My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down here among your hills
that I might talk to you about this Exchange you are going to build:
but, earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do
nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say very little,
about this same Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, though
not willingly;--I could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited
me to speak on one subject, I _wilfully_ spoke on another. But I
cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and
most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I
do _not_ care about this Exchange of yours.
If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had answered, "I
won't come, I don't care about the Exchange of Bradford," you would
have been justly offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt
a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently
let me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I now
remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at the opportunity
of speaking to a gracious audience.
In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange--because _you_
don't; and because you know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at
the essential conditions of the case, which you, as business men, know
perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You are going
to spend £30,000, which to you, collectively, is nothing; the buying a
new coat is, as to the cost of it, a much more important matter of
consideration to me, than building a new Exchange is to you. But you
think you may as well have the right thing for your money. You know
there are a great many odd styles of architecture about; you don't
want to do anything ridiculous; you hear of me, among others, as a
respectable architectural man-milliner; and you send for me, that I
may tell you the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the
moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles.
Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot have good
architecture merely by asking people's advice on occasion. All good
architecture is the expression of national life and character, and it
is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for
beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep significance of
this word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more earnestly or
oftener controverted than that good taste is essentially a moral
quality. "No," say many of my antagonists, "taste is one thing,
morality is another. Tell us what is pretty: we shall be glad to know
that; but we need no sermons--even were you able to preach them, which
may be doubted."
Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of mine somewhat.
Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;--it is the ONLY
morality. The first, and last, and closest trial question to any
living creature is, "What do you like?" Tell me what you like, and
I'll tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask the first
man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is; and if they answer
candidly, you know them, body and soul. "You, my friend in the rags,
with the unsteady gait, what do _you_ like?" "A pipe and a quartern of
gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy
bonnet, what do you like?" "A swept hearth, and a clean tea-table; and
my husband opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know you
also. "You, little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, what
do you like?" "My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." "You,
little boy with the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you
like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we
know them all now. What more need we ask?
"Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need rather to ask what these people
and children do, than what they like. If they do right, it is no
matter that they like what is wrong; and if they _do_ wrong, it is no
matter that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; and it
does not matter that the man likes drinking, so that he does not
drink; nor that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she
will not learn her lessons; nor that the little boy likes throwing
stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, for
a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. For if,
resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing
it. But they only are in a right moral state when they _have_ come to
like doing it; and as long as they don't like it, they are still in a
vicious state. The man is not in health of body who is always thinking
of the bottle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst; but
the man who heartily enjoys water in the morning, and wine in the
evening, each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire object
of true education is to make people not merely _do_ the right things,
but _enjoy_ the right things:--not merely industrious, but to love
industry--not merely learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure,
but to love purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after
justice.[203]
But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for outside
ornaments,--for pictures, or statues, or furniture, or
architecture,--a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a rightly set
liking. Taste for _any_ pictures or statues is not a moral quality,
but taste for good ones is. Only here again we have to define the word
"good." I don't mean by "good," clever--or learned--or difficult in
the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their
dice; it is an entirely clever picture; so clever that nothing in its
kind has ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely base
and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged
contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered,"
or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense--it
is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of Titian's,
or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, expresses
delight in the perpetual contemplation of a good and perfect thing.
That is an entirely moral quality--it is the taste of the angels And
all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve themselves into simple
love of that which deserves love. That deserving is the quality which
we call "loveliness"--(we ought to have an opposite word, hateliness,
to be said of the things which deserve to be hated); and it is not an
indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is
just the vital function of all our being. What we _like_ determines
what we _are_, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is
inevitably to form character.
As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet Street the other day,
my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's
window. It was--"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all
classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when you
have diffused your taste, where will your classes be? The man who
likes what you like, belongs to the same class with you, I think.
Inevitably so. You may put him to other work if you choose; but, by
the condition you have brought him into, he will dislike the other
work as much as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger or a
costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and
'Pop goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make him like Dante
and Beethoven? I wish you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you have
made a gentleman of him:--he won't like to go back to his
coster-mongering."
And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, that, if I had time
to-night, I could show you that a nation cannot be affected by any
vice, or weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for ever,
either in bad art, or by want of art; and that there is no national
virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the
art which circumstances enable the people possessing that virtue to
produce. Take, for instance, your great English virtue of enduring and
patient courage. You have at present in England only one art of any
consequence--that is, iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to
cast and hammer iron. Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which
you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at the mouths of
the Infernos you have created; do you think, on those iron plates,
your courage and endurance are not written for ever,--not merely with
an iron pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great English
vice--European vice--vice of all the world--vice of all other worlds
that roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere of
hell--the vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your
commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour into your
wars--that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next
neighbouring nation, the daily occupations of existence no longer
possible, but with the mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in
its sheath; so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes
of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civilization of the
earth,--you have realized for them all, I say, in person and in
policy, what was once true only of the rough Border riders of your
Cheviot hills--
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;[204] do you
think that this national shame and dastardliness of heart are not
written as legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as the strength
of the right hands that forged it?
Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more ludicrous or the
more melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of
being now sent for by you, I had been sent for by some private
gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated only
by a fruit wall from his next door neighbour's; and he had called me
to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin
looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and
such a paper might be desirable--perhaps a little fresco here and
there on the ceiling--a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah,"
says my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but
you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet the world
credits you with a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but
do you know, at present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in
steel-traps?" "Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that fellow on the
other side the wall, you know: we're very good friends, capital
friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the
wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and
our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows
enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new
trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen
millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see
how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life for two
private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly
comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman
in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one
clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself
red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something
else than comic, I think.
Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and willingly allow for
that. You don't know what to do with yourselves for a sensation:
fox-hunting and cricketing will not carry you through the whole of
this unendurably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns when you were
schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things better
made: but then the worst of it is, that what was play to you when
boys, was not play to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is
not play to the small birds of State neither; and for the black
eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake
not.[205]
I must get back to the matter in hand, however. Believe me, without
further instance, I could show you, in all time, that every nation's
vice, or virtue, was written in its art: the soldiership of early
Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of
Tuscany; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no
time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206]
but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching
manner.
I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild
hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large
proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the
churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and
mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning
of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when
the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well
as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp,
there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo
Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an
Italian St. Paul's.[207] But now you live under one school of
architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing
this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your
architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches
experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a
church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently
sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine
frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved
for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may
seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that,
at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than
that you have separated your religion from your life.
For consider what a wide significance this fact has: and remember that
it is not you only, but all the people of England, who are behaving
thus, just now.
You have all got into the habit of calling the church "the house of
God." I have seen, over the doors of many churches, the legend
actually carved, "_This_ is the house of God and this is the gate of
heaven."[208] Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what
place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a
long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he has to cross a wild
hill-desert; just as if one of your own boys had to cross the wolds to
visit an uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds
himself somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors,
at sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot
further that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best
he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under his
head;--so wild the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And
there, lying under the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a
ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and
the angels of God are ascending and descending upon it. And when he
wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place; surely
this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven." This PLACE, observe; not this church; not this city; not this
stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint on
which his head has lain. But this _place_; this windy slope of
Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this
_any_ place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know
where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but
by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to
fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning;
but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that
lightning when it shines from the east to the west.[209]
But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a
merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in
which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples."
Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ temples. They have never
had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are
"synagogues"--"gathering places"--where you gather yourselves together
as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force
of another mighty text--"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the
hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [we
should translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, when
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to thy Father"--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in
secret."[210]
Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were
trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying
to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the
Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is. I would have you
feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in
all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy,"
you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separated
yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the
ground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feeble
Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar.
"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me,
impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on
these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones;
and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had
before been interested in anything I have written, you must know that
all I have yet said about architecture was to show this. The book I
called _The Seven Lamps_ was to show that certain right states of
temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good
architecture, without exception, had been produced. _The Stones of
Venice_ had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the
Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all
its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue;
and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in all
its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and
of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what style is best to
build in, and how can I answer, knowing the meaning of the two styles,
but by another question--do you mean to build as Christians or as
Infidels? And still more--do you mean to build as honest Christians or
as honest Infidels? as thoroughly and confessedly either one or the
other? You don't like to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help
it; they are of much more importance than this Exchange business; and
if they can be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself
in a moment. But before I press them farther, I must ask leave to
explain one point clearly.
In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show that good
architecture is essentially religious--the production of a faithful
and virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the
course of doing this, I have had also to show that good architecture
is not _ecclesiastical_. People are so apt to look upon religion as
the business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear
of anything depending on "religion," they think it must also have
depended on the priesthood; and I have had to take what place was to
be occupied between these two errors, and fight both, often with
seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the work of good and
believing men; therefore, you say, at least some people say, "Good
architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of
the laity." No--a thousand times no; good architecture[211] has always
been the work of the commonalty, _not_ of the clergy. "What," you say,
"those glorious cathedrals--the pride of Europe--did their builders
not form Gothic architecture?" No; they corrupted Gothic architecture.
Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It
was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of labouring
citizens and warrior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument
for the aid of his superstition; when that superstition became a
beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly dreamed and
pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the
crusade,--through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the
Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most
foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost.
I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunderstanding me when I
come to the gist of what I want to say to-night;--when I repeat, that
every great national architecture has been the result and exponent of
a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits
there--you must have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not the monopoly
of a clerical company--it is not the exponent of a theological
dogma--it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood;
it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common
purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible
laws of an undoubted God.
Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools of European
architecture. I say, European, because Asiatic and African
architectures belong so entirely to other races and climates, that
there is no question of them here; only, in passing, I will simply
assure you that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and
India, is just good or great for the same reasons as the buildings on
our side of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, have had three great
religions: the Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom and
Power; the Mediæval, which was the worship of the God of Judgment and
Consolation; the Renaissance, which was the worship of the God of
Pride and Beauty: these three we have had--they are past,--and now, at
last, we English have got a fourth religion, and a God of our own,
about which I want to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones
first.
I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the God of Wisdom;
so that whatever contended against their religion,--to the Jews a
stumbling-block,--was, to the Greeks--_Foolishness_.[212]
The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in the word, of which
we keep the remnant in our words "_Di_-urnal" and "_Di_-vine"--the god
of _Day_, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially
daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the head. We are only
with the help of recent investigation beginning to penetrate the depth
of meaning couched under the Athenaic symbols: but I may note rapidly,
that her ægis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which she
often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up her left
hand, for better guard; and the Gorgon, on her shield, are both
representative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness (turning men
to stone, as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of
knowledge--that knowledge which separates, in bitterness, hardness,
and sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the
child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension,
danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the
full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of which she is
crowned with the olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.[213]
This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit
of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the
seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself,
as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;[214] not with
any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and
continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no
consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek
architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and
self-contained.
Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was
essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the
remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain
phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly
glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine
was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a
continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of
purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a
mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly
luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every
one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or
weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base
people build it--of all, the noblest, when built by the noble.
And now note that both these religions--Greek and Mediæval--perished
by falsehood in their own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom
perished in a false philosophy--"Oppositions of science, falsely so
called." The Mediæval religion of Consolation perished in false
comfort; in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of
absolution that ended the Mediæval faith; and I can tell you more, it
is the selling of absolution which, to the end of time, will mark
false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins only
by _ending_ them; but false Christianity gets her remission of sins by
_compounding for_ them. And there are many ways of compounding for
them. We English have beautiful little quiet ways of buying
absolution, whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than any
of Tetzel's trading.[215]
Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, in which all
Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in death. First, _bals masqués_
in every saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And all these
three worships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek worshipped
Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon--the Virgin's temple. The Mediæval
worshipped Consolation, and built you Virgin temples also--but to our
Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of a sort,
and built you Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell
me what _we_ worship, and what _we_ build?
You know we are speaking always of the real, active, continual,
national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that
which they talk of, when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal
religion, to which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time; but
we have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we devote
nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of our time. And we
dispute a great deal about the nominal religion: but we are all
unanimous about this practical one; of which I think you will admit
that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the
"Goddess of Getting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." The Athenians
had an "Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Market; but she was a
subordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the
principal type of ours. And all your great architectural works are, of
course, built to her. It is long since you built a great cathedral;
and how you would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral on
the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an Acropolis!
But your railroad mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon; your
railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable;
your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires!
your harbour-piers; your warehouses; your exchanges!--all these are
built to your great Goddess of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, and
will continue to form your architecture, as long as you worship her;
and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to _her_; you
know far better than I.
There might, indeed, on some theories, be a conceivably good
architecture for Exchanges--that is to say, if there were any heroism
in the fact or deed of exchange which might be typically carved on the
outside of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architecture
must be adorned with sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or
painting, you must have a subject. And hitherto it has been a received
opinion among the nations of the world that the only right subjects
for either, were _heroisms_ of some sort. Even on his pots and his
flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying
serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and earthborn
despondencies. On his temples, the Greek put contests of great
warriors in founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his
houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of angels
conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for
another: subject inappropriate, I think, to our manner of exchange
here. And the Master of Christians not only left His followers without
any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside
of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of His dislike of affairs
of exchange within them.[216] And yet there might surely be a heroism
in such affairs; and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves,
not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has
never been supposed to be in any wise consistent with the practice of
supplying people with food, or clothes; but rather with that of
quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their
clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages; but the
selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken any colour of
magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing
the naked should ever become base businesses, even when engaged in on
a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest
to them anyhow! so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate
race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving
them compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "_occupying_ a country" with
one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as
much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an eared field
stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should
"carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these
serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained
by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are
witty things to be thought of in planning other business than
campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight
with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless.
The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic element in the soldier's
work seems to be--that he is paid little for it--and regularly: while
you traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably
benevolent business, like to be paid much for it--and by chance. I
never can make out how it is that a _knight_-errant does not expect to
be paid for his trouble, but a _pedlar_-errant always does;--that
people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell
ribands cheap; that they are ready to go on fervent crusades, to
recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil
the orders of a living one;--that they will go anywhere barefoot to
preach their faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are
perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and
fishes.
If you chose to take the matter up on any such soldierly principle; to
do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and
to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best
cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could
carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can
only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and
making its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. And
in the innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of Britannia
of the Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, a partridge for her
crest, typical at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and
of her interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden
letters, "Perdix fovit quæ non peperit."[217] Then, for her spear, she
might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's
Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret
proper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market,"[218] and
her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a
purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece of money to go in at, on
each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people would come to
see your exchange, and its goddess, with applause.
Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain strange characters in
this goddess of yours. She differs from the great Greek and Mediæval
deities essentially in two things--first, as to the continuance of her
presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it.
1st, as to the Continuance.
The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual increase of wisdom, as the
Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual increase of
comfort. There was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation
of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just the most
important question. Getting on--but where to? Gathering together--but
how much? Do you mean to gather always--never to spend? If so, I wish
you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without the
trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, somebody
else will--somebody else must. And it is because of this (among many
other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your so-called
science of Political Economy to be no science; because, namely, it has
omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the
business--the study of _spending_. For spend you must, and as much as
you make, ultimately. You gather corn:--will you bury England under a
heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You
gather gold:--will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your
streets with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if you keep
it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give you all the
gold you want--all you can imagine--if you can tell me what you'll do
with it. You shall have thousands of gold-pieces;--thousands of
thousands--millions--mountains, of gold: where will you keep them?
Will you put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion--make Ossa like
a wart?[219] Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to
you, in the streams from such mountains, more blessedly than they will
down the mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whinstone?
But it is not gold that you want to gather! What is it? greenbacks?
No; not those neither. What is it then--is it ciphers after a capital
I? Cannot you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you want?
Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and say every
evening, I am worth all those noughts more than I was yesterday. Won't
that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want? Not gold,
not greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have to
answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, money's _worth_."
Well, what is that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and
let her learn to stay therein.
2d. But there is yet another question to be asked respecting this
Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of the continuance of her power;
the second is of its extent.
Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the world's Pallas, and
all the world's Madonna. They could teach all men, and they could
comfort all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the power of
your Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the Goddess--not
of everybody's getting on--but only of somebody's getting on. This is
a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal
of the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke and
maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was last here;--you have
never told me.[220] Now, shall I try to tell you?
Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in
a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath
it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion,
with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately-sized
park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives
through the shrubberies In this mansion are to live the favoured
votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious
wife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the boudoir and
the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball dresses for the
daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands
for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less
than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, and
two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill
are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand
workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday,
and always express themselves in respectful language.
Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you
propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed seen from above; not
at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families
she is the Goddess of _not_ Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all
their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must
always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not
skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What
then! do you think the old practice, that "they should take who have
the power, and they should keep who can,"[221] is less iniquitous,
when the power has become power of brains instead of fist? and that,
though we may not take advantage of a child's or a woman's weakness,
we may of a man's foolishness? "Nay, but finally, work must be done,
and some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." Granted, my
friends. Work must always be, and captains of work must always be; and
if you in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, you must
know that they are thought unfit for this age, because they are always
insisting on need of government, and speaking with scorn of liberty.
But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being
captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does
not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take
all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or
land;) neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to
consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the
contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of
this,--by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's
work for themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so infallible
as that. Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely,
unostentatiously? probably he _is_ a King. Does he cover his body with
jewels, and his table with delicates? in all probability he is _not_ a
King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; but that is when the
nation shares his splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to
be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones.[222]
But, even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in
ruin, and only the true king-hoods live, which are of royal labourers
governing loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, establish
the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find that because you are
king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for
yourself all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king
of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its
maintenance--over field, or mill, or mine,--are you to take all the
produce of that piece of the foundation of national existence for
yourself.
You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot
mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or
something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding
power--and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? All
history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing they never
can do. Change _must_ come; but it is ours to determine whether change
of growth, or change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its
rock, and Bolton priory[223] in its meadow, but these mills of yours
be the consummation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels be
as the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may come, and men may
go," but--mills--go on for ever?[224] Not so; out of these, better or
worse shall come; and it is for you to choose which.
I know that none of this wrong is done with deliberate purpose. I
know, on the contrary, that you wish your workmen well; that you do
much for them, and that you desire to do more for them, if you saw
your way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all this wrong
and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, each of you
striving to do his best; but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this
best should be done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the
plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us that, "To do the
best for ourselves, is finally to do the best for others." Friends,
our great Master said not so; and most absolutely we shall find this
world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally to
do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have our eyes fixed
on that issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says
of this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of
Plato,--if not the last actually written (for this we cannot know),
yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words--in which,
endeavouring to give full crowning and harmonious close to all his
thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the
Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, and the words
cease, broken off for ever. They are at the close of the dialogue
called _Critias_, in which he describes, partly from real tradition,
partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and
order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis
he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man,
which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the
Sons of God inter-married with the daughters of men,[225] for he
supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God;
and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot was not the spot
of his children."[226] And this, he says, was the end; that indeed
"through many generations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was
full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves
lovingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness; for their
uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every wise great; so
that, in _all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other_, and
took all the chances of life; and despising all things except virtue,
they cared little what happened day by day, and _bore lightly the
burden_ of gold and of possessions; for they saw that, if _only their
common love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased
together with them_; but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon
material possession would be to lose that first, and their virtue and
affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and what of the
divine nature remained in them, they gained all this greatness of
which we have already told; but when the God's part of them faded and
became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by the
prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they then
became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into
shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see,
having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the
blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to
happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy,
being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession and power.
Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a
once just nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such
punishment upon them as might make them repent into restraining,
gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from
heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; and having
assembled them, he said "--
The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom of the heathen,
spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden image,
high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields of England
are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:[227] this
idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and
faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any
age or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the
purposes of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal
one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be
possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow
mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some
conception of a true human state of life to be striven for--life, good
for all men, as for yourselves; if you can determine some honest and
simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom,
which are pleasantness,[228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn
paths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying wealth into
"commonwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily labours,
your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase
into one magnificent harmony. You will know then how to build, well
enough; you will build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples
not made with hands,[229] but riveted of hearts; and that kind of
marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.
[202] Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864.
[203] _Matthew_ v, 6.
[204] Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, canto 1, stanza 4.
[205] The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take
arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook and
Wedderburn.]
[206] See, e.g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff.
[207] Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723]
were the best known architects of their respective generations.
[208] _Genesis_ xxviii, 17.
[209] _Matthew_ xxiv, 27.
[210] _Matthew_ vi, 6.
[211] And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous
and secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.]
[212] 1 _Corinthians_ i, 23.
[213] For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's
_Queen of the Air_.
[214] It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking,
was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and
Strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character of Greek
art is not beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and
Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine
wisdom and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over
the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength
and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no
Venus-worship among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses
are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.]
[215] Tetzel's trading in Papal indulgences aroused Luther to the
protest which ended in the Reformation.
[216] _Matthew_ xxi, 12.
[217] _Jeremiah_ xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the
partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth
riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and
at his end shall be a fool." [Ruskin.]
[218] Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." [Ruskin.]
[219] Cf. _Hamlet_, 5. 1. 306.
[220] Referring to a lecture on _Modern Manufacture and Design_,
delivered at Bradford, March 1, 1859 published later as Lecture III
in _The Two Paths_.
[221] See Wordsworth's _Rob Roy's Grave_, 39-40.
[222] 1 Kings x, 27.
[223] A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire.
[224] Cf. Tennyson's _The Brook_.
[225] _Genesis_ vi, 2.
[226] _Deuteronomy_ xxxii, 5.
[227] _Daniel_ iii, 1.
[228] _Proverbs_ iii, 17.
[229] _Acts_ vii, 48.