35 
The measure of all things 
Man behaves as if he had created the world and could play with it. Pretty 
much at the beginning of his glorious development he coined the saying that 
man was the measure of all things. Then he quickly went to work and turned 
as much of the world as he could upside down. The Venus de Milo lies shat 
tered on the ground. Man has measured with the measure of all things, him 
self, measured and presumed. He has tailored and pruned away at beauty. 
This cutting to measure gave rise to a fashion shop, the fashion shop gave rise 
to madness in all its forms. Confusion, unrest, nonsense, insanity and frenzy 
dominate the world. Foetuses with geometric double heads, human bodies 
with yellow hippopotamuses heads, fan-shaped monsters with trunks like ele 
phants, stomachs with teeth on crutches, corpulent or emaciated pyramids 
with dragging feet and tears in their eyes, clods of earth with sex organs, etc., 
have appeared in painting and statuary. 
Beauty has not vanished beneath the ruins of the centuries 
When the personality, the intellect, philosophy arose from the legendary 
depths of mythical humanity, when nature was discovered by man, when “the 
earth, the wavy sea, the moist air and the Titan Ether,” were solemnly sung, 
beauty dwelt naked among men. 
In every century beauty changed. Beauty did not vanish beneath the ruins 
of the centuries, it vanished into the Maya, into the mirage. So many rare and 
priceless garments had been showered upon her, she no longer knew in which 
to show herself. 
Which is the original image of beauty? Which is the image “of beauty’s 
gushing fountain, the picture that flows from the source . . . ”? Is it the naked 
corporeality of the Greeks, is it the disguise, the veil, the pageant of the Renais 
sance, is it the disembodied yearning of Gothic, is it the cube and the sphere, 
is it the love and the harmony of which Empedocles said: “There were no two 
arms extending from a trunk, nor were there feet or swift knees or organs of 
procreation; there was a sphairos the same in all its aspects.” 
Deception, appearance, artifice 
Man became a childish demiurge, a childish creator. In his megalomania, 
he wanted to create God and the world a second time. A loathsome bickering