that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this
inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his rare
delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however
misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new doctrine, received with
screams a little while ago by canting moralists, and still not properly
worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a step further into the
heart of this rough but noble universe. For nowadays the pride of man
denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer
like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another
genus: and in him too we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an
unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with the
dog? We look at our feet, where the ground is blackened with the swarming
ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that
we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here also, in
his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see confessed the law of
duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant?
Rather, this desire of well-doing and this doom of frailty run through all
the grades of life; rather is this earth, from the frosty top of Everest
to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues
and one temple of pious tears and perseverance.
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and
the god-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy
coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed
creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us
the love of an ideal: strive like us,--like us are tempted to grow weary
of the struggle,--to do well; like us receive at times unmerited
refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned
like us to be crucified between that double law of the members and the
will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, some
sugar with the drug? Do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at
the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and
the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? It may be;
and yet God knows what they should look for. Even while they look, even
while they repent, the foot of man treads them by thousands in the dust,
the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet speeds, the knives
are heating in the den of the vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the
generation of a day is blotted out. For these are creatures compared with
whom our weakness is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span
eternity.
And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the
imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, the
reasoner, the wise in his own eyes--God forbid it should be man that
wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the
language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation
groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy--surely not
all in vain.
JOHN RUSKIN
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS[8]
When I accepted the privilege of addressing you to-day, I was not aware of
a restriction with respect to the topics of discussion which may be
brought before this Society[9]--a restriction which, though entirely wise
and right under the circumstances contemplated in its introduction, would
necessarily have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing any
lecture for you on the subject of art in a form which might be permanently
useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such
limitation; for indeed my infringement will be of the letter--not of the
spirit--of your commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion
which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed
to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no
note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither do I
fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving--or at least stating
as capable of positive proof--the connection of all that is best in the
crafts and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the
sincerity of his patriotism.
But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by which I am checked in
frankness of utterance, not here only, but everywhere: namely, that I am
never fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for
real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me attention only
because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist
upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a
foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was
heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of
the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore,
the power of using such pleasant language--if, indeed, it ever were
mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I
find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my thoughts have
changed also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier life, what little
influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which
I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their
colors in the sky; so all the influence I now desire to retain must be due
to the earnestness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form and
beauty of another kind of cloud than those: the bright cloud of which it
is written, "What is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away."
I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age,
without having, at some moment of change or disappointment, felt the truth
of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine
from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the knowledge that
the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as
transient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at such times of
melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true perception that this human
life shares in the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery
of the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and
courses no less fantastic, than spectral and obscure; so that not only in
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot
pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man walketh in a
vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."
And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our passions, or
the height of our pride, are we able to understand in its depths the third
and most solemn character in which our life is like those clouds of
heaven; that to it belongs, not only their transience, not only their
mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human soul there
is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the
rain; and that, though of the good and evil it shall one day be said
alike, that the place that knew them knows them no more, there is an
infinite separation between those whose brief presence had there been a
blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the
garden, and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful
shade, of whom the Heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without
water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of
darkness is reserved forever."
To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just
estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in
accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts,
and the creeds of men, it seems to me that, now at least, if never at any
former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its
powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute
sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much
deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended
the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason
distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an
exaggerated degree of it; nay, I rather believe that in periods of new
effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and
that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may
see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling
sunshine....
You know, there is a tendency in the minds of many men, when they are
heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and
perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a
vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its nature is of
disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped by
imagination only; that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within;
but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought:--
Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
These painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense, by pride.
Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy.
One pleasure past, another still we gain,
And not a vanity is given in vain.
But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the reverse of
this. The more that my life disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful
it became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity
of it _was_ indeed given in vain; but that there was something behind the
veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to me, not a painted cloud,
but a terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which vanished as I
drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw
near. For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in petty things
as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from the want
of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of
existence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I
saw more and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any
other occupation, had come from the ruling of the lower purposes, not by a
conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing
power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that
the mortal part of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality; and
that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital strength of
honor, but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in the service
either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and
law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion.
Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary--nothing has been
more misunderstood or misapplied--than my strong assertion that the arts
can never be right themselves unless their motive is right. It is
misunderstood this way: weak painters, who have never learned their
business, and cannot lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out,
"Look at this picture of mine; it _must_ be good, I had such a lovely
motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken years to think over
its treatment." Well, the only answer for these people is,--if one had the
cruelty to make it,--"Sir, you cannot think over _any_thing in any number
of years,--you haven't the head to do it; and though you had fine motives,
strong enough to make you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you
could paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an inch of one; you
haven't the hand to do it."
But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who _do_ know their
business, or may know it if they choose, "Sir, you have this gift, and a
mighty one; see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a
greater trust than ships and armies: you might cast _them_ away, if you
were their captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your
own glorious power away, and serving the devil with it instead of men.
Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but a great intellect,
once abused, is a curse to the earth forever."
This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must have noble motive. This
also I said respecting them, that they never had prospered, nor could
prosper, but when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to the
proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that they had
always failed in this proclamation--that poetry, and sculpture, and
painting, though great when they strove to teach us something about the
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about the gods, but had
always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their powers at
the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also,
with increasing amazement, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves the
hearers, no less than in these the teachers; and that, while the wisdom
and rightness of every act and art of life could only be consistent with a
right understanding of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a
languid dream--our hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed,
lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach us--lest we should see
with our eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed.
This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life; it
stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There is no making
ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes
of life should have no motive, is understandable; but--that life itself
should have no motive,--that we neither care to find out what it may lead
to, nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us,--here is a
mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to call at this moment to
anyone in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a
large estate had been lately left to him on some curious conditions; but
that though I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even where
it was--whether in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance
of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it
had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any
single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without
warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give
every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had
ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he
were a young man, and all he could discover by his best endeavor was that
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he persevered, during
certain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious life; but that,
according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it literally depended on
his behavior from day to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty
thousand a year, or nothing whatever--would you not think it strange if
the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor
even to know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and
never inquired whether his chances of the estate were increasing or
passing away?
Well, you know that this is actually and literally so with the greater
number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries. Nearly
every man and woman in any company such as this outwardly professes to
believe--and a large number unquestionably think they believe--much more
than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them
if they please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a
possession--an estate of perpetual misery--is in store for them if they
displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there
is not one in a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, for ten
minutes of the day, where this estate is or how beautiful it is, or what
kind of life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead
to obtain it.
You fancy that you care to know this; so little do you care that,
probably, at this moment many of you are displeased with me for talking of
the matter! You came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the
Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of what you can
hear any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. I will tell you something
before you go about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you
would like better to hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you say,
"We want you to talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you
know something of them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well--I
don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery of which I
urge you to take notice, is in this--that I do not--nor you either. Can
you answer a single bold question unflinchingly about that other
world?--Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure that
men are dropping before your faces through the pavements of these streets
into eternal fire, or sure that they are not? Sure that, at your own
death, you are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with
all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpetual
companionship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the earth are as
grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of his feet? Are you sure of
this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and,
if not, how can anything that we do be right--how can anything we think be
wise? what honor can there be in the arts that amuse us, or what profit in
the possessions that please?
Is not this a mystery of life?
But further, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent ordinance for the
generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on
such questions of the future, because the business of the day could not be
done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow. Be it
so; but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us,
who were evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set
themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future
destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous
manner, but in the plainest and most severely earnest words.
Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus endeavored, during
the Christian era, to search out these deep things, and relate them, are
Dante and Milton. There are none who for earnestness of thought, for
mastery of word, can be classed with these. I am not at present, mind you,
speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to
deliver creeds to us, or doctrines; but of men who try to discover and set
forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other
world. Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these
two poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become there; or
how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been, inhabited.
And what have they told us? Milton's account of the most important event
in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently
unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on,
and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the
decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is
a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and
consciously employed; not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived
as tenable by any living faith.
Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not
to be escaped from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that one
of the wildest that ever entranced a soul--a dream in which every
grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned;
and the destinies of the Christian Church, under their most sacred
symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be
understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden.
I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and
trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems
daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with
the most precious truths (or the most deadly untruths) by which the whole
human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived--all the world
their audiences forever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart; and yet,
to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon
sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of
hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the
openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic
imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal
love.
Is not this a mystery of life?
But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were both of
them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They
were men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, or
stress of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified
their utterances of the moral law; or their own agony mingled with their
anger at its violation. But greater men than these have
been--innocent-hearted--too great for contest. Men, like Homer and
Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in future
ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men,
therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not
strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not
praise. And all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to
them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read,
either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in substance or in
thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under
Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and French,
and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the
scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that the intellectual measure of
every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.
Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us
of conviction respecting what it most behooves that intelligence to grasp?
What is their hope--their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation
have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and
dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our
unrest, any redemption to our misery?