The Beautiful Necessity Part 3

RHYTHMIC CHANGE

There is in nature a universal tendency toward refinement and compactness of form in s.p.a.ce, or contrariwise, toward increment and diffusion; and this manifests itself in time as acceleration or r.e.t.a.r.dation. 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 sh.e.l.ls, in the branching of trees and the veining of leaves; the diminution in the size of the pipes of an organ ill.u.s.trates it, and the s.p.a.cing of the frets of a guitar. More and more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the spiral vortex, which so beautifully ill.u.s.trates this law, both in its time and its s.p.a.ce aspects is the universal archetype, the pattern of all that is, has been, or will be, since it is the form a.s.sumed 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 Cla.s.sic column is determined by this law, the spirals of the Ionic volute, the annulets of the Parthenon cap, obey it (Ill.u.s.tration 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 st.u.r.dier, 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 (Ill.u.s.tration 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, a.n.a.logous to that which a tree undergoes--the strong, relatively unbroken base corresponding to the trunk, the diminishing b.u.t.tresses to the tapering limbs, and the mult.i.tude 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.

The idea here expressed by the term "radiation" is a familiar one to all students of theosophy. The Logos radiates his life and light throughout his universe, bringing into activity a host of ent.i.ties which become themselves radial centers; these generate still others, and so on endlessly. This principle, like every other, patiently publishes itself to us, unheeding, everywhere in nature, and in all great art as well; it is a law of optics, for example, that all straight lines having a common direction if sufficiently prolonged appear to meet in a point, i.e., radiate from it (Ill.u.s.tration 31).

Leonardo da Vinci employed this principle of perspective in his Last Supper to draw the spectator's eye to the picture's central figure, the point of sight toward which the lines of the walls and ceiling converge centering in the head of Christ. Puvis de Chavannes, in his Boston Library decoration, leads the eye by a system of triangulation to the small figure of the Genius of Enlightenment above the central door (Ill.u.s.tration 32); and Ruskin, in his _Elements of Drawing_, has shown how artfully Turner arranged some of his compositions to attract attention to a focal point.

This law of Radiation enters largely into architecture. The Colosseum, based upon the ellipse, a figure generated from two points or foci, and the Pantheon, based upon the circle, a figure generated from a central point, are familiar examples. The distinctive characteristic of Gothic construction, the concentration or focalization of the weight of the vaults and arches at certain points, is another ill.u.s.tration of the same principle applied to architecture, beautifully exemplified in the semicircular apse of a cathedral, where the lines of the plan converge to a common center, and the ribs of the vaulting meet upon the capitals of the piers and columns, seeming to radiate thence to still other centers in the loftier vaults which finally meet in a center common to all.

[Ill.u.s.tration 30]

[Ill.u.s.tration 31]

[Ill.u.s.tration 32]

The tracery of the great roses, high up in the facades of the cathedrals of Paris and of Amiens, ill.u.s.trate Radiation, in the one case masculine: straight, angular, direct; in the feminine: curved, flowing, sinuous. The same _Beautiful Necessity_ determined the characteristics of much of the ornament of widely separated styles and periods: the Egyptian lotus, the Greek honeysuckle, the Roman acanthus, Gothic leaf work--to s.n.a.t.c.h at random four blossoms from the sheaf of time. The radial principle still inherent in the debased ornament of the late Renaissance gives that ornament a unity, a coherence, and a kind of beauty all its own (Ill.u.s.tration 35).

[Ill.u.s.tration 33]

[Ill.u.s.tration 34]

Such are a few of the more obvious laws of natural beauty and their application to the art of architecture. The list is by no means exhausted, but it is not the multiplicity and diversity of these laws which is important to keep in mind, so much as their relatedness and coordination, for they are but different aspects of the One Law, that whereby the Logos manifests in time and s.p.a.ce. A brief recapitulation will serve to make this correlation plain, and at the same time fix what has been written more firmly in the reader's mind.

[Ill.u.s.tration 35]

[Ill.u.s.tration 36]

First comes the law of _Unity_; then, since every unit is in its essence twofold, there is the law of _Polarity_; but this duality is not static but dynamic, the two parts acting and reacting upon one another to produce a third--hence the law of _Trinity_. Given this third term, and the innumerable combinations made possible by its relations to and reactions upon the original pair, the law of _Multiplicity in Unity_ naturally follows, as does the law of _Consonance_, or repet.i.tion, since the primal process of differentiation tends to repeat itself, and the original combinations to reappear--but to reappear in changed form, hence the law of _Diversity in Monotony_. The law of _Balance_ is seen to be but a modification of the law of Polarity, and since all things are waxing and waning, there is the law whereby they wax and wane, that of _Rhythmic Change_. _Radiation_ rediscovers and reaffirms, even in the utmost complexity, that essential and fundamental unity from which complexity was wrought.

Everything, beautiful or ugly, obeys and ill.u.s.trates one or another of these laws, so universal are they, so inseparably attendant upon every kind of manifestation in time and s.p.a.ce. It is the number of them which finds ill.u.s.tration within small compa.s.s, and the aptness and completeness of such ill.u.s.tration, which makes for beauty, because beauty is the fine flower of a sort of sublime ingenuity. A work of art is nothing if not _artful_: like an acrostic, the more different ways it can be read--up, down, across, from right to left and from left to right--the better it is, other things being equal. This statement, of course, may be construed in such a way as to appear absurd; what is meant is simply that the more a work of art is freighted and fraught with meaning beyond meaning, the more secure its immortality, the more powerful its appeal. For enjoyment, it is not necessary that all these meanings should be fathomed, it is only necessary that they should be felt.

Consider for a moment the manner in which Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, an acknowledged masterpiece, conforms to everyone of the laws of beauty enumerated above (Ill.u.s.tration 32). It ill.u.s.trates the law of Unity in that it movingly portrays a single significant episode in the life of Christ. The eye is led to dwell upon the central personage of this drama by many artful expedients: the visible part of the figure of Christ conforms to the lines of an equilateral triangle placed exactly in the center of the picture; the figure is separated by a considerable s.p.a.ce from the groups of the disciples on either hand, and stands relieved against the largest parallelogram of light, and the vanishing point of the perspective is in the head of Christ, at the apex, therefore, of the triangle. The law of Polarity finds fulfilment in the complex and flowing lines of the draped figures contrasted with the simple parallelogram of the cloth-covered table, and the severe architecture of the room. The law of Trinity is exemplified in the three windows, and in the subdivision of the twelve figures of the disciples into four groups of three figures each. The law of Consonance appears in the repet.i.tion of the horizontal lines of the table in the ceiling above; and in the central triangle before referred to, continued and echoed, as it were, in the triangular supports of the table visible underneath the cloth. The law of Diversity in Monotony is ill.u.s.trated in the varying disposition of the heads of the figures in the four groups of three; the law of Balance in the essential symmetry of the entire composition; the law of Rhythmic Change in the diminishing of the wall and ceiling s.p.a.ces; and the law of Radiation in the convergence of all the perspective lines to a single significant point.

To ill.u.s.trate further the universality of these laws, consider now their application to a single work of architecture: the Taj Mahal, one of the most beautiful buildings of the world (Ill.u.s.tration 36). It is a unit, but twofold, for it consists of a curved part and an angular part, roughly figured as an inverted cup upon a cube; each of these (seen in parallel perspective, at the end of the princ.i.p.al vista) is threefold, for there are two sides and a central parallelogram, and two lesser domes flank the great dome. The composition is rich in consonances, for the side arches echo the central one, the subordinate domes the great dome, and the lanterns of the outstanding minarets repeat the princ.i.p.al motif. Diversity in Monotony appears abundantly in the ornament, which is intricate and infinitely various; the law of Balance is everywhere operative in the symmetry of the entire design.

Rhythmic Change appears in the tapering of the minarets, the outlines of the domes and their ma.s.s relations to one another; and finally, the whole effect is of radiation from a central point, of elements disposed on radial lines.

It would be fatuous to contend that the prime object of a work of architecture is to obey and ill.u.s.trate these laws. The prime object of a work of architecture is to fulfill certain definite conditions in a practical, economical, and admirable way, and in fulfilling to express as far as possible these conditions, making the form express the function. The architect who is also an artist however will do this and something beyond: working for the most part unconsciously, harmoniously, joyously, his building will obey and ill.u.s.trate natural laws--these laws of beauty--and to the extent it does so it will be a work of art; for art is the method of nature carried into those higher regions of thought and feeling which man alone inhabits: regions which it is one of the purposes of theosophy to explore.

IV

THE BODILY TEMPLE

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 a.n.a.lyzing 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 pa.s.sive.

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 hand flowers out into fingers and the foot into toes, each with a threefold articulation; and in this way is effected that transition from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, which appears to be so universal throughout nature, and of which a tree is the perfect symbol.

[Ill.u.s.tration 37: THE LAW OF RHYTHMIC DIMINUTION ILl.u.s.tRATED IN THE TAPERING BODY, LIMBS, FINGERS & TOES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration 38]

[Ill.u.s.tration 39]

The body is rich in veiled repet.i.tions, echoes, _consonances_. The head and arms are in a sense a refinement upon the trunk and legs, there being a clearly traceable correspondence between their various parts. The hand is the body in little--_"Your soft hand is a woman of itself"_--the palm, the trunk; the four fingers, the four limbs; and the thumb, the head;-each finger is a little arm, each finger tip a little palm. The lips are the lids of the mouth, the lids are the lips of the eyes--and so on. The law of _Rhythmic Diminution_ is ill.u.s.trated in the tapering of the entire body and of the limbs, in the graduated sizes and lengths of the palm and the toes, and in the successively decreasing length of the palm and the joints of the fingers, so that in closing the hand the fingers describe natural spirals (Ill.u.s.trations 37, 38). Finally, the limbs radiate as it were from the trunk, the fingers from a point in the wrist, the toes from a point in the ankle. The ribs radiate from the spinal column like the veins of a leaf from its midrib (Ill.u.s.tration 39).

[Ill.u.s.tration 40]

The relation of these laws of beauty to the art of architecture has been shown already. They are reiterated here only to show that man is indeed the microcosm--a little world fashioned from the same elements and in accordance with the same _Beautiful Necessity_ as is the greater world in which he dwells. When he builds a house or temple he builds it not literally in his own image, but according to the laws of his own being, and there are correspondences not altogether fanciful between the animate body of flesh and the inanimate body of stone. Do we not all of us, consciously or unconsciously, recognize the fact of character and physiognomy in buildings? Are they not, to our imagination, masculine or feminine, winning or forbidding--_human_, in point of fact--to a greater degree than anything else of man's creating? They are this certainly to a true lover and student of architecture. Seen from a distance the great French cathedrals appear like crouching monsters, half beast, half human: the two towers stand like a man and a woman, mysterious and gigantic, looking out over city and plain. The campaniles of Italy rise above the churches and houses like the sentinels of a sleeping camp--nor is their strangely human aspect wholly imaginary: these giants of mountain and campagna have eyes and brazen tongues; rising four square, story above story, with a belfry or lookout, like a head, atop, their likeness to a man is not infrequently enhanced by a certain ident.i.ty of proportion--of ratio, that is, of height to width: Giotto's beautiful tower is an example.

The caryatid is a supporting member in the form of a woman; in the Ionic column we discern her stiffened, like Lot's wife, into a pillar, with nothing to show her feminine but the spirals of her beautiful hair. The columns which uphold the pediment of the Parthenon are unmistakably masculine: the ratio of their breadth to their height is the ratio of the breadth to the height of a man (Ill.u.s.tration 40).

[Ill.u.s.tration 41: THE BODY THE ARCHETYPE OF SACRED EDIFICES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration 42: THE VESICA PISCIS AND THE PLAN OF CHARTRES.]

At certain periods of the world's history, periods of mystical enlightenment, men have been wont to use the human figure, the soul's temple, as a sort of archetype for sacred edifices (Ill.u.s.tration 41).

The colossi, with calm inscrutable faces, which flank the entrance to Egyptian temples; the great bronze Buddha of j.a.pan, with its dreaming eyes; the little known colossal figures of India and China--all these belong scarcely less to the domain of architecture than of sculpture.

The relation above referred to however is a matter more subtle and occult than mere obvious imitation on a large scale, being based upon some correspondence of parts, or similarity of proportions, or both.

The correspondence between the innermost sanctuary or shrine of a temple and the heart of a man, and between the gates of that temple and the organs of sense is sufficiently obvious, and a relation once established, the idea is susceptible of almost infinite development.

That the ancients proportioned their temples from the human figure is no new idea, nor is it at all surprising. The sculpture of the Egyptians and the Greeks reveals the fact that they studied the body abstractly, in its exterior presentment. It is clear that the rules of its proportions must have been established for sculpture, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that they became canonical in architecture also. Vitruvius and Alberti both lay stress on the fact that all sacred buildings should be founded on the proportions of the human body.

[Ill.u.s.tration 43: A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL THE SYMBOL OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST]

[Ill.u.s.tration 44: THE SYMBOLISM OF A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL FROM THE ROSICRUCIANS: HARGRAVE JENNINGS]

In France, during the Middle Ages, a Gothic cathedral became, at the hands of the secret masonic guilds, a glorified symbol of the body of Christ. To practical-minded students of architectural history, familiar with the slow and halting evolution of a Gothic cathedral from a Roman basilica, such an idea may seem to be only the maunderings of a mystical imagination, a theory evolved from the inner consciousness, ent.i.tled to no more consideration than the familiar fallacy that vaulted nave of a Gothic church was an attempt to imitate the green aisles of a forest. It should be remembered however that the habit of the thought of that time was mystical, as that of our own age is utilitarian and scientific; and the chosen language of mysticism is always an elaborate and involved symbolism. What could be more natural than that a building devoted to the worship of a crucified Savior should be made a symbol, not of the cross only, but of the body crucified?

[Ill.u.s.tration 45: THE GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE]

[Ill.u.s.tration 46]

The _vesica piscis_ (a figure formed by the developing arcs of two equilateral triangles having a common side) which in so many cases seems to have determined the main proportion of a cathedral plan--the interior length and width across the transepts--appears as an aureole around the figure of Christ in early representations, a fact which certainly points to a relation between the two (Ill.u.s.trations 42, 43). A curious little book, _The Rosicrucians_, by Hargrave Jennings, contains an interesting diagram which well ill.u.s.trates this conception of the symbolism of a cathedral. A copy of it is here given. The apse is seen to correspond to the head of Christ, the north transept to his right hand, the south transept to the left hand, the nave to the body, and the north and south towers to the right and left feet respectively (Ill.u.s.tration 44).

[Ill.u.s.tration 47]