way of taking our hands off the plough handle, and binding another's
upon it. This first way of doing it is the economical way--the way
preferred by prudent and virtuous people. The bolder way is the
acquisitive way:--the way of speculation. You know we are considering
at present the various modes in which a nation corrupts itself, by not
acknowledging the eternal connection between its plough and its
pleasure;--by striving to get pleasure, without working for it. Well, I
say the first and commonest way of doing so is to try to get the
product of other people's work, and enjoy it ourselves, by cheapening
their labour in times of distress: then the second way is that grand
one of watching the chances of the market;--the way of speculation. Of
course there are some speculations that are fair and honest--
speculations made with our own money, and which do not involve in their
success the loss, by others, of what we gain. But generally modern
speculation involves much risk to others, with chance of profit only to
ourselves: even in its best conditions it is merely one of the forms of
gambling or treasure hunting; it is either leaving the steady plough
and the steady pilgrimage of life, to look for silver mines beside the
way; or else it is the full stop beside the dice-tables in Vanity Fair
--investing all the thoughts and passions of the soul in the fall of the
cards, and choosing rather the wild accidents of idle fortune than the
calm and accumulative rewards of toil. And this is destructive enough,
at least to our peace and virtue. But is usually destructive of far
more than _our_ peace, or _our_ virtue. Have you ever deliberately set
yourselves to imagine and measure the suffering, the guilt, and the
mortality caused necessarily by the failure of any large-dealing merchant,
or largely-branched bank? Take it at the lowest possible supposition-
count, at the fewest you choose, the families whose means of support have
been involved in the catastrophe. Then, on the morning after the intelli-
gence of ruin, let us go forth amongst them in earnest thought; let us use
that imagination which we waste so often on fictitious sorrow, to measure
the stern facts of that multitudinous distress; strike open the private
doors of their chambers, and enter silently into the midst of the domestic
misery; look upon the old men, who had reserved for their failing strength
some remainder of rest in the evening-tide of life, cast helplessly back
into its trouble and tumult; look upon the active strength of middle
age suddenly blasted into incapacity--its hopes crushed, and its hardly
earned rewards snatched away in the same instant--at once the heart
withered, and the right arm snapped; look upon the piteous children,
delicately nurtured, whose soft eyes, now large with wonder at their
parents' grief, must soon be set in the dimness of famine; and, far
more than all this, look forward to the length of sorrow beyond--to the
hardest labour of life, now to be undergone either in all the severity
of unexpected and inexperienced trial, or else, more bitter still, to
be begun again, and endured for the second time, amidst the ruins of
cherished hopes and the feebleness of advancing years, embittered by
the continual sting and taunt of the inner feeling that it has all been
brought about, not by the fair course of appointed circumstance, but by
miserable chance and wanton treachery; and, last of all, look beyond
this--to the shattered destinies of those who have faltered under the
trial, and sunk past recovery to despair. And then consider whether the
hand which has poured this poison into all the springs of life be one
whit less guiltily red with human blood than that which literally pours
the hemlock into the cup, or guides the dagger to the heart? We read
with horror of the crimes of a Borgia or a Tophana; but there never
lived Borgias such as live now in the midst of us. The cruel lady of
Ferrara slew only in the strength of passion--she slew only a few,
those who thwarted her purposes or who vexed her soul; she slew sharply
and suddenly, embittering the fate of her victims with no foretastes of
destruction, no prolongations of pain; and, finally and chiefly, she
slew, not without remorse, nor without pity. But _we,_ in no storm
of passion--in no blindness of wrath,--we, in calm and clear and
untempted selfishness, pour our poison--not for a few only, but for
multitudes;--not for those who have wronged us, or resisted,--but for
those who have trusted us and aided:--we, not with sudden gift of
merciful and unconscious death, but with slow waste of hunger and weary
rack of disappointment and despair;--we, last and chiefly, do our
murdering, not with any pauses of pity or scorching of conscience, but
in facile and forgetful calm of mind--and so, forsooth, read day by
day, complacently, as if they meant any one else than ourselves, the
words that forever describe the wicked: "The _poison of asps_ is
under their lips, and their _feet are swift to shed blood._"
You may indeed, perhaps, think there is some excuse for many in this
matter, just because the sin is so unconscious; that the guilt is not
so great when it is unapprehended, and that it is much more pardonable
to slay heedlessly than purposefully. I believe no feeling can be more
mistaken, and that in reality, and in the sight of heaven; the callous
indifference which pursues its own interests at any cost of life,
though it does not definitely adopt the purpose of sin, is a state of
mind at once more heinous and more hopeless than the wildest
aberrations of ungoverned passion. There may be, in the last case, some
elements of good and of redemption still mingled in the character; but,
in the other, few or none. There may be hope for the man who has slain
his enemy in anger; hope even for the man who has betrayed his friend
in fear; but what hope for him who trades in unregarded blood, and
builds his fortune on unrepented treason?
But, however this may be, and wherever you may think yourselves bound
in justice to impute the greater sin, be assured that the question is
one of responsibilities only, not of facts. The definite result of all
our modern haste to be rich is assuredly, and constantly, the murder of
a certain number of persons by our hands every year. I have not time to
go into the details of another--on the whole, the broadest and
terriblest way in which we cause the destruction of the poor--namely,
the way of luxury and waste, destroying, in improvidence, what might
have been the support of thousands; [Footnote: The analysis of this
error will be found completely carried out in my lectures on the
political economy of art. And it is an error worth analyzing; for until
it is finally trodden under foot, no healthy political, economical, or
moral action is _possible_ in any state. I do not say this
impetuously or suddenly, for I have investigated this subject as
deeply; and as long, as my own special subject of art; and the
principles of political economy which I have stated in those lectures
are as sure as the principles of Euclid. Foolish readers doubted their
certainty, because I told them I had "never read any books on Political
Economy" Did they suppose I had got my knowledge of art by reading
books?] but if you follow out the subject for yourselves at home--and
what I have endeavoured to lay before you to-night will only be useful
to you if you do--you will find that wherever and whenever men are
endeavouring to _make money hastily_, and to avoid the labour
which Providence has appointed to be tho only source of honourable
profit;--and also wherever and whenever they permit themselves to
_spend it luxuriously_, without reflecting how far they are
misguiding the labour of others;--there and then, in either case, they
are literally and infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their
own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths; that, therefore,
the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, whether
he will be a labourer, or an assassin; and that whosoever has not his
hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on the Hilt of the dagger.
It would also be quite vain for me to endeavour to follow out this
evening the lines of thought which would be suggested by the other two
great political uses of iron in the Fetter and the Sword: a few words
only I must permit myself respecting both.
2. THE FETTER.--As the plough is the typical instrument of industry, so
the fetter is the typical instrument of the restraint or subjection
necessary in a nation--either literally, for its evil-doers, or
figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. You have to
choose between this figurative and literal use; for depend upon it, the
more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and
the fewer punishments to enforce. For wise laws and just restraints are
to a noble nation not chains, but chain mail--strength and defence,
though something also of an incumbrance. And this necessity of
restraint, remember, is just as honourable to man as the necessity of
labour. You hear every day greater numbers of foolish people speaking
about liberty, as if it were such an honourable thing: so far from
being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense,
dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. No human being,
however great or powerful, was ever so free as a fish. There is always
something that he must, or must not do; while the fish may do whatever
he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put together are not half so
large as the sea, and all the railroads and wheels that ever were, or
will be, invented are not so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly
thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is honourable to man,
not his Liberty; and, what is more, it is restraint which is honourable
even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee;
but you honour the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws
which fit it for orderly function in bee society And throughout the
world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is
always the more honourable. It is true, indeed, that in these and all
other matters you never can reason finally from the abstraction, for
both liberty and restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and
both are bad when they are basely chosen; but of the two, I repeat, it
is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the
lower creature: and, from the ministering of the archangel to the
labour of the insect,--from the poising of the planets to the
gravitation of a grain of dust,--the power and glory of all creatures,
and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The
Sun has no liberty--a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are
formed has no liberty. Its liberty will come--with its corruption.
And, therefore, I say boldly, though it seems a strange thing to say in
England, that as the first power of a nation consists in knowing how to
guide the Plough, its second power consists in knowing how to wear the
Fetter:--
3. THE SWORD.--And its third power, which perfects it as a nation,
consist in knowing how to wield the sword, so that the three talismans
of national existence are expressed in these three short words--Labour,
Law, and Courage.
This last virtue we at least possess; and all that is to be alleged
against us is that we do not honour it enough. I do not mean honour by
acknowledgment of service, though sometimes we are slow in doing even
that. But we do not honour it enough in consistent regard to the lives
and souls of our soldiers. How wantonly we have wasted their lives you
have seen lately in the reports of their mortality by disease, which a
little care and science might have prevented; but we regard their souls
less than their lives, by keeping them in ignorance and idleness, and
regarding them merely as instruments of battle. The argument brought
forward for the maintenance of a standing army usually refers only to
expediency in the case of unexpected war, whereas, one of the chief
reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military
system as a method of education. The most fiery and headstrong, who are
often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a
tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for
your soldiers: others, weak and unserviceable in a civil capacity, are
tempted or entrapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them: out of
this fiery or uncouth material, it is only a soldier's discipline which
can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of
order and authority, the army is the salvation of myriads; and men who,
under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or
dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once
summons and directs their energies. How much more than this military
education is capable of doing, you will find only when you make it
education indeed. We have no excuse for leaving our private soldiers at
their present level of ignorance and want of refinement, for we shall
invariably find that, both among officers and men, the gentlest and
best informed are the bravest; still less have we excuse for
diminishing our army, either in the present state of political events,
or, as I believe, in any other conjunction of them that for many a year
will be possible in this world.
You may, perhaps, be surprised at my saying this; perhaps surprised at
my implying that war itself can be right, or necessary, or noble at
all. Nor do I speak of all war as necessary, nor of all war as noble.
Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and
occasion. No man has a profounder sense of the horror and guilt of
ignoble war than I have: I have personally seen its effects, upon
nations, of unmitigated evil, on soul and body, with perhaps as much
pity, and as much bitterness of indignation, as any of those whom you
will hear continually declaiming in the cause of peace. But peace may
be sought in two ways. One way is as Gideon sought it, when he built
his altar in Ophrah, naming it, "God send peace," yet sought this peace
that he loved, as he was ordered to seek it, and the peace was sent, in
God's way:--"the country was in quietness forty years in the days of
Gideon." And the other way of seeking peace is as Menahem sought it
when he gave the King of Assyria a thousand talents of silver, that
"his hand might be with him." That is, you may either win your peace,
or buy it:--win it, by resistance to evil;--buy it, by compromise with
evil. You may buy your peace, with silenced consciences;--you may buy
it, with broken vows,--buy it, with lying words,--buy it, with base
connivances,--buy it, with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the
captive, and the silence of lost souls--over hemispheres of the earth,
while you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping comfortable
prayers evening and morning, and counting your pretty Protestant beads
(which are flat, and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the
monks' ones were), and so mutter continually to yourselves, "Peace,
peace," when there is No peace; but only captivity and death, for you,
as well as for those you leave unsaved;--and yours darker than theirs.
I cannot utter to you what I would in this matter; we all see too
dimly, as yet, what our great world-duties are, to allow any of us to
try to outline their enlarging shadows. But think over what I have
said, and as you return to your quiet homes to-night, reflect that
their peace was not won for you by your own hands; but by theirs who
long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children; and remember
that neither this inherited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but
through the same jeopardy. No peace was ever won from Fate by
subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but
that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin;--victory over the
sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts. For many a
year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to
save or subdue; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by
the offering of your own, that you ever will draw nearer to the time
when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth;--when men
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; neither shall they learn war any more.
APPENDICES.
APPENDIX I.
RIGHT AND WRONG.
Readers who are using my _Elements of Drawing_ may be surprised by
my saying here that Tintoret may lead them wrong; while in the
_Elements_ he is one of the six men named as being "always right."
I bring the apparent inconsistency forward at the beginning of this
Appendix, because the illustration of it will be farther useful in
showing the real nature of the self-contradiction which is often
alleged against me by careless readers.
It is not only possible, but a frequent condition of human action, to
_do_ right and _be_ right--yet so as to mislead other people
if they rashly imitate the thing done. For there are many rights which
are not absolutely, but relatively right--right only for _that_
person to do under those circumstances,--not for _this_ person to
do under other circumstances.
Thus it stands between Titian and Tintoret. Titian is always absolutely
Right. You may imitate him with entire security that you are doing the
best thing that can possibly be done for the purpose in hand. Tintoret
is always relatively Right--relatively to his own aims and peculiar
powers. But you must quite understand Tintoret before you can be sure
what his aim was, and why he was then right in doing what would not be
right always. If, however, you take the pains thus to understand him,
he becomes entirely instructive and exemplary, just as Titian is; and
therefore I have placed him among those are "always right," and you can
only study him rightly with that reverence for him.
Then the artists who are named as "admitting question of right and
wrong," are those who from some mischance of circumstance or short-
coming in their education, do not always do right, even with relation
to their own aims and powers.
Take for example the quality of imperfection in drawing form. There are
many pictures of Tintoret in which the trees are drawn with a few
curved flourishes of the brush instead of leaves. That is (absolutely)
wrong. If you copied the tree as a model, you would be going very wrong
indeed. But it is relatively, and for Tintoret's purposes, right. In
the nature of the superficial work you will find there must have been a
cause for it. Somebody perhaps wanted the picture in a hurry to fill a
dark corner. Tintoret good-naturedly did all he could--painted the
figures tolerably--had five minutes left only for the trees, when the
servant came. "Let him wait another five minutes." And this is the best
foliage we can do in the time. Entirely, admirably, unsurpassably
right, under the conditions. Titian would not have worked under them,
but Tintoret was kinder and humbler; yet he may lead you wrong if you
don't understand him. Or, perhaps, another day, somebody came in while
Tintoret was at work, who tormented Tintoret. An ignoble person! Titian
would have been polite to him, and gone on steadily with his trees.
Tintoret cannot stand the ignobleness; it is unendurably repulsive and
discomfiting to him. "The Black Plague take him--and the trees, too!
Shall such a fellow see me paint!" And the trees go all to pieces.
This, in you, would be mere ill-breeding and ill-temper. In Tintoret it
was one of the necessary conditions of his intense sensibility; had he
been capable, then, of keeping his temper, he could never have done his
greatest works. Let the trees go to pieces, by all means; it is quite
right they should; he is always right.
But in a background of Gainsborough you would find the trees
unjustifiably gone to pieces. The carelessness of form there is
definitely purposed by him;--adopted as an advisable thing; and
therefore it is both absolutely and relatively wrong;--it indicates his
being imperfectly educated as a painter, and not having brought out all
his powers. It may still happen that the man whose work thus partially
erroneous is greater far, than others who have fewer faults.
Gainsborough's and Reynolds' wrongs are more charming than almost
anybody else's right. Still, they occasionally _are_ wrong--but
the Venetians and Velasquez, [Footnote: At least after his style was
formed; early pictures, like the Adoration of the Magi in our Gallery,
are of little value.] never.
I ought, perhaps, to have added in that Manchester address (only one
does not like to say things that shock people) some words of warning
against painters likely to mislead the student. For indeed, though here
and there something may be gained by looking at inferior men, there is
always more to be gained by looking at the best; and there is not time,
with all the looking of human life, to exhaust even one great painter's
instruction. How then shall we dare to waste our sight and thoughts on
inferior ones, even if we could do so, which we rarely can, without
danger of being led astray? Nay, strictly speaking, what people call
inferior painters are in general no painters. Artists are divided by an
impassable gulf into the men who can paint, and who cannot. The men who
can paint often fall short of what they should have done;--are
repressed, or defeated, or otherwise rendered inferior one to another:
still there is an everlasting barrier between them and the men who
cannot paint--who can only in various popular ways pretend to paint.
And if once you know the difference, there is always some good to be
got by looking at a real painter--seldom anything but mischief to be
got out of a false one; but do not suppose real painters are common. I
do not speak of living men; but among those who labour no more, in this
England of ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five
real painters;--Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Richard Wilson, and
Turner.
The reader may, perhaps, think I have forgotten Wilkie. No. I once much
overrated him as an expressional draughtsman, not having then studied
the figure long enough to be able to detect superficial sentiment. But
his colour I have never praised; it is entirely false and valueless.
And it would tie unjust to English art if I did not here express my
regret that the admiration of Constable, already harmful enough in
England, is extending even into France. There was, perhaps, the making,
in Constable, of a second or third-rate painter, if any careful
discipline had developed in him the instincts which, though
unparalleled for narrowness, were, as far as they went, true. But as it
is, he is nothing more than an industrious and innocent amateur
blundering his way to a superficial expression of one or two popular
aspects of common nature.