The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's: XIII. The Rule

The discussion began when Mr Blottisham announced, with unusual satisfaction,

"I've never been terribly fond of rules."

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"Really?"

"They're forever telling one not to do something."

"Such as?"

"'Keep off the grass.'"

"'No parking.'"

"'Silence in the library.'"

Miss Stray smiled.

"You've chosen an interesting place in which to make your case."

Blottisham glanced around the Common Room.

"I have?"

"The library is only silent because everyone is quietly following a rule."

Blottisham considered this.

"I hadn't intended to begin by disproving myself."

"It saves time."

Quillibrace reached for the essay.

"Our anonymous author proposes something rather unexpected."

"What?"

"That rules do not merely restrict activities."

"They create them."

Blottisham looked unconvinced.

"That sounds suspiciously like something an administrator would say."

Quillibrace laughed.

"I assure you it is considerably older than administration."

He picked up the chessboard that permanently occupied a side table.

"Suppose we remove the rules of chess."

Blottisham shrugged.

"The pieces remain."

"They do."

"The board remains."

"Yes."

"So what's missing?"

"The game."

"Precisely."

Blottisham looked at the carved pieces.

"I've always imagined the game lived in the board."

"It never did."

"It lived..."

"...between the players."

Miss Stray nodded.

"And in what they agreed the pieces could mean."

For a while they looked quietly at the chessboard.

Eventually Blottisham said,

"I suppose football is the same."

"Oh?"

"If there were no offside rule..."

"What would happen?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

"But it wouldn't be football."

"No."

"It would become... something else."

Quillibrace smiled.

"A game is remarkably difficult to destroy."

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"You need only remove its rules."

Blottisham laughed.

"That sounds almost disappointingly easy."

The Professor folded his hands.

"Music offers another example."

"In what way?"

"A violin possesses only four strings."

"Yes."

"Does that limitation prevent music?"

"No."

"It makes a particular kind of music possible."

Miss Stray added,

"The sonnet works rather like that."

Blottisham looked at her.

"Only fourteen lines."

"And because of that..."

"...people have spent centuries discovering possibilities that would never have existed without the limitation."

Blottisham became thoughtful.

"So perhaps freedom isn't simply having every option."

"What is it?"

"Having worthwhile options."

Quillibrace smiled.

"I think our anonymous friend would approve."

Another silence settled over the room.

Then Miss Stray said,

"I've always been intrigued by children inventing games."

"So have I."

"They spend half their time saying..."

"'No, you can't do that.'"

Blottisham laughed.

"They certainly do."

"I used to think they were spoiling the game."

"And now?"

"I think they're rescuing it."

Quillibrace looked delighted.

"A beautiful distinction."

Outside, a group of students were throwing a frisbee across the lawn.

Every so often someone protested loudly.

"Out!"

"No, it wasn't!"

"That doesn't count!"

Blottisham watched them.

"They're arguing."

"They are."

"But they're not trying to end the game."

"No."

"They're trying to preserve it."

The Professor nodded.

"Exactly."

The room fell comfortably quiet.

After a few moments Blottisham spoke again.

"I've just realised something rather embarrassing."

"What is it?"

"I complain about university regulations quite frequently."

"Indeed you do."

"But I become remarkably upset when students ignore the rules of academic honesty."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Perhaps because those rules make scholarship possible."

Blottisham sat very still.

"So I'm not objecting to rules."

"No?"

"I'm objecting to rules that no longer seem connected with their purpose."

Quillibrace nodded slowly.

"I suspect you've just identified one of the oldest problems in civilisation."

"The accumulation of rules?"

"The forgetting."

"The forgetting?"

"We remember the rule."

"But?"

"We forget what it was protecting."

There was a long silence.

At last Miss Stray said,

"Perhaps that is when rules become heavy."

"What do you mean?"

"When they stop opening possibilities..."

"...and begin merely defending themselves."

The Professor looked quietly pleased.

"I couldn't improve upon that."

Blottisham stood and stretched.

"I think I've been unfair to rules."

"Oh?"

"I've treated them as fences."

"And now?"

"I wonder whether they're more like the lines on a football pitch."

Quillibrace smiled.

"The lines prevent certain movements."

"Yes."

"But they also create the game."

The old clock chimed the hour.

The three gathered their books.

As they reached the doorway, Blottisham paused.

"I've been trying to think of the opposite of a rule."

"And?"

"I don't think it's freedom."

"No?"

"I think it's arbitrariness."

No one answered immediately.

At length Quillibrace opened the door.

"The finest rules are not remembered because they tell us what we cannot do."

"What are they remembered for?"

"They quietly create something that would never have existed without them."

The three stepped out into the quadrangle.

Students crossed the lawns, tutors hurried to lectures, the porter nodded politely to passing visitors, and somewhere, quite unnoticed, thousands of invisible rules were quietly making an ordinary afternoon possible.