THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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of the resurrection from the grave, with the stone rolled away (Mark 16, 4). So if Egypt was the crystal of death as foreseen perfection, Gothic is assigned in utopian
terms just as decisively to resurrection and to life. Its architectural symbol is thus necessarily the expulsion of death, anti­death, is the tree of life as foreseen perfection,
reproduced in a Christ­like way. If Egyptian art contains within it the aspiration to become like stone, then Gothic art simply contains the aspiration to become like the
tree of life, like the vine of Christ; and both styles of architecture as unique styles radically came to an end in this imitatio of theirs. Historically, all styles which
developed in addition to these contain variations of these two orders: that of severity and that of profusion, but only in Egypt and Gothic were they radically processed
out and related so powerfully and divergently to their religious basis of stonemasonry. These are the decisive characters of the architectural forms pyramid and cathedral
themselves; they both remain as the attempted construction of the depictiveness of a perfect space: on the one hand of silent death with crystal, on the other of the
organic excelsior with tree of life and community.
Further and individual examples of guiding space in ancient architecture
So old is the problem of what building should ultimately adhere to. For building not only satisfies the need for somewhere to live and so on, it certainly does not seek to
be merely pleasing in other respects either. Neither in the zealous nor in the handicraft sense of this word, in the all too gluttonous sense. How closely architecture is
connected with the respective social conditions, with the power that is to be displayed, with influence. And how immanently building as such is not merely a particularly
superstructural, but a pictorial, and hence objective art. As such, however, it adheres, like all pictorial art, to the visible world, absorbs it, reshapes it in an
experimental­substantial way. But where are the visible, i.e. naturalistic forms which a builder could find to use as a model in the same way as a painter or sculptor?
There are a great many gaps here of course, the architect only finds details to use as a model, scarcely however the peculiar whole in which they are used: the house.
Of course, even for its lay­out architecture may learn something from an egg, a honeycomb, a nest. Organic examples have been used from time immemorial for
ornamentation, acanthus, lotus, shell, the pillar is a trunk, the dome may be modelled on the cave, the interior of the cathedral on the forest. The architrave rests on top
as a slab of rock (the Lion Gate in Mycenae still