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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
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