Page 139 (1/1)

In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Ro but the priest, whether he calls hiian, or Pope It is not the same in the architectures of the people They are richer and less sacred In the Phoenician, one feels the merchant; in the Greek, the republican; in the Gothic, the citizen

The general characteristics of all theocratic architecture are iress, the preservation of traditional lines, the consecration of the pri of all the forms of men and of nature to the incomprehensible caprices of the symbol These are dark books, which the initiated alone understand how to decipher Moreover, every form, every deformity even, has there a sense which renders it inviolable Do not ask of Hindoo, Egyptian, Ron, or to i is an ih the rigidity of the dogma had spread over the stone like a sort of second petrifaction The general characteristics of popular inality, opulence, perpetual ion to think of their beauty, to take care of it, to correct without relaxation their parure of statues or arabesques They are of the age They have sole incessantly with the divine symbol under which they still produce Hence, edifices coence, to every iination, symbolical still, but as easy to understand as nature Between theocratic architecture and this there is the difference that lies between a sacred language and a vulgar language, between hieroglyphics and art, between Solomon and Phidias

If the reader will sum up e have hitherto briefly, very briefly, indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also a thousand objections of detail, be will be led to this: that architecture was, down to the fifteenth century, the chief register of huht which is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the world, which has not been worked into an edifice; that every popular idea, and every religious law, has had its monumental records; that the huht which it has not written in stone And why? Because every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating itself; because the idea which has eneration wishes to move others also, and leave a trace Nohat a precarious immortality is that of the , is a book of stone! In order to destroy the written word, a torch and a Turk are sufficient To demolish the constructed word, a social revolution, a terrestrial revolution are required The barbarians passed over the Coliseue, perhaps, passed over the Pyramids