ABSTRACT
The experience of containment for every individual starts with the womb, and already there must be some haptic sense of being carried about, perhaps even some awareness of mother's direction of walk. Certainly of whether she is active or resting. The womb is the first centre of the child's world; birth the first crossing of a threshold. When the child starts to crawl, he or she creates a linear path, moving towards or away from things, and confronting other people. This is the beginning of an essential linear principle to complement the central one. The central principle, the linear one, or both, are needed to define a space of action. The combination of a linear path and a nesting series of layers around a centre necessitates the creation of one or many thresholds: house door, territorial gate, city gate, frontier. Sometimes, rites of passage involve literal thresholds in support of symbolic ones, and again an anthropologist's example can enlighten.
