Page 10
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page compresses a whole moral argument into an aphorism about making men out of lines and squares and tearing apart the new world in the process.
Because it is so short, the statement lands like a shard from a larger essay or poem. It suggests that order, geometry, and construction can become forms of damage rather than improvement.
A two-line aphorism set against itself: 'I know that to build a man must be plumb, in lines and squares.' is immediately challenged by 'Doesn't that just tear apart the new world?' The carpenter's vocabulary of 'plumb,' 'lines and squares' turns suspect - the very precision that builds is accused of destroying. A shard that distrusts order and construction as forms of damage.