
be characteristic of Gothic, as symmetry is characteristic of Classic,
architecture.
RHYTHMIC CHANGE
There is in nature a universal tendency toward refinement and
compactness of form in space, or contrariwise, toward increment
and diffusion; and this manifests itself in time as acceleration or
retardation. It is governed, in either case, by an exact mathematical
law, like the law of falling bodies. It shows itself in the widening
circles which appear when one drops a stone into still water, in the
convolutions of shells, in the branching of trees and the veining
of leaves; the diminution in the size of the pipes of an organ
illustrates it, and the spacing of the frets of a guitar. More and
more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the
spiral vortex, which so beautifully illustrates this law, both in its
time and its space aspects is the universal archetype, the pattern of
all that is, has been, or will be, since it is the form assumed by the
ultimate physical atom, and the ultimate physical atom is the physical
cosmos in miniature.
This Rhythmic Diminution is everywhere: it is in the eye itself, for
any series of mathematically equal units, such for example as the
columns and intercolumnations of a colonnade, become when seen
in perspective rhythmically unequal, diminishing according to the
universal law. The entasis of a Classic column is determined by this
law, the spirals of the Ionic volute, the annulets of the Parthenon
cap, obey it (Illustration 30).
In recognition of the same principle of Rhythmic Diminution a building
is often made to grow, or appear to grow lighter, more intricate,
finer, from the ground upward, an end attained by various devices,
one of the most common being the employment of the more attenuated
and highly ornamented orders above the simpler and sturdier, as in the
Roman Colosseum, or in the Palazzo Uguccioni, in Florence--to mention
only two examples out of a great number. In the Riccardi Palace
an effect of increasing refinement is obtained by diminishing the
boldness of the rustication of the ashlar in successive stories; in
the Farnese, by the gradual reduction of the size of the angle quoins
(Illustration 30). In an Egyptian pylon it is achieved most simply by
battering the wall; in a Gothic cathedral most elaborately by a
kind of segregation, or breaking up, analogous to that which a tree
undergoes--the strong, relatively unbroken base corresponding to
the trunk, the diminishing buttresses to the tapering limbs, and
the multitude of delicate pinnacles and crockets, to the outermost
branches and twigs, seen against the sky.
RADIATION
The final principle of natural beauty to which the author would call
attention is the law of _Radiation_, which is in a manner a return
to the first, the law of _Unity_. The various parts of any organism
radiate from, or otherwise refer back to common centers, or foci,
and these to centers of their own. The law is represented in its
simplicity in the star-fish, in its complexity in the body of man; a
tree springs from a seed, the solar system centers in the sun.