ss the
function. The architect who is also an artist however will do this
and something beyond: working for the most part unconsciously,
harmoniously, joyously, his building will obey and illustrate natural
laws--these laws of beauty--and to the extent it does so it will be a
work of art; for art is the method of nature carried into those higher
regions of thought and feeling which man alone inhabits: regions which
it is one of the purposes of theosophy to explore.

IV

THE BODILY TEMPLE

Carlyle says: "There is but one temple in the world, and that is the
body of man." If the body is, as he declares, a temple, it is not less
true that a temple or any work of architectural art is a larger body
which man has created for his uses, just as the individual self is
housed within its stronghold of flesh and bones. Architectural beauty
like human beauty depends upon the proper subordination of parts
to the whole, the harmonious interrelation between these parts, the
expressiveness of each of its function or functions, and when these
are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another. This being
so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing the sources
of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable. Pursued intelligently,
such a study will stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple
yet subtle laws according to which nature everywhere works, and
it will educate the eye in the finest known school of proportion,
training it to distinguish minute differences, in the same way that
the hearing of good music cultivates the ear.

Those principles of natural beauty which formed the subject of the
two preceding essays are all exemplified in the ideally perfect human
figure. Though essentially a unit, there is a well marked division
into right and left--"Hands to hands, and feet to feet, in one body
grooms and brides." There are two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes,
and two lids to each eye; the nose has two nostrils, the mouth has
two lips. Moreover, the terms of such pairs are masculine and feminine
with respect to each other, one being active and the other passive.
Owing to the great size and one-sided position of the liver, the right
half of the body is heavier than the left; the right arm is usually
longer and more muscular than the left; the right eye is slightly
higher than its fellow. In speaking and eating the lower jaw and under
lip are active and mobile with relation to the upper; in winking