CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 71

understood until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course, of the form given in fig. 5.

APHORISM 11. The inviolability of Divine Law not oj necessity but of ordinance.²

§ 13. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural deceits, I would remind the architect who thinks that I am unnecessarily and narrowly limiting his resources or his art, that the highest greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints.¹ Nothing is more evident than this, in that supreme government which is the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its meeting and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and for the sake of that contest,³ admitted by the Divine Omnipotence: and these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many times and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may necessitate for the accomplishment of given purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why the system of the higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or, more naturally still, carbon; so framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant and rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grass-hoppers, and other animals might have been framed, far more magnificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations; a creation for every element, and elements infinite. But the architecture

¹ [On the subject of restraint in art, see ch. iii. § 23, p. 134; ch. vii. §§ 2, 8, pp. 250, 259; cf. Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. x., “Of Moderation, or the Type of Government by Law”; and see General Index, s. “Moderation” and “Restraint.”]

² [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “the highest greatness ...” down to the end of § 13.]

³ [The words “for the sake of that contest” are not in the MS.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]