House iff Garden 
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 
dedicated to the worship of a crucified Savior 
should be a symbol, not of the cross only, 
but of the body crucified ? The vesica piscis , 
which in many cases determined the main 
proportion of a cathedral (the interior length 
and the width across the transepts) appears 
as an aureole around the figure of Christ in 
early representations of him, a fact which 
points to a relation between the two. A 
curious little book, “ The Rosicrucians,” by 
Hargrave Jennings, contains an interesting 
diagram which well illustrates 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 the right hand, the south transept 
to the left hand, the nave to the trunk, and 
the north and south towers to the right and 
left feet respectively. 
The cathedral builders excelled all others 
THE, GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE 
THE EQUATION OF THE F1C3UEE.TD 
THEiQUAEE.THE CIRCLE). AND THE 
E£3yU4STEEXE TRIANGLE 
THE. PltOPOETTION S OF THE 
FIGUEE, AS ESTABLISHED By' 
DOCTOR) EJMMEJb. 
in the artfulness with which they established 
and maintained a relation between their archi¬ 
tecture and the stature of a man. This is 
perhaps one reason why the Gothic churches 
are more impressive than the great Renais¬ 
sance structures built at a later period, such 
as St. Peter’s in Rome, for example. A 
gigantic order furnishes no true measure for 
the eye; its vastness is revealed only by the 
accident of some human presence which 
forms a basis of comparison. That archi¬ 
tecture is not necessarily the most noble 
which gives the impression of having been 
ALPHA 
E::3 
NORTH CELESTIAL ROLE. 
SUN RISES'—EAST 
APSE, OR, APSIS 
CROWN OP THORNS \ 
HEAD 
MAN’S SIDE. 
I 
WOMAN'S SIDET 
DEXTER) 
I 
SINISTER 
NORTH TRANSEPT 
RIGHT HAND 
NAVE—NAVEL 
MALE SACRED 
PILLAR) “JACKIN * 
SOUTH TRANSEPT 
LEFT HAND 
PLACE) OF FONS 
FEMALE SACRED 
HLIAR> "5QA2." 
WINE) 
BREAD 
SOUTH CELESTIAL POLE 
SUN SETS—'WEST 
OMEGA. 
THE, SYMBOLISM OF A GOTHIC CATHBDkAL 
FROPTHE) R05IGRUCIANS? HAKGRTi/E JENNINGS 
built by giants for the abode of pigmies. 
Like the other arts, architecture is highest 
when it is most human. The medieval build¬ 
ers, true to this dictum, employed stones of a 
size proportionate to the strength of a man 
working without unusual mechanical aids. 
The great piers and columns, built up ot 
many such stones, were subdivided into 
clusters, and the circumference of each shaft 
of such a cluster usually approximated the 
girth of a man. By this device the mould¬ 
ings of the bases and the foliation of the 
caps were easily kept in scale. Wherever a 
balustrade occurred it was proportioned, not 
with relation to the height of the column 
below, as in classic architecture, hut with 
relation to a man’s stature. 
It may be stated as a general rule that 
every work of architecture should have 
somewhere about it something fixed and 
enduring to relate it to the human figure, 
if it be only a flight of steps in which each 
one is the measure of a stride. In the Far- 
nese, the Riccardi, the Strozzi and many 
another Italian palace, the stone seat about 
the base gives scale to the building because 
the beholder knows instinctively that the 
x 95 
