The Column.

The column is the first element in sacred architecture, the first proof that a community has built, by causing objects to stand as people do. The upright column is released from its imprisonment in matter, so as to stand in the world of mind. It has the posture, inseparable from its visible role as a support. It also has proportion: like a person, it can appear too fat or too thing, too tall or too short, too delicate or too firm. It is visibly elastic, taking the weight that rests on it and passing it to the ground. It has a head and a foot, and just as the first may develop from the Doric cushion into a full base. Its parts are articulate, often fluted or moulded, so as to create the dialogue of light and shade without which stone is merely dead for us. (A stone column, properly treated, is not stone merely, but crystallised light).

— Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Architecture.