FREDERICK BLIGH BOND, F.R.I.B.A
THOMAS SIMCOX LEA, D.D.
ANNOTATED AND TRANSCRIBED BY
PETER WAKEFIELD SAULT
GO TO CONTENTS | P.95 | P.96
ON GEOMETRIC TRUTH.
(EXPLANATORY OF CHAP. I.)
Mere words of natural significance fail to interpret spiritual ideas unless a figurative meaning can be added to them. By type and symbol alone can the essence of Truth be conveyed. In myth and parable the poet, prophet and religious teacher in all time present to us the realisations of their spiritual sense.
And not in the imagery of words alone, but in architecture, and its allied arts, some of the most sublime of human conceptions have been conveyed. Architecture has been the interpreter to man of the Universal Truths, those which express the Mind and Works of the Creator, for Architecture is the witness to the Formative principles which underlie Nature, and speaks of the Immutable Foundations.
And these are expressed in the symmetry of geometric forms, co-related by Measure and Number. Thus Architecture constitutes a higher language adapted to sacred uses.
Now in the Greek Gematria we have what may be termed the Architecture of Language, for the Gematria unites both elements, both modes of expression, and in a wonderful accord, since words are therein related in their sense to Number, by their Number to Geometry, and by their Geometry again to Building.
For all Building, whether of Words, Ideas, Figures, or Material Forms, is founded on fixed proportionals which we have termed Aeonial, and these we study under the name Geometry.
As a matter of fact we think in Geometry, for the laws of human thought are themselves geometrical, so that, as Howard Hinton has shewn, even the Rules of Logic may be demonstrated geometrically, the Rational Conclusions arranging themselves symmetrically on the surface of a cube*, and their exact number determined in the process.
The concept of Truth is thus possibly more purely illustrated and more vitally appropriated through the exercise of the geometric sense than by any other method. Pythagoras and his followers were obviously of this opinion. And it may clearly be inferred from the Coptic Gnostic Books that that the same teaching was believed to be inculcated by Jesus. Hence in the true and faithful use of Geometric Forms we shall in reality be demonstrating truths more subtle than those of which we are commonly aware.
Geometry is therefore a sacred study, the Language of the Great Verities, and it follows that any language built upon Geometry will contain more than at first meets the eye, and will be capable of a limitless power of expression, because its rational terms are eternal in nature, and infinite.
* H. Hinton. New Era of Thought. (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1906.) He shewed, by this means one more rational form, not included in the textbooks. The first application of the method is credited to Mrs. Alicia Boole Stott, and it is elaborated by Hinton, who shews that a four-dimensional figure is necessarily involved in the process of demonstration, and that this Fourth Element is present in the Laws of Thought.
Creative Commons Licence
Save a copy
|Copyright © Peter Wakefield Sault 2003-2008|