A regulating line is an assurance against capriciousness: it is a means of verification which can ratify all work created in a fervour, the schoolboy's rule of nine, the Q.E.D. of the mathematician.
The regulating line is a satisfaction of a spiritual order which leads to the pursuit of ingenious and harmonious relations. It confers on the work the quality of rhythm.
The regulating line brings in this tangible form of mathematics which gives the reassuring perception of order. The choice of a regulating line fixes the fundamental geometry of the work; it fixes therefore one of the "fundamental characters." The choice of the regulating line is one of the decisive moments of inspiration, it is one of the vital operations of architecture.
Here are regulating lines which have served to make very beautiful things and which arc the very reason why these things are so beautiful.
FROM THE MARBLE SLAB FOUND IN 1882:
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FAÇADE OF THE ARSENAL OF THE PIRÆUS
