THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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pyramid and the humanly balanced Greek temple, the Roma quadrata and even the Slavonic circular market­place always obeyed, from the standpoint of their
respective symbols in the superstructure, different classifications from those of raw materials, technology, and immediate function; and the Gothic cathedral was no
exception to these classifications. Even more unmistakable in the Gothic symbolism of the masons' guilds is the after­effect of dualisticgnostic mythology of numbers and
figures, which had been kept alive in the Mediterranean countries, particularly in Provence, and spread north from there. Christ­like architecture differs here from the
heathen­astral kind only in the totally different content of its mythical classification, not in the classification itself. A special image of classification is found in Greek
architecture of course, namely a purely humane one, one with corporeal­human proportions, not with astral or Christian­otherworldly ones. This kind of classification
arose from a society without a priesthood and makes Greek architecture into that urbane human style among architectures, which then — through related replacements
or conquests of myth — largely became a world of proportions kept humane in the modern age. But around the Greek­built urbanum there runs the credited formula of
all the masons' guilds and their architectural utopia: the attempted imitatio of a cosmic or conversely Christ­like building, the one most perfectly conceived for the
purpose of a rapport. The imitatio necessarily preceded the longed­for rapport, and thus it created in its most radical expressions the crystal symmetry of the Egyptian
pyramid or conversely the hieratically ordered vitality of the Gothic cathedral.
Beautiful building thus also intended to do more than have an externally pleasing effect. Unfortunately, as was stressed above, nothing is sufficiently clear in detail as yet
about the ‘rules’ which undoubtedly existed at one time. And unfortunately again, only the freemasons have made an incessant allusion to this something more, a
dubious and largely falsified one. Nevertheless, their civilized­delusional mummery must be taken into account here, for there definitely must be something discarded
from the masons' guilds in it. As everyone knows, masonry both uses the emblems of the building trade and above all fantasizes its history throughout the entire history
of architecture. It is highly improbable that this bourgeois­aristocratic alliance itself, especially with its hocus­pocus, emerged from practical masonry. But it is even
more improbable that the fundamental frivolous use it makes of architectural metaphors was purely its own invention. The Salvation Army did not emerge from the
military either, yet without the military its lieutenants and majors would not exist; even the hallelujah girl who