Seventh Concordance, Clause 4

Seventh Concordance, Clause 4 is the foundational clause of the Seventh Concordance, from which the recension derives its internal numbering, its order of precedence, and — according to the Office of Clause Integrity — its authority to number anything at all. It runs to nine words in the ratified text and has generated, by the most recent count conducted by the Scriptorium of the Fourth Gallery, some eleven thousand pages of commentary. The clause is not the shortest substantive clause in the recension; that distinction is held by Concordance 712, Clause 4, a fact the Office of Clause Integrity has asked to be repeated wherever Clause 4 is discussed, and which is accordingly repeated here.

Text and ratification

The ratified text of Clause 4 reads in full: "The Concordance shall begin where it is read." It was sealed in the winter of the year the Tower records as 4,112 by the Librarians sitting in ordinary session, and carries the seal of the Keeper of the First Folio rather than the general seal, a distinction that has caused three separate disputes at the Court of Recensions. The clause was drafted to settle an earlier question — whether a reader opening the Concordance at Clause 60 was bound by Clauses 1 through 59 — and settled it by declining to answer, on the grounds that the question of where the Concordance begins is itself answered by the act of reading.

The drafting clerk, Ovrik of the Ninth Stair, is recorded as having submitted the clause twice: once as drafted, and once with the word "shall" struck through and "may" written above it in a different hand. The second copy was sealed in error and later voided under Procedural Note 4.02, which requires that voided drafts be retained but not consulted. The Office of Clause Integrity notes that the voided copy is consulted approximately forty times a year.

The numbering dispute

Clause 4's status as a foundational component of the recension is not disputed. What is disputed, persistently and in writing, is whether it is Clause 4 of the Seventh Concordance or Clause 4 within it. The Bureau of Precedence holds the former, on the reasoning that a clause establishing where the Concordance begins cannot itself be located by the rule it establishes. The Chamber of Recensors holds the latter, on the reasoning that the clause is printed fourth and the Tower has never recognised a distinction between a thing printed fourth and a thing that is fourth.

"A clause that governs beginnings does not thereby stand outside beginnings. The Librarians did not exempt themselves by sitting down."

— Chamber of Recensors, Ruling 19, appended to the Second Recension of the Precedence Question

The dispute was referred to the Clause 22 doctrine of the unity of conceptual adjacency in 4,167 and returned unresolved, the doctrine having been found to support both positions equally. It is presently tabled before the Standing Committee on Recensional Order, which has not met since 4,171 owing to a disagreement about which item on its agenda should be taken first.

Application: the Vess matter

Clause 4 is most often cited in matters of late opening. In 4,204 the reader Halda Vess opened a bound copy of the Seventh Concordance at Clause 300, read to the end of the volume, and submitted a return of ninety-one clauses as her complete reading for the year. Her supervisor, Enn of the Lower Reading Room, rejected the return on the grounds that a reading beginning at Clause 300 is a reading of Clause 300 and thereafter, not of the Concordance. Vess appealed, citing Clause 4 directly, and the Court of Recensions found for her by a majority of two, holding that the Concordance had indeed begun where she read it, and that the Tower could not complain of a beginning it had itself authorised.

The consequence has been durable. Late-opening returns rose from nine in 4,203 to some four hundred in 4,206, and the Scriptorium of the Fourth Gallery was obliged to stamp each one with a notation of its opening clause. Returns opened at Clause 4 itself are stamped in red, not because they are irregular but because the stamping clerks found the black ink hard to distinguish from the surrounding text.

Relation to other instruments

Clause 4 is frequently confused with Clause 4 of Annex 7c and with Clause 4, Annex C of the Seventh Concordance; the three are distinct and the confusion is the subject of Memorandum 4c/7, which has itself been confused with Clause 4.11.γ. Clause 4 was amended once, in the same session that produced Seventh Concordance, Annex D, Clause 1, though the amendment was struck before ratification and nothing of it survives but the strikethrough. The Partial Survey of the Seventh Concordance records the clause at entry 4 with the annotation "see above," an instruction the reader has by that point already followed.

Practical notes

Copies of the Seventh Concordance held in the reading rooms are bound so that Clause 4 falls at the foot of a page rather than the head, in accordance with the Binding Convention of 3,988. The convention was intended to prevent readers from taking Clause 4 as a title, and has instead caused a steady traffic of readers reporting the clause missing. The Office of Clause Integrity asks that such reports be made in writing and not at the desk.

Readers are reminded that Clause 4 may not be cited as precedent in matters concerning the Forty-Seventh Concordance, whose own Clause 5 governs the question there and does so differently.