red. Nature seems to abhor equalities, never making two
things alike or the same proportion if she can help it. All systems
founded on equalities, as are so many modern systems of social reform,
are man's work, the products of a machine-made age. For this is the
difference between nature and the machine: nature never produces two
things alike, the machine never produces two things different. Man could
solve the social problem to-morrow if you could produce him equal units.
But if all men were alike and equal, where would be the life and fun of
existence? it would depart with the variety. And in proportion, as in
life, variety is the secret of vitality, only to be suppressed where a
static effect is wanted. In architecture equality of proportion is more
often met with, as the static qualities of repose are of more importance
here than in painting. One meets it on all fine buildings in such things
as rows of columns and windows of equal size and distances apart, or the
continual repetition of the same forms in mouldings, &c. But even here,
in the best work, some variety is allowed to keep the effect from being
quite dead, the columns on the outside of a Greek pediment being nearer
together and leaning slightly inwards, and the repeated forms of
windows, columns, and mouldings being infinitely varied in themselves.
But although you often find repetitions of the same forms equidistant in
architecture, it is seldom that equality of proportion is observable in
the main distribution of the large masses.

Let us take our simple type of composition, and in Diagram XXVIII, A,
put the horizon across the centre and an upright post cutting it in the
middle of the picture. And let us introduce two spots that may indicate
the position of birds in the upper spaces on either side of this.

Here we have a maximum of equality and the deadest and most static of
results.

To see these diagrams properly it is necessary to cover over with some
pieces of notepaper all but the one being considered, as they affect
each other when seen together, and the quality of their proportion is
not so readily observed.

[Illustration: Plate XLVIII.

THE ANSIDEI MADONNA. BY RAPHAEL (NATIONAL GALLERY)

A typical example of static balance in composition.

_Photo Hanfstaengl_]

In many pictures of the Madonna, when a hush and reverence are desired
rather than exuberant life, the figure is put in the centre of the
canvas, equality of proportion existing