ATHENA ERGANE.*
(Athena in the Heart.)
* "Athena the worker, or having rule over work." The name was first give
to her by the Athenians.
VARIOUS NOTES RELATING TO THE CONCEPTION OF ATHENA AS THE DIRECTRESS OF
THE IMAGINATION AND WILL.
101. I have now only a few words to say, bearing on what seems to me
present need, respecting the third function of Athena, conceived as the
directress of human passion, resolution, and labor.
Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give accurate distinction between
the intellectual rule of Athena and that of the Muses; but, broadly, the
Muses, with their king, preside over meditative, historical, and poetic
arts, whose end is the discovery of light or truth, and the creation of
beauty; but Athena rules over moral passion, and practically useful art.
She does not make men learned, but prudent and subtle; she does not teach
them to make their work beautiful, but to make it right.
In different places of my writings, and though many years of endeavor to
define the laws of art, I have insisted on this rightness in work, and on
its connection with virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that
the impression left on the reader's mind--if, indeed, it was ever
impressed at all--has been confused and uncertain. In beginning the
series of my corrected works, I wish this principle (in my own mind the
foundation of every other) to be made plain, if nothing else is; and will
try, therefore, to make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it
into unmistakable words. And, at first, here is a very simple statement
of it, given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of the
Somme, which will be better read in this place than in its incidental
connection with my account of the porches of Abbeville.
102. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by
what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus of
works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and
vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the
merits of a piece of stone?
The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its
virtues his virtues.
Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art,
that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds
foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and a
vicious one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it means that a
thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest man
cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its carver was
too greedy of pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive,
or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell
these most precious of all legends,--pictures and buildings,--you may
read the characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mirror;
nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hundredfold; for the character
becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest
or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under a
scalpel, and in dissection; for a man may hide himself from you, or
misrepresent himself to you every other way; but he cannot in his work:
there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that
he sees,--all that he can do,--his imagination, his affections, his
perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is
there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a
honey-comb, by a bee; a wormcast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest
wreathed by a bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is
worthy, and ignobly if he is ignoble.
And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good or
bad, so is the maker of it.
103. You will use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you
theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;* you
don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that
the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old
Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael
Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and
out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute,
or a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or
the Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end,
that no man could have done it but exactly the man who did it; and by
looking close at it, you may, if you know your letters, read precisely
the manner of man he was.
* The elaborate pendiment above the central porch at the west end of
Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and enriched
with a border of "twisted eglantine."
104. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts
concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, while
manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the whole
spirit of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it; and by
whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice or
virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets
evil; and that which is born of valor and honor, teaches valor and honor.
All art is either infection or education. It must be one or other of
these.
105. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which
understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I
assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly,
and with contumely, denied, and that by high authority; and I hold it one
of the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts among
us, that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and artists,
should have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed into the
assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as theirs could have
rendered for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is written in
the history of all great nations; it is the one sentence always inscribed
on the steps of their thrones; the one concordant voice in which they
speak to us out of their dust.
All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful animal
race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives of hardship
by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline; they become fierce
and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their
king, or chief head of government, is always their first soldier.
Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de
Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandalo, or Frederick the Great,--Egyptian, Jew,
Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian,--that is inviolable law
for them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be
in progressive power. Then, after their great military period, comes the
domestic period; in which, without betraying the discipline of war, they
add to their great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate
and tender home-life; and then, for all nations, is the time of their
perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their
national idea of character, developed by the finished care of the
occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was,
or can be; palpably the history of it,--unmistakably,--written on the
forehead of it in letters of light,--in tongues of fire, by which the
seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's
flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great period,
has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for pleasure
only. And all has so ended.
106. Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two
things,--first, the foundation of art in moral character; next, the
foundation of moral character in war. I must make both these assertions
clearer, and prove them.
First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift
and amiability of disposition are two different things; for a good man
is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color necessarily imply
an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers; it is
the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not
there, we can have no art at all; and if the soul--and a right soul too--
is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous.
107. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of
the moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice;
but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That
she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of
music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue
and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigor
and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human
conduct renders, after a certain number of generations, human art
possible; every sin that clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and
persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a
certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by
the long-suffering of the laws of nature, and mistake, in a nation, the
reward of the virtue of its sires, for the issue of its own sins. The
time of their visitation will come, and that inevitably; for, it is
always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's
teeth are set on edge. And for the individual, as soon as you have
learned to read, you may, as I said, know him to the heart's core,
through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to
the height by the schools of a great race of men, and it is still but a
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul; and the bearing of it
will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man or on a skeleton. If
you are dim-eyed, you may not see the difference in the fall of the folds
at first, but learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become
transparent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the
divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of right, or as a
winding-sheet.
108. Then further, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and
that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it
bares fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is often
didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael
Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its special
function; it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but beautiful with
haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of myths that can be
read only with the heart.
For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a page
of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and gold, and soft
green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure
resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight
them; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not much
more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy; and it will do
the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is
an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken about two miles from
Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the distance. The old
city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty
veil of Athena's weaving; a faint light of morning, peaceful exceedingly,
and almost colorless, shed from behind the Voirons, increases into soft
amber along the slope of the Salëve, and is just seen, and no more, on
the fair warm fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud
that rests upon the grass, but rises, high and tower-like, into the
zenith of dawn above.
109. There is not as much color in that low amber light upon the
hillside as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but
gray in mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few
dark clusters of leaves, a single white flower--scarcely seen--are all
the gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of
the eastern manuscript would give color enough for all the red that is in
Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not
so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in
half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made him take pleasure
in the low color that is only like the brown of a dead leaf? in the cold
gray of dawn--in the one white flower among the rocks--in these--and no
more than these?
110. He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English
fields and hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his
heart, and its powers of thought in his brain; because he knew the
stories of the Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read
the Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the
givers of dew to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, and
the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face of his
friend; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and
death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days of its
first sea kings; and also the compassion and the joy that are woven into
the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, born now in
countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any courage or
truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just this which its maker
had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are of the
temper in which it must be received. It is didactic if we are worthy to
be taught, not otherwise. The pure heart, it will make more pure; the
thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in it no words for the reckless or
the base.
111. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of my life--and
both have been many and great--that does not rise up against me, and take
away my joy, and shorten my power of possession of sight, of
understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam of
rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this
art, and its vision. So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret either, my
power is owing to what of right there is in me. I dare to say it, that,
because through all my life I have desired good, and not evil; because I
have been kind to many; have wished to be kind to all; have wilfully
injured none; and because I have loved much, and not selfishly;
therefore, the morning light is yet visible to me on those hills, and
you, who read, may trust my thought and word in such work as I have to do
for you; and you will be glad afterwards that you have trusted them.
112. Yet, remember,--I repeat it again and yet again,--that I may for
once, if possible, make this thing assuredly clear: the inherited
art-gift must be there, as well as the life in some poor measure, or
rescued fragment, right. This art-gift of mine could not have been won
by any work or by any conduct: it belongs to me by birthright, and came
by Athena's will, from the air of English country villages, and Scottish
hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may come on me, for printing
one of my many childish rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg,
just north of Loch Leven. It bears date 1st January, 1828. I was born
on the 8th of February, 1819; and al that I ever could be, and all that I
cannot be, the weak little rhyme already shows.
"Papa, how pretty those icicles are,
That are seen so near,--that are seen so far;
--Those dropping waters that come from the rocks
And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox.
That silvery stream that runs babbling along,
Making a murmuring, dancing song.
Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's side,
And men, that, like specters, among them glide.
And waterfalls that are heard from far,
And come in sight when very near.
And the water-wheel that turns slowly round,
Grinding the corn that--requires to be ground,--
(Political Economy of the future!)
----And mountains at a distance seen,
And rivers winding through the plain,
And quarries with their craggy stones,
And the wind among them moans."
So foretelling Stones of Venice, and this essay on Athena.
Enough now concerning myself.
113. Of Turner's life, and of its good and evil, both great, but the
good immeasurably the greater, his work is in all things a perfect and
transparent evidence. His biography is simply, "He did this, nor will
ever another do its like again." Yet read what I have said of him, as
compared with the great Italians, in the passages taken from the "Cestus
of Aglaia," farther on, §158, pp. 164, 165.
114. This, then, is the nature of the connection between morals and art.
Now, secondly, I have asserted the foundation of both these, at least
hitherto, in war. The reason of this too manifest fact is, that, until
now it has been impossible for any nation, except a warrior one, to fix
its mind wholly on its men, instead of their possessions. Every great
soldier nation thinks, necessarily, first of multiplying its bodies and
souls of men, in good temper and strict discipline. As long as this is
its political aim, it does not matter what it temporarily suffers, or
loses, either in numbers or in wealth; its morality and its arts (if it
have national art-gift) advance together; but so soon as it ceases to be
a warrior nation, it thinks of its possessions instead of its men; and
then the moral and poetic powers vanish together.
115. It is thus, however, absolutely necessary to the virtue of war that
it should be waged by personal strength, not by money or machinery. A
nation that fights with a mercenary force, or with torpedoes instead of
its own arms, is dying. Not but that there is more true courage in
modern than even in ancient war; but this is, first, because all the
remaining life of European nations is with a morbid intensity thrown into
their soldiers; and, secondly, because their present heroism is the
culmination of centuries of inbred and traditional valor, which Athena
taught them by forcing them to govern the foam of the sea-wave and of the
horse,--not the steam of kettles.
116. And further, note this, which is vital to us in the present crisis:
If war is to be made by money and machinery, the nation which is the
largest and most covetous multitude will win. You may be as scientific
as you choose; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpowder
will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make an
end of you; of itself, also, in good time, but of you first. And to the
English people the choice of its fate is very near now. It may
spasmodically defend its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few
years longer--a very few. No walls will defend either it, or its
havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spreading faster than
the clouds, over the habitable earth. We shall be allowed to live by
small pedler's business, and iron-mongery--since we have chosen those for
our line of life--as long as we are found useful black servants to the
Americans, and are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders; and have
still coals to dig,--they once exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we
shall be abolished. But if we think more wisely, while there is yet
time, and set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on
cheapening English wares, if we resolve to submit to wholesome laws of
labor and economy, and setting our political squabbles aside, try how
many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd
into every spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail
against us; nor traffic, nor hatred; the noble nation will yet, by the
grace of heaven, rule over the ignoble, and force of heart hold its own
against fireballs.
117. But there is yet a further reason for the dependence of the arts
on war. The vice and injustice of the world are constantly springing
anew, and are only to be subdued by battle; the keepers of order and law
must always be soldiers. And now, going back to the myth of Athena, we
see that though she is first a warrior maid, she detests war for its own
sake; she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quarrels, but she disarms
Ares. She contends, herself, continually against disorder and
convulsion, in the earth giants; she stands by Hercules' side in victory
over all monstrous evil; in justice only she judges and makes war. But
in this war of hers she is wholly implacable. She has little notion of
converting criminals. There is no faculty of mercy in her when she has
been resisted. Her word is only, "I will mock when your fear cometh."
Note the words that follow: "when your fear cometh as desolation, and
your destruction as a whirlwind;" for her wrath is of irresistible
tempest: once roused, it is blind and deaf,--rabies--madness of anger--
darkness of the Dies Iræ.
And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to know about our own
several lives. Wisdom never forgives. Whatever resistance we have
offered to her loaw, she avenges forever; the lost hour can never be
redeemed, and the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best that can
be done afterwards, but for that, had been better; the falsest of all the
cries of peace, where there is no peace, is that of the pardon of sin, as
the mob expect it. Wisdom can "put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it;
and she is apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the
black ægis is on her breast.
118. And this is also a fact we have to know about our national life,
that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power of noble Anger. When
it paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful criminalities; and endures
its false weights, and its adulterated food; dares not to decide
practically between good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor
smite the other, but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and
consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves it in the sugar of
its leaden heart,--the end is come.
119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with any people is that
they become warriors, and that the chief thought of every man of them is
to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail from his brother's side in
battle. Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's
orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war.
But further: Athena presides over industry, as well as battle; typically,
over women's industry; that brings comfort with pleasantness. Her word
to us all is: "Be well exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in
your right minds; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes
clutched from each other's shoulders. Fight and weave. Then I myself
will answer for the course of the lance, and the colors of the loom."
And now I will ask the reader to look with some care through these
following passages respecting modern multitudes and their occupations,
written long ago, but left in fragmentary form, in which they must now
stay, and be of what use they can.
120. It is not political economy to put a number of strong men down on
an acre of ground, with no lodging, and nothing to eat. Nor is it
political economy to build a city on good ground, and fill it with store
of corn and treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it. Political
economy creates together the means of life, and the living persons who
are to use them; and of both, the best and the most that it can, but
imperatively the best, not the most. A few good and healthy men, rather
than a multitude of diseased rogues; and a little real milk and wine
rather than much chalk and petroleum; but the gist of the whole business
is that the men and their property must both be produced together--not
one to the loss of the other. Property must not be created in lands
desolate by exile of their people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity,
in lands barren of bread.
121. Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions are to be
increased at the same time, the first object of thought is always to be
the multiplication of a worthy people. The strength of the nation is in
its multitude, not in its territory; but only in its sound multitude. It
is one thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to
be swollen with putrid humors. Not that multitude ever ought to be
inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be wiser than one, and two
thousand than two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records
of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of
cities. As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws
and repress crimes! As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks--
men, only in separate dens! As if it were easy to help one another on
the opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of
a street! But when the men are true and good, and stand shoulder to
shoulder, the strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in
its land nor gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its
territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the madness of
economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the madness
of kings to seek for land instead of life. They want the town on the
other side of the river, and seek it at the spear point; it never enters
their stupid heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this
side of the river would make them stronger kings; and that this doubling
might be done by the ploughshare instead of the spear, and through
happiness instead of misery.
Therefore, in brief, this is the only object of all true policy and true
economy: "utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground"--
imperatively always good, sound, honest men,--not a mob of white-faced
thieves. So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong which is
inconsistent with numbers; and on the other all numbers are wrong which
are inconsistent with breeding.
122. Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the maintenance of
such men, observe, that you must never use the terms "money" and "wealth"
as synonymous. Wealth consists of the good, and therefore useful, things
in the possession of the nation; money is only the written or coined sign
of the relative quantities of wealth in each person's possession. All
money is a divisible title-deed, of immense importance as an expression
of right to property, but absolutely valueless as property itself. Thus,
supposing a nation isolated from all others, the money in its possession
is, at its maximum value, worth all the property of the nation, and no
more, because no more can be got for it. And the money of all nations
is worth, at its maximum, the property of all nations, and no more, for
no more can be got for it. Thus, every article of property produced
increases, by its value, the value of all the money in the world, and
every article of property destroyed, diminishes the value of all the
money in the world. If ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thousand
pounds in their pockets, and there is on the rock, neither food nor
shelter, their money is worth simply nothing, for nothing is to be had
for it. If they built ten huts, and recover a cask of biscuit from the
wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its maximum value, is worth ten
huts and a cask of biscuit. If they make their thousand pounds into two
thousand by writing new notes, their two thousand pounds are still worth
ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And the law of relative value is the
same for all the world, and all the people in it, and all their property,
as for ten men on a rock. Therefore, money is truly and finally lost in
the degree in which its value is taken from it (ceasing in that degree to
be money at all); and it is truly gained in the degree in which value is
added to it. Thus, suppose the money coined by the nation be a fixed
sum, and divided very minutely (say into francs and cents), and neither
to be added to nor diminished. Then every grain of food and inch of
lodging added to its possessions makes every cent in its pockets worth
proportionally more, and every gain of food it consumes, and inch of roof
it allows to fall to ruin, makes every cent in its pockets worth less;
and this with mathematical precision. The immediate value of the money
at particular times and places depends, indeed, on the humors of the
possessors of property; but the nation is in the one case gradually
getting richer, and will feel the pressure of poverty steadily everywhere
relaxing, whatever the humors of individuals may be; and, in the other
case, is gradually growing poorer, and the pressure of its poverty will
every day tell more and more, in ways that it cannot explain, but will
most bitterly feel.
123. The actual quantity of money which it coins, in relation to its
real property, is therefore only of consequence for convenience of
exchange; but the proportion in which this quantity of money is divided
among individuals expresses their various rights to greater or less
proportions of the national property, and must not, therefore, be
tampered with. The government may at any time, with perfect justice,
double its issue of coinage, if it gives every man who has ten pounds in
his pocket another ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence another
ten pence; for it thus does not make any of them richer; it merely
divides their counters for them into twice the number. But if it gives
the newly-issued coins to other people, or keeps them itself, it simply
robs the former holders to precisely that extent. This most important
function of money, as a title-deed, on the non-violation of which all
national soundness of commerce and peace of life depend, has been never
rightly distinguished by economists from the quite unimportant function
of money as a means of exchange. You can exchange goods--at some
inconvenience, indeed, but you can still contrive to do it--without money
at all; but you cannot maintain your claim to the savings of your past
life without a document declaring the amount of them, which the nation
and its government will respect.
124. And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money
in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its
function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing
produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple
and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach.
How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and
others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does
your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives
has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every
well-educated girl--do even the women in high political position--know
that every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys
precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it
are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming
somewhat louder.
125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. So much goods, so
much money; so little goods, so little money. But, as there is this true
relation between money and "goods," or good things, so there is a false
relation between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad things will
fetch a price in exchange; but they do not increase the wealth of the
country. Good wine is wealth, drugged wine is not; good meat is wealth,
putrid meat is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A
thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to
pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you
please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth
one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more
than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce
many potters to manufacture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to
buy them; but the nation is, through the whole business so encouraged,
rich by the addition to its wealth of so many potsherds,--and there an
end. The thing is worth what it CAN do for you, not what you think it
can; and most national luxuries, nowadays, are a form of potsherd,
provided for the solace of a self-complacent Job, voluntary sedent on his
ash-heap.
126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and have become
media of exchange, the variations in their prices are absolutely
indifferent to the nation. Whether Mr. A. buys a Titian from Mr. B. for
twenty, or for two thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national
revenue; that is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue whether Mr.
A. has the picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the picture, and Mr.
A. the money. Which of them will spend the money most wisely, and which
of them will keep the picture most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of
some importance; but this cannot be known by the mere fact of exchange.
127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace and well-being
besides, depend on the number of persons it can employ in making good and
useful things. I say its well-being also, for the character of men
depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them,
or principles with which we can imbue them. The employment forms the
habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man,--the
greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under
special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment
is the half, and the primal half, of education--it is the warp of it; and
the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends
wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there
may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event
and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely,
of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination
of their final fate by their character. The moment, and the first
direction of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their
persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of
the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English
Parliament may have been more or less accidental; the results of the
measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been
developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life.
Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will
depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general
intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them
whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and
modest in their estimate of the promises, of life.
128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or
employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be
remembered that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act
of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not
made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they
committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct
begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,--not merely at the moment
when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.
All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their
timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error
corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can be no more
stayed, nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave
the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spends itself in
frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust.
The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital
punishment is, I trust, the sign of an awakening perception that
punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the
legislator for the prevention of crime. The true instruments of
reformation are employment and reward; not punishment. Aid the willing,
honour the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will
be no deed for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of
death.
129. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes
depends on the establishment of institutions for their active employment,
while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of
self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice, not
altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should
always be able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed;
but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be
the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced;
and they must be convinced. If the danger of the principal thoroughfares
in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than
ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are not enough, they will not
have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect
of the lower orders has reached a point at which it begins to bear its
necessary fruit, and every day makes the fields, not whiter, but more
stable, to harvest.
130. The general principles by which employment should be regulated may
be briefly stated as follows:
I. There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our
disposal, namely, (a) vital or muscular power; (b) natural mechanical
power of wind, water, and electricity; and (c) artificially produced
mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all
available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and
only at last have recourse to artificial power. And this because it is
always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe
himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he
cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him feed and clothe
himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine--as a windmill
or watermill--than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have
natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually
hear economists regret that the water-power of the cascades or streams of
a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its
idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as
the south of Provence, where a strong wind* blows steadily all day long
for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a windmill, while
men are continually employed at a hundred miles to the north, in digging
fuel to obtain artificial power. But the principal point of all to be
kept in view is, that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the
country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of
so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our
force, while the vital force is unused, and not only unused, but in being
so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal, and spoil our
humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, wherever there is an
idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last
all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one
about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer."
Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of
mechanical force? We are continually in search of means to pull, to
hammer, to fetch, to carry. We waste our future resources to get this
strength, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere
pestiferous breath, and production of its variously noisome forms of
ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first.
The industrious hands must already have so much to do that they can do
no more, or else we need not use machines to help them. Then use the
idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put
it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroluem
cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order
that, and many other things, time enough before we want it. So, the
carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most
wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing-vessels; and
no healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, than such
active porterage.
* In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery
to turn the variable into a constant velocity--no insurmountable
difficulty.
131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to
make the employments we choose as educational as possible; for a
wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education,
mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer well,
and a woman taught to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are already
educated in many essential moral habits. Labor considered as a
discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real
and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be
Reformatory, but Formatory.
132. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is
pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed
to the production of useful articles only; that is to say, of food, of
simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing,
and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not
at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless
business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ
riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what
would have employed lace-makers at Honiton; or makers of something else,
as useless, elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, at some
time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If
we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in
a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or
merely gone to pay navies for making a useless embankment, instead of to
pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we
cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without giving
employment of some kind; and, therefore, whatever quantity of money
exists, the relative quantity of employment must some day come out of it;
but the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have
produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on
ribands, or buttons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place;
and every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much
withdrawn from the national means of life. One of the most beautiful
uses of railroads is to enable A to travel from the town of X to take
away the business of B in the town of Y; while, in the mean time, B
travels from the town of Y to take away A's business in the town of X.
But the national wealth is not increased by these operations. Whereas
every coin spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodging, in making
necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and in
carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and
direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round Coventry makes
living easier at Honiton, and every acre of sand gained from the sea in
Lincolnshire, makes life easier all over England.
4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else must be
working somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing,
therefore, double the quantity of work that would be enough for his own
needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to
work for his maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in many
countries to take away laborers who supported their families, from their
useful work, and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display
at the public expense. Since this has been long endured by the most
civilized nations, let it not be thought they would not much more gladly
endure a conscription which should seize only the vicious and idle,
already living by criminal procedures at the public expense; and which
should discipline and educate them to labor which would not only maintain
themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is
simply this: we must feed the drunkard, vagabond, and thief; but shall we
do so by letting them steal their food, and do no work for it? or shall
we give them their food in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing
work which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will redeem
their own characters and make them happy and serviceable members of
society?
I find by me a violent little fragment of undelivered lecture, which puts
this, perhaps, still more clearly. Your idle people (it says), as they
are now, are not merely waste coal-beds. They are explosive coal-beds,
which you pay a high annual rent for. You are keeping all these idle
persons, remember, at far greater cost than if they were busy. Do you
think a vicious person eats less than an honest one? or that it is
cheaper to keep a bad man drunk, than a good man sober? There is, I
suppose, a dim idea in the mind of the public, that they don't pay for
the maintenance of people they don't employ. Those staggering rascals
at the street corner, grouped around its splendid angle of public-house,
we fancy that they are no servants of ours! that we pay them no wages!
that no cash out of our pockets is spent over that beer-stained counter!
Whose cash is it then they are spending? It is not got honestly by work.
You know that much. Where do they get it from? Who has paid for their
dinner and their pot? Those fellows can only live in one of two ways--by
pillage or beggary. Their annual income by thieving comes out of the
public pocket, you will admit. They are not cheaply fed, so far as they
are fed by theft. But the rest of their living--all that they don't
steal--they must beg. Not with success from you, you think. Wise, as
benevolent, you never gave a penny in "indiscriminate charity." Well,
I congratulate you on the freedom of your conscience from that sin, mine
being bitterly burdened with the memory of many a sixpence given to
beggars of whom I knew nothing but that they had pale faces and thin
waists. But it is not that kind of street beggary that is the worst
beggars' trade. Home alms which it is their worst degradation to
receive. Those scamps know well enough that you and your wisdom are
worth nothing to them. They won't beg of you. They will beg of their
sisters, and mothers, and wives, and children, and of any one else who is
enough ashamed of being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them
out of sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane of a family.
That is the deadly "indiscriminate charity"--the charity which each
household pays to maintain its own private curse.
133. And you think that is no affair of yours? and that every family
ought to watch over and subdue its own living plague? Put it to
yourselves this way, then: suppose you knew every one of those families
kept an idol in an inner room--a big-bellied bronze figure, to which
daily sacrifice and oblation was made; at whose feet so much beer and
brandy was poured out every morning on the ground; and before which,
every night, good meat, enough for two men's keep, was set, and left,
till it was putrid, and then carried out and thrown on the dunghill; you
would put an end to that form of idolatry with your best diligence, I
suppose. You would understand then that the beer, and brandy, and meat,
were wasted; and that the burden imposed by each household on itself lay
heavily through them on the whole community? But, suppose further, that
this idol were not of silent and quiet bronze only, but an ingenious
mechanism, wound up every morning, to run itself down into automatic
blasphemies; that it struck and tore with its hands the people who set
food before it; that it was anointed with poisonous unguents, and
infected the air for miles round. You would interfere with the idolatry
then, straightway? Will you not interfere with it now, when the
infection that they venomous idol spreads is not merely death, but sin?
134. So far the old lecture. Returning to cool English, the end of the
matter is, that, sooner or later, we shall have to register our people;
and to know how they live; and to make sure, if they are capable of work,
that right work is given them to do.
The different classes of work for which bodies of men could be
consistently organized, might ultimately become numerous; these following
divisions of occupation may all at once be suggested:
I. Road-making.--Good roads to be made, wherever needed, and kept in
repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads, in spoiled horses,
strained wheels, and time, done away with.
II. Bringing in of waste land.--All waste lands not necessary for
public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed; chiefly our
wide and waste seashores. Not our mountains nor moorland. Our life
depends on them, more than on the best arable we have.
III. Harbor-making.--The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage
in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous
points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection
with the pilot and life-boat services. There is room for every order of
intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers.
IV. Porterage.--All heavy goods, not requiring speed in transit, to
be carried (under preventative duty on transit, by railroad) by
canal-boats, employing men for draught; and the merchant-shipping service
extended by sea; so that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while
there are idle ones in mischief on shore.
V. Repair of buildings.--A body of men in various trades to be kept
at the disposal of the authorities in every large town, for repair of
buildings, especially the houses of the poorer orders, who, if no such
provision were made, could not employ workmen on their own houses, but
would simply live with rent walls and roofs.
VI. Dressmaking.--Substantial dress, of standard material and kind,
strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as
to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence,
to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing.
VII. Works of Art.--Schools to be established on thoroughly sound
principles of manufacture, and use of materials, and with sample and, for
given periods, unalterable modes of work; first, in pottery, and
embracing gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting; the
two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial
establishments, being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable
degree; and the production of everything by hand-work, for the special
purpose of developing personal power and skill in the workman.
The last two departments, and some subordinate branches of others, would
include the service of women and children.
I give now, for such further illustrations as they contain of the points
I desire most to insist upon with respect both to education and
employment, a portion of the series of notes published some time ago in
the "Art Journal," on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and the
unescapable law of wise restraint. I am sorry that they are written
obscurely--and it may be thought affectedly; but the fact is, I have
always had three different ways of writing: one, with the single view of
making myself understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal of
what comes into my head; another, in which I say what I think ought to be
said, in what I suppose to be the best words I can find for it (which is
in reality an affected style--be it good or bad); and my third way of
writing is to say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the
first words that come, retouching them afterward into (approximate)
grammar. These notes for the "Art Journal" were so written; and I like
them myself, of course; but ask the reader's pardon for their
confusedness.