Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing--say Pimlico.
If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of
thought leads to the throne of the mystic and the arbitary. It is not
enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely
cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a
man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would
be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love
Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly
reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise
into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as
a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide
horrible things; but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does
not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover
does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico
as mothers love children, arbitarily, because it is _theirs_ Pimlico in
a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that
this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of
mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the
darkest roots of civilisation and you will find them knotted round some
sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to
a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because
she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed
to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there
is at the back of all historic government an idea of content and
co-operation, they were demonstrably right. But they really were wrong
in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics
directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by