The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Beautiful Necessity, by Claude Fayette
Bragdon

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Title: The Beautiful Necessity

Author: Claude Fayette Bragdon

Release Date: June 18, 2004 [eBook #12648]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY***

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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 n