RUSKIN PAGE
WORK IN PROGRESS : A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY TO BE ENTITLED :
THE STORMCLOUD OF THE 20TH CEN TURY : RUSKIN, THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
This anthology of Ruskin means to concentrate on Ruskin’s writings which are relevant to environmental problems.
From MP II,
…the object I propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. It is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases; it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person; it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigour, now leading them with Tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings.
(LE4, p. 27)
From MP II :
“…And at this time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of Europe, as grapeshot do the sea; when their great net is drawing and twitching the ancient frame and strength of England together, contracting all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a narrow, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures; when there is not a monument throughout the cities of Europe that speaks of old years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafés and gaming-houses;…..
…..when we ravage without a pause all the loveliness of creation which God in giving pronounced Good, and destroy without a thought all those labours which men have given their lives and their sons’ sons’ lives to complete;… —there is need, bitter need, to bring back into men’s minds, that to live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live;
…. He has not cloven the earth with rivers,4 that their white wild waves might turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under as it were fire,
(But to be contemplated ….)
MODERN PAINTERS V
Chapter 2 Lance of Pallas
No more daydreaming
Action
Taking up arms against evils
Chapter X
The Two Boyhoods
Death of England
Death of Europe
Chapter X
The Nereid's Gard
Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides
CHAPTER XI
THE HESPERID ÆGLÉ
§ 1. Five years after the Hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by Turner’s hand. Another dragon—this time not triumphant, but in death-pang,
Apollo and Python, exh 18111
§ 15. I say you will find, not knowing to how few I speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;—now I cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.*
§ 16. Nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, I would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in Art upon human mind, if I had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. But the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury,1 that I cannot get it put into any tractable compass. Nay, I have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before I can determine the just limits of the hope in which I may permit myself to continue to labour in any cause of Art.2
Nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. I have written it to show that Turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. What the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, I do not yet know. Thus far, however, I do know.3
* Thus, the railroad bridge over the Fall of Schaffhausen, and that round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the place, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.
§ 17. Three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.
“We do not come here to look at the mountains,” said the Carthusian to me at the Grande Chartreuse.1 “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” the Austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of Garda. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale and Halifax.
§ 18. All these asceticisms have their bright and their dark sides. I myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. There is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,—so narrow that even all the three together would not make up a perfect man. Nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. I do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. Perhaps, it may be well that this England should become the furnace of the world;1 so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which, in other countries, men dreaded or disdained, it should become England’s duty to do,—becoming thus the offscourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lion upon her shield. I do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of England,2 nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain—that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness,3 fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive;4 but essentially contemplative and protective, which (A) does not lose itself in the monk’s vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (B) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (C), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. So that the things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content.
§ 19. Towards which last state of contentment, I do not see that the world is at present approximating. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall “inherit the earth.”1 Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit2 anything;* they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.
§ 20. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how “to better themselves,” but how to “satisfy themselves.” It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied.3 The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger—the bread of justice, or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom.
§ 21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life,—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance;1 not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days;2 so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,* but wholly of accumulation;—the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;—therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world……………………………… …..
§ 23. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, I cannot yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life.
The idea of such refinement has been made to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that “education” means teaching Latin, or algebra, or music, or drawing, instead of developing or “drawing out” the human soul.2
It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. I would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political philosophy, he should help his neighbour, and disdain a bribe.
FORS CLAVIGERA
Letter 5
THE WHITE-THORN BLOSSOM2
“For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
Arise, O my fair one, my dove,
And come.”3
Denmark Hill,
1st May, 1871.
1. My Friends,—It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it was difficult for you to understand.4
I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor words,—the saddest of them, perhaps, too well. But I have great fear that you may never come to understand these written above, which are part of a king’s love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone.
14. There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one “knows how to live”3 till he has got them.
These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
15. The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without limit, the available quantities of them.
You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of you. You, or your fellows, German and French, are at present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power in every direction; chiefly at this moment with corpses, and animal and vegetable ruin in war: changing men, horses, and garden-stuff into noxious gas. But everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease.
29.91 On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere,—is literally infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food.
16. Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you will,1 by planting wisely and tending carefully;—drought where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools; so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls dirty.
17. Then for the third, Earth,—meant to be nourishing for you, and blossoming. You have learned, about it, that there is no such thing as a flower;2 and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter,*into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone1—with the voice of your brother’s blood crying out of it,2 in one wild harmony round all its murderous sphere.
This is what you have done for the three Material Useful Things.
RUSKIN PAGE
WORK IN PROGRESS : A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY TO BE ENTITLED :
THE STORMCLOUD OF THE 20TH CEN TURY : RUSKIN, THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
This anthology of Ruskin means to concentrate on Ruskin’s writings which are relevant to environmental problems.
From MP II,
…the object I propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. It is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases; it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person; it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigour, now leading them with Tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings.
(LE4, p. 27)
From MP II :
“…And at this time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of Europe, as grapeshot do the sea; when their great net is drawing and twitching the ancient frame and strength of England together, contracting all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a narrow, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures; when there is not a monument throughout the cities of Europe that speaks of old years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafés and gaming-houses;…..
…..when we ravage without a pause all the loveliness of creation which God in giving pronounced Good, and destroy without a thought all those labours which men have given their lives and their sons’ sons’ lives to complete;… —there is need, bitter need, to bring back into men’s minds, that to live is nothing, unless to live be to know Him by whom we live;
…. He has not cloven the earth with rivers,4 that their white wild waves might turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under as it were fire,
(But to be contemplated ….)
MODERN PAINTERS V
Chapter 2 Lance of Pallas
No more daydreaming
Action
Taking up arms against evils
Chapter X
The Two Boyhoods
Death of England
Death of Europe
Chapter X
The Nereid's Gard
Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of Hesperides
CHAPTER XI
THE HESPERID ÆGLÉ
§ 1. Five years after the Hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by Turner’s hand. Another dragon—this time not triumphant, but in death-pang,
Apollo and Python, exh 18111
§ 15. I say you will find, not knowing to how few I speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and I know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. Once I could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;—now I cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. Wherever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. They seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. Every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.*
§ 16. Nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, I would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in Art upon human mind, if I had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. But the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury,1 that I cannot get it put into any tractable compass. Nay, I have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before I can determine the just limits of the hope in which I may permit myself to continue to labour in any cause of Art.2
Nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. I have written it to show that Turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. What the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, I do not yet know. Thus far, however, I do know.3
* Thus, the railroad bridge over the Fall of Schaffhausen, and that round the Clarens shore of the lake of Geneva, have destroyed the power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the place, in appeal to the higher ranks of European mind.
§ 17. Three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the Middle Ages. Military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of London and Manchester.
“We do not come here to look at the mountains,” said the Carthusian to me at the Grande Chartreuse.1 “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” the Austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of Garda. “We do not come here to look at the mountains,” so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between Rochdale and Halifax.
§ 18. All these asceticisms have their bright and their dark sides. I myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. Nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. There is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. A monk of La Trappe, a French soldier of the Imperial Guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,—so narrow that even all the three together would not make up a perfect man. Nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. I do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. Perhaps, it may be well that this England should become the furnace of the world;1 so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which, in other countries, men dreaded or disdained, it should become England’s duty to do,—becoming thus the offscourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lion upon her shield. I do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of England,2 nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain—that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness,3 fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive;4 but essentially contemplative and protective, which (A) does not lose itself in the monk’s vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (B) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (C), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. So that the things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content.
§ 19. Towards which last state of contentment, I do not see that the world is at present approximating. There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall “inherit the earth.”1 Neither covetous men, nor the Grave, can inherit2 anything;* they can but consume. Only contentment can possess.
§ 20. The most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how “to better themselves,” but how to “satisfy themselves.” It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied.3 The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger—the bread of justice, or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom.
§ 21. And, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,—this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. Humble life,—that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance;1 not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days;2 so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,* but wholly of accumulation;—the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;—therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world……………………………… …..
§ 23. Again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, I cannot yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life.
The idea of such refinement has been made to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that “education” means teaching Latin, or algebra, or music, or drawing, instead of developing or “drawing out” the human soul.2
It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. I would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political philosophy, he should help his neighbour, and disdain a bribe.
FORS CLAVIGERA
Letter 5
THE WHITE-THORN BLOSSOM2
“For lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone,
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds is come,
Arise, O my fair one, my dove,
And come.”3
Denmark Hill,
1st May, 1871.
1. My Friends,—It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to you of things you were little likely to care for, in words which it was difficult for you to understand.4
I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor words,—the saddest of them, perhaps, too well. But I have great fear that you may never come to understand these written above, which are part of a king’s love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone.
14. There are three Material things, not only useful, but essential to Life. No one “knows how to live”3 till he has got them.
These are, Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
15. The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth.
Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without limit, the available quantities of them.
You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of you. You, or your fellows, German and French, are at present busy in vitiating it to the best of your power in every direction; chiefly at this moment with corpses, and animal and vegetable ruin in war: changing men, horses, and garden-stuff into noxious gas. But everywhere, and all day long, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease.
29.91 On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere,—is literally infinite. You might make every breath of air you draw, food.
16. Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you will,1 by planting wisely and tending carefully;—drought where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools; so full of fish that you might take them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls dirty.
17. Then for the third, Earth,—meant to be nourishing for you, and blossoming. You have learned, about it, that there is no such thing as a flower;2 and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter,*into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone1—with the voice of your brother’s blood crying out of it,2 in one wild harmony round all its murderous sphere.
This is what you have done for the three Material Useful Things.
LETTER 46 (October 1874) 173
8. St. George’s Company to “do good work.”
8. And now I am really going to begin my steady explanation of what the St. George’s Company have to do.
(1.1) You are to do good work, whether you live or die. “What is good work?” you ask. Well you may! For your wise pastors and teachers, though they have been very careful to assure you that good works are the fruits of faith, and follow after justification,2 have been so certain of that fact that they never have been the least solicitous to explain to you, and still less to discover for themselves, what good works were; content if they perceived a general impression on the minds of their congregations that good works meant going to church and admiring the sermon on Sundays, and making as much money as possible in the rest of the week.
It is true, one used to hear almsgiving and prayer sometimes recommended by old-fashioned country ministers. But “the poor are now to be raised without gifts,” says my very hard-and-well-working friend Miss Octavia Hill;3 and prayer is entirely inconsistent with the laws of hydro (shows natural philisophy not opposed to religion as in France)(and other) statics, says the Duke of Argyll.4
It may be so, for aught I care, just now. Largesse and supplication may or may not be still necessary in the world’s economy. They are not, and never were, part of the world’s work. For no man can give till he has been paid his own wages; and still less can he ask his Father for the said wages till he has done his day’s duty for them.
1 [Ruskin does not, however, go on to the other injunctions, as set forth in Letter 2, § 22 (Vol. XXVII. p. 44).]
2 [Prayer-book (Article XII.).]
3 [See Letter 10, § 15 (Vol. XXVII. p. 175).]
4 [The reference is to a controversy on the efficacy of Prayer, which had been raging in the Reviews. The Duke of Argyll’s contribution was in the Contemporary Review for February 1873, vol. 21, pp. 464 seq. The various articles were reprinted at Boston (U.S.A.) in a volume, edited by J. O. Means, under the title The Prayer-Gauge Debate. The Duke’s paper, however, hardly bears out Ruskin’s statement; see also the Duke’s remarks on Prayer in The Reign of Law, ch. ii. His position was that the physical and spiritual spheres could not be sharply separated: “Reason, science, and revelation alike point to the folly and ignorance of any attempt to draw an absolute line where we confessedly have not the knowledge to enable us to do so, and confirm the sound philosophy, as well as the piety, of the old Christian practice of ‘in all things making our requests known,’ with the over-riding, over-ruling condition, ‘nevertheless not our will, but Thine, be done.’ ”]
174 FORS CLAVIGERA: Vol. IV
Neither almsgiving nor praying, therefore, nor psalmsinging, nor even—as poor Livingstone thought, to his own death, and our bitter loss1—discovering the mountains of the Moon, have anything to do with “good work,” or God’s work. But it is not so very difficult to discover what that work is. (All this You keep the Sabbath, in imitation of God’s rest. Do, by all manner of means, if you like; and keep also the rest of the week in imitation of God’s work.
9. It is true that, according to tradition, that work was done a long time ago, “before the chimneys in Zion were hot, and ere the present years were sought out, and or ever the inventions of them that now sin were turned; and before they were sealed that have gathered faith for a treasure.”* (Obscure. Check this )But the established processes of it continue, as his Grace of Argyll has argutely observed;—and your own work will be good, if it is in harmony with them, and duly sequent of them. Nor are even the first main facts or operations by any means inimitable, on a duly subordinate scale, for if Man be made in God’s image,2 much more is Man’s work made to be the image of God’s work. So therefore look to your model, very simply stated for you in the nursery tale of Genesis.
Day First. —The Making, or letting in, of Light.
Day Second. —The Discipline and Firmament of Waters.
Day Third. — The Separation of earth from water, and planting the secure earth with trees.
Day Fourth. —The Establishment of time and seasons, and of the authority of the stars.
Day Fifth. — Filling the water and air with fish and birds.
Day Sixth. — Filling the land with beasts; and putting divine life into the clay of one of these, that it may have authority over the others, and over the rest of the Creation.
* 2 Esdras vi. 4, 5.
1 [He had died in 1873.]
2 [Genesis i. 27.]
LETTER 46 (October 1874) 175
Here is your nursery story,—very brief, and in some sort unsatisfactory; not altogether intelligible (I don’t know anything very good that is), nor wholly indisputable (I don’t know anything ever spoken usefully on so wide a subject that is); but substantially vital and sufficient. So the good human work may properly divide itself into the same six branches; and will be a perfectly literal and practical following out of the Divine; and will have opposed to it a correspondent Diabolic force of eternally bad work—as much worse than idleness or death, as good work is better than idleness or death.
10. The six good works of men, and the correspondent diabolic works.
10. Good work, then, will be,—
(Becomes godlike!? )
a. Letting in light where there was darkness; as especially into poor rooms and back streets; and generally guiding and administering the sunshine wherever we can, by all the means in our power.
And the correspondent Diabolic work is putting a tax on windows, and blocking out the sun’s light with smoke.
b. Disciplining the falling waters. In the Divine work, this is the ordinance of clouds;* in the human it is properly putting the clouds to service; and first stopping the rain where they carry it from the sea, and then keeping it pure as it goes back to the sea again.
And the correspondent Diabolic work is the arrangement of land so as to throw all the water back to the sea as fast as we can; † and putting every sort of fifth into the stream as it runs.
* See Modern Painters, vol. iv., “The Firmament” [Vol. VI. p. 113].(So inclde this in anthology)
† Compare Dante, Purg., end of Canto V.1
1 [“That evil will, which in his intellect
Still follows evil, came; and raised the wind
And smoky mist, by virtue of the power
Given by his nature. Thence the valley, soon
As day was spent, he cover’d o’er with cloud,
From Pratomagno to the mountain range;
And stretch’d the sky above; so that the air
Impregnate changed to water. Fell the rain;
And to the fosses came all that the land
Contain’d not; and, as mightiest streams are wont,
To the great river, with such headlong sweep,
Rush’d, that nought stay’d its course” (Cary).]
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c. The separation of earth from water, and planting it with trees. The correspondent human work is especially clearing morasses, and planting desert ground.
The Dutch, in a small way, in their own country, have done a good deal with sand and tulips; also the North Germans. But the most beautiful type of the literal ordinance of dry land in water is the State of Venice, with her sea-canals, restrained, traversed by their bridges, and especially bridges of the Rivo Alto or High Bank,1 which are, or were till a few years since, symbols of the work of a true Pontifex,—the Pontine Marshes being the opposite symbol. (Extend this. From SV?)
The correspondent Diabolic work is turning good land and water into mud; and cutting down trees that we may drive steam ploughs, etc., etc.(As iin Bresil today to grow soja to feed beef)
d. The establishment of times and seasons. The correspondent human work is a due watching of the rise and set of stars, (see further on inrelation to gardening) and course of the sun; and due administration and forethought of our own annual labours, preparing for them in hope, and concluding them in joyfulness, according to the laws and gifts of Heaven. Which beautiful order is set forth in symbols on all lordly human buildings round the semicircular arches which are types of the rise and fall of days and years.
And the correspondent Diabolic work is turning night into day with candles, so that we never see the stars; and mixing the seasons up one with another, and having early strawberries, and green pease and the like. (What is this ?Rather Very familiar today, getting non seasonal foods thanks to CO travelling)
e. Filling the waters with fish, and air with birds. The correspondent human work is Mr. Frank Buckland’s2 and
1 [In his own copy, however, Ruskin writes, “Deep Stream”: see St. Mark’s Rest, § 38 (Vol. XXIV. p. 238).]
2 [Francis Trevelyan Buckland (1826–1880); inspector of salmon fisheries, 1867–1880. “He devoted all his energies not merely to the duties of his office, but to the elucidation of every point connected with the history of the salmon, and endeavoured in every way to improve the condition of the British fisheries. . . . In order to interest people in his favourite subject he established about 1865 at the South Kensington Museum a large collection of fish-hatching apparatus,” etc.]
LETTER 46 (October 1874) 177
the like,—of which “like” I am thankful to have been permitted to do a small piece near Croydon, in the streams to which my mother took me when a child, to play beside. There were more than a dozen of the fattest, shiniest, spottiest, and tamest trout I ever saw in my life, in the pond at Carshalton, the last time I saw it this spring.1
The correspondent Diabolic work is poisoning fish, as is done at Coniston, with copper-mining; and catching them for Ministerial and other fashionable dinners when they ought not to be caught;2 and treating birds—as birds are treated, Ministerially and otherwise.
f. Filling the earth with beasts, properly known and cared for by their master, Man; but chiefly breathing into the clayey and brutal nature of Man himself, the Soul, or Love, of God.
The correspondent Diabolic work is shooting and tormenting beasts;3 and grinding out the soul of man from his flesh, with machine labour; and then grinding down the flesh of him, when nothing else is left, into clay, with machines for that purpose—mitrailleuses, Woolwich infants, and the like.
These are the six main heads of God’s and the Devil’s work.
11. The doing and undoing of Creation
11. And as Wisdom, or Prudentia, is with God, and with His children in the doing,—“There I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight,”4—so Folly, or Stultitia, saying, There is no God,5 is with the Devil and his children, in the undoing. “There she is with them as one brought up with them, and she is daily their delight.”
And so comes the great reverse of Creation, and wrath
1 [See Letter 48, § 3 (p. 204).]
2 [The annual Ministerial “Whitebait Dinner” at Greenwich, at the close of the Parliamentary session, first established in Pitt’s time, has since 1892 been abandoned.]
3 [Compare, above, p. 24.]
4 [Proverbs viii. 30.]
5 [Psalms xiv. 1.]
XXVIII. M
178 FORS CLAVIGERA: Vol. IV
of God, accomplished on the earth by the fiends, and by men their ministers, seen by Jeremy the Prophet:1 “For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. (Now note the reversed creation.) I beheld the Earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the Heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger.”2
And so, finally, as the joy and honour of the ancient and divine Man and Woman were in their children, so the grief and dishonour of the modern and diabolic Man and Woman are in their children; and as the Rachel of Bethlehem weeps for her children, and will not be comforted, because they are not,3 the Rachel of England weeps for her children, and will not be comforted—because they are.
12. Every man, woman, and child can do some Divine work, or undo some Diabolic work, every day.
12. Now, whoever you may be, and how little your power may be, and whatever sort of creature you may be,—man, woman, or child,—you can, according to what discretion of years you may have reached, do something of this Divine work, or undo something of this Devil’s work, every day. Even if you are a slave, forced to labour at some abominable and murderous trade for bread,—as iron-forging, for instance, or gunpowder-making,—you can resolve to deliver yourself, and your children after you, from the chains of that hell,4 ( do a note here referring to guild scheme to buyup land and give it to workers) and from the dominion of its
1 [See Modern Painters, vol. iv. (Vol. VI. p. 152 n.), where (in a note added in Frondes Agrestes) Ruskin refers to this letter as giving the true meaning of the passage from Jeremiah misinterpreted in his earlier book.]
2 [Jeremiah iv. 22–26.]
3 [Jeremiah xxxi. 15; Matthew ii. 18.]
4 [See 2 Peter ii. 4.]
LETTER 46 (October 1874) 179
slave-masters, or to die. That is Patriotism; and true desire of Freedom, or Franchise.1 What Egyptian bondage, do you suppose—(painted by Mr. Poynter as if it were a thing of the past!2)—was ever so cruel as a modern English iron forge, with its steam hammers? What Egyptian worship of garlic or crocodile3 ever so damnable as modern English worship of money? Israel—even by the fleshpots—was sorry to have to cast out her children,—would fain stealthily keep her little Moses,—if Nile were propitious;4 and roasted her passover anxiously. But English Mr. P.,5 satisfied with his fleshpot, and the broth of it, will not be over-hasty about his roast. If the Angel, perchance, should not pass by, it would be no such matter, thinks Mr. P. (????)Or, again, if you are a slave to Society, and must do what the people next door bid you,—you can resolve, with any vestige of human energy left in you, that you will indeed put a few things into God’s fashion, instead of the fashion of next door. Merely fix that on your mind as a thing to be done; to have things—dress, for instance,—according to God’s taste (and I can tell you He is likely to have some, as good as any modiste you know of); or dinner, according to God’s taste instead of the Russians’;6 or supper, or picnic, with guests of God’s inviting, occasionally, mixed among the more respectable company.
