ABSTRACT
It would be humiliating to think that the Greeks have the exclusive privilege of inventing the orders of architecture. Why would other nations be forbidden to get involved in the quarry that the Greeks first exploited, to penetrate beyond the borders where they stopped? This quarry is immense, it is indefinite. Let us be brave enough to believe that there is still a great number of beauties that genius is capable of apprehending and producing in the light of day. All the arts, before genius brought its flame to theirs, are like a universe shrouded in darkness. One only feels a small number of objects within it, by groping at it. Imagination enclosed them in a narrow circumference and sees only amorphic chaos in their arrangement and links. Light illuminates this unknown universe and immediately sight loses itself in its immensity, marvels are created and multiply at every step. It was a small circle of regular things, distinct and striking.
