The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and ArchitectureBragdon, Claude Fayette
Philosophy
The Beautiful Necessity: Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture
Bragdon, Claude Fayette
Architecture; Theosophy
Carlyle says: "There is but one temple in the world, and that is the
body of man." If the body is, as he declares, a temple, it is not less
true that a temple or any work of architectural art is a larger body
which man has created for his uses, just as the individual self is
housed within its stronghold of flesh and bones. Architectural beauty
like human beauty depends upon the proper subordination of parts
to the whole, the harmonious interrelation between these parts, the
expressiveness of each of its function or functions, and when these
are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another. This being
so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing the sources
of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable. Pursued intelligently,
such a study will stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple
yet subtle laws according to which nature everywhere works, and
it will educate the eye in the finest known school of proportion,
training it to distinguish minute differences, in the same way that
the hearing of good music cultivates the ear.
Those principles of natural beauty which formed the subject of the
two preceding essays are all exemplified in the ideally perfect human
figure. Though essentially a unit, there is a well marked division
into right and left--"Hands to hands, and feet to feet, in one body
grooms and brides." There are two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes,
and two lids to each eye; the nose has two nostrils, the mouth has
two lips. Moreover, the terms of such pairs are masculine and feminine
with respect to each other, one being active and the other passive.
Owing to the great size and one-sided position of the liver, the right
half of the body is heavier than the left; the right arm is usually
longer and more muscular than the left; the right eye is slightly
higher than its fellow. In speaking and eating the lower jaw and under
lip are active and mobile with relation to the upper; in winking it is
the upper eyelid which is the more active. That "inevitable duality"
which is exhibited in the form of the body characterizes its motions
also. In the act of walking for example, a forward movement is
attained by means of a forward and a backward movement of the thighs
on the axis of the hips; this leg movement becomes twofold again below
the knee, and the feet move up and down independently on the axis of
the ankle. A similar progression is followed in raising the arm and
hand: motion is communicated first to the larger parts, through them
to the smaller and thence to the extremities, becoming more rapid and
complex as it progresses, so that all free and natural movements of
the limbs describe invisible lines of beauty in the air. Coexistent
with this pervasive duality there is a threefold division of the
figure into trunk, head and limbs: a superior trinity of head and
arms, and an inferior trinity of trunk and legs. The limbs are divided
threefold into upper-arm, forearm and hand; thigh, leg and foot. The
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