The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915 — John Shaqi
The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915Williams, Cora Lenore
Philosophy
The Fourth-Dimensional Reaches of the Exposition: San Francisco, 1915
Williams, Cora Lenore
Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
And again that 'vexing, forward reaching sense of some more noble
permanence' urges you on. 'Time was;' you joyously affirm for man to
come to the knowledge of an eternal self. But that, your tradition and
education have led you to believe, is still yonder, worlds away. And you
image the soul in its quest passing from life to life as you are now
passing from building to building, from hall to hall. But glad the
thought - there will be courts wherein you may perhaps glimpse the plan
of the whole and so gather strength and purpose for another housing. All
at once you know that death has no fear for you and you feel toward your
present life as you do toward these Palaces of the Mundane - the sooner
compassed the better.
You pass from court to edifice and from edifice to court, marveling at
the symmetry of plan and structure. Unity, balance, and harmony become
manifest as spatial properties - you had been taught to regard them as
principles of art. You wonder if art itself may not be merely a matter
of right placing - the adjustment of a thing to its environment. You are
certain that this is so as each coign and niche offers you its
particular insight. Strange vagaries float through your mind - one's
duty to the inanimate things of one's possession; the house too large
for the personality of the owner; the right setting for certain
idiosyncrasies; character building as a constructive process; the ideal
as the limit of an infinite series - each pointing the way, as you
think, to a different vista of human outlook. What then your glad
surprise to find these converging toward one ideal synthesis. In
anticipation of the splendor you hasten on till earth shall have
attained to heaven. There it stands - 'a structure brave,' the Palace of
Art, the Temple of the Soul - and you know you were made to be perfect
too.
Now that you apprehend the plan of the whole, symmetry takes on a vital
significance for your thought. You try to recall what you learned of it
in geometry. There was a folding over, you remember, and a fitting
together 'congruence' you believe it was called. But that could have no
meaning for solids. Stop! a folding over? Why, that implies another
dimension! The two halves of a leaf can be brought together only as one
or the other is lifted out of the plane of the leaf into a third
dimension. So to bring two buildings into superposition when they are
alike except for a reverse order of parts, would necessitate a fourth
dimension and a turning inside out. Quick as the thought, the court you
are in is that - a building inside out!
Ah! you know now wherefor that wonderful uplifting sensation that comes
whenever you enter one of these beautiful inclosures. You have passed
into the fourth dimension of spatial realization. 'Time is past,' you
shout aloud, and laugh to find yourself on the inside of externality.
Cubism in architecture! Futurism, in very truth!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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