116 THE STONES OF VENICE III. PRIDE OF SYSTEM

last chapter of the Seven Lamps,¹ will suppose me to underrate the importance, or dispute the authority of law. It has been necessary for me to allege these again and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged, against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of civilization; heady and high-minded despisers of discipline, and refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and system, and is not written upon the heart, -as it is, in a Divine loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait about the throne of the Eternal Lawgiver,-this lower and formally expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains, forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught among responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and foolishness are in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to submit themselves painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their need of being corrected, and to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate things which are governed by law altogether; yet yielding, in the manner of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of man,-being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their greatness.* But, so far as men become good and wise, and rise above the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in the fulness and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law; a law so universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep it.

§ 88. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this Divine law in two opposite ways: either by brute resistance,

* Compare Seven Lamps, chap. vii. § 3.

¹ [See Vol. VIII. p. 250.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]