250 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool, equality;¹ by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and truest is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they are subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is “Loyalty,” and the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is “Fold.”²

§ 3. Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them.³ Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a

¹ [See above, ch. iv. § 28, p. 167.]

² [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. § 87, where some modifications of the Lamp of Obedience are stated.]

³ [See Queen of the Air, § 148, where the common house-fly is taken as the best type of “a perfectly free creature”; and The Two Paths, § 191, where the fish is similarly instanced.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]