should say today) of the cosmic influences pouring down on them from the stars. Astrology also had a say in the founding of temples and towns. Spika was the marking star for the ancients—people far earlier than the sophisticates who built this sanctuary. In those times it was accurately done by the responsible agent, the king, with the aid of two pegs joined by a cord, and a golden mallet. The priestess having driven one peg into the ground at a previously consecrated spot, the king then directed his gaze to the constellation of the Bull’s Foreleg. Having aligned the cord to the hoof thereof and to Spika, as seen through the visor of the strange head-dress of the priestess, he drove home the second peg to mark the axis of the temple to be. Boom!
“Mobego, the god of today, does not require any such efforts on our part. Yet perhaps defeat and decline are also part of an unconscious intention? After all, we form our heroes in our own likeness. A Caligula or a Napoleon leaves a great raw birth-mark on the fatty degenerate tissue of our history. Are we not satisfied? Have we not earned them? As for the scientific view—it is one which drags up provisional validities and pretends they are universal truths. But ideas, like women’s clothes and rich men’s illnesses, change according to fashion. Man, like the chimpanzee, cannot concentrate for very long; he yawns, he needs a sea-change. Well then, a Descartes or a Leibniz is born to divert him. A film starlet might have been enough, but no, poor nature is forced to over-compensate. We are all supposed to be pilgrims, all supposed to be in search; but in fact very few among us are. The majority are mere vegetables, malingerers, fallers by the wayside. All the great cosmologies have been stripped of their validity by human sloth. They have become hospitals for the maimed, casualty clearing stations.”
Hippolyta, understanding little of all this, was in a state of deep depression though tinged with relief. But Caradoc swept on, hair flying, voice booming. My only concern was for my devil box. I was anxious lest the faint wind in the mike should give me boom as well as rasp.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the geometries we use in our buildings are biological projections, and we can see the same sort of patterning in the work of other animals or insects, birds, spiders,snails and so on. Matter does not dictate the form but only modifies it in order to make sure that a spider’s web really holds the fly, the bird’s nest really cherishes the egg. And how much the whole matter is dependent on sexual factors is really a dark question. Among squids and octopods, for example, the males have a special arm with which to transfer the semen to the female, inserting the spermatophore into the cloak or mantle of the lady. In the chambered nautilus the female clutches and retains the arm which breaks off. Spiders are differently catered for; the end of the pedipalp is used as a syringe to suck up and transfer the sperm;but before this can be done the male must discharge this into a special web which he weaves for the purpose . In fact the female does not have to be present. In the axolotl however the female picks up the sperm case with her hind feet and inserts it—a labour-saving device which Mrs. Henniker’s young ladies would be prepared to perform for elderly clients. In birds sometimes, by fault an egg can produce weird gynandromorph forms, half male and half female. Aye! In the smallest thing we build is buried the lore of centuries.
“All this and much more occurred to me in my youth as a prentice architect playing about among the foundations of Canberra with Griffin, one of Sullivan’s lads. It has occurred to me all over again here in Athens among the girdling shanty towns like New Ionia which your refugees from Turkey have run up, almost overnight. In these provisional and sometimes haphazard constructs you will find many a trace left of the basic predispositions we
“Mobego, the god of today, does not require any such efforts on our part. Yet perhaps defeat and decline are also part of an unconscious intention? After all, we form our heroes in our own likeness. A Caligula or a Napoleon leaves a great raw birth-mark on the fatty degenerate tissue of our history. Are we not satisfied? Have we not earned them? As for the scientific view—it is one which drags up provisional validities and pretends they are universal truths. But ideas, like women’s clothes and rich men’s illnesses, change according to fashion. Man, like the chimpanzee, cannot concentrate for very long; he yawns, he needs a sea-change. Well then, a Descartes or a Leibniz is born to divert him. A film starlet might have been enough, but no, poor nature is forced to over-compensate. We are all supposed to be pilgrims, all supposed to be in search; but in fact very few among us are. The majority are mere vegetables, malingerers, fallers by the wayside. All the great cosmologies have been stripped of their validity by human sloth. They have become hospitals for the maimed, casualty clearing stations.”
Hippolyta, understanding little of all this, was in a state of deep depression though tinged with relief. But Caradoc swept on, hair flying, voice booming. My only concern was for my devil box. I was anxious lest the faint wind in the mike should give me boom as well as rasp.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the geometries we use in our buildings are biological projections, and we can see the same sort of patterning in the work of other animals or insects, birds, spiders,snails and so on. Matter does not dictate the form but only modifies it in order to make sure that a spider’s web really holds the fly, the bird’s nest really cherishes the egg. And how much the whole matter is dependent on sexual factors is really a dark question. Among squids and octopods, for example, the males have a special arm with which to transfer the semen to the female, inserting the spermatophore into the cloak or mantle of the lady. In the chambered nautilus the female clutches and retains the arm which breaks off. Spiders are differently catered for; the end of the pedipalp is used as a syringe to suck up and transfer the sperm;but before this can be done the male must discharge this into a special web which he weaves for the purpose . In fact the female does not have to be present. In the axolotl however the female picks up the sperm case with her hind feet and inserts it—a labour-saving device which Mrs. Henniker’s young ladies would be prepared to perform for elderly clients. In birds sometimes, by fault an egg can produce weird gynandromorph forms, half male and half female. Aye! In the smallest thing we build is buried the lore of centuries.
“All this and much more occurred to me in my youth as a prentice architect playing about among the foundations of Canberra with Griffin, one of Sullivan’s lads. It has occurred to me all over again here in Athens among the girdling shanty towns like New Ionia which your refugees from Turkey have run up, almost overnight. In these provisional and sometimes haphazard constructs you will find many a trace left of the basic predispositions we
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