Page:Ruskin - The Seven Lamps of Architecture.djvu/74

46 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 or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grasshoppers, 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 of animals here is appointed by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant architecture; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the mylodon has a double skull; we, in our wisdom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the mylodon a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of Obedience—an obedience to His own laws: and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures, we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature; 'that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.'

XIV. 2nd. Surface Deceits. These may be