THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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bodily dimension, precisely that specific imitatio which instead of the crystal of the pyramid, instead of the later forest profusion of the cathedral resorts to the perfect
bodily figure as its architectural symbol. As one in whose youthful and also abstract Humanum the Egyptian final clarity and the Gothic final profusion are still or already
united in a certain corrective. But the architectural utopia of completion was no less involved in the building here, however much more subdued it may appear than that
of the Egyptian and afterwards of the Gothic architectural symbol. And although, as will be shown, only Egypt realized the possibility of total geometrization, only
Gothic the possibility of total vitalization as an architectural experiment. So that most other architectures of the world then contain within them the Egyptian geometrical
element and the Gothic vitalistic element again and again as wishful alternatives, as guiding images of the final architectural expression; in different percentages, and also
with a perpetual struggle, with one abstractly settled only in Greece itself, and then perhaps also in the early Renaissance. This is the sense in which we can speak of
geometric or vitalistic ornamentation even in the art of the Stone Age, and thus, with powerful anachronism, of that which later reached its full composition in Egyptian
or in Gothic terms. And why Romanesque architecture, via late Roman mediation, can also still Egyptianize, i.e. geometrize, just as the Baroque incorporates refunctioned
Gothic. Likewise, Egypt and Gothic remain the only radical architectural symbols, and at the same time those of the radical difference in the content of their
intended architectural perfection. Therefore the ‘rules’ of the Gothic and long before that of the Egyptian stonemasons' guilds there and then certainly already contain an
element of that utopia of completion which prospectively fulfils the symbolic intentions on both sides. Equally, however, both symbols are by no means free­floating or
objectless, but they denote, like all genuine symbols, real possibilities in the world, answering counterparts from its aesthetic latency. The Egyptian architectural symbol
is, as will now be seen in more detail, that of the crystal of death, the Gothic that of the tree of life or, expressed in terms of medieval ideology: of Corpus Christi. This is
the breadth of variation of sculptural­architectural utopias, especially of those whose particular sap also rises and falls in the religious superstructures of their society. In
the architectural will of Memphis stood there and then the utopia of an aspiration to become and a being like stone, of a transformation into crystal. In the architectural
will of Amiens and Reims, of Strasbourg, Cologne and Regensburg sprouted there and then the utopia of an aspiration to become and a being like resurrection, of a
transformation into the tree of the