practically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into life,
that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where their
private circumstances present no opening. There ought to be government
establishments for every trade, in which all youths who desired it
should be received as apprentices on their leaving school; and men
thrown out of work received at all times. At these government
manufactories the discipline should be strict, and the wages steady, not
varying at all in proportion to the demand for the article, but only in
proportion to the price of food; the commodities produced being laid up
in store to meet sudden demands, and sudden fluctuations in prices
prevented:--that gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed
which is properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw
material and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency to
produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked by
directing the youth at the government schools into other trades; and the
yearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means of
government provisions for the poor. That provision should be large, and
not disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange notions in
the public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people are
willing to take them in the form of a pension from government, but
unwilling to take them in the form of a pension from their parishes.
There may be some reason for this singular prejudice, in the fact of the
government pension being usually given as a definite acknowledgment of
some service done to the country;--but the parish pension is, or ought
to be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country
with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with
his sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and therefore the
wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be
less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as
natural and straight-forward a matter for a labourer to take his
pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as
for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because
he has deserved well of his country.
130. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may
imply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming
to the government: since improvidence is far less justifiable in a
highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less
justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury,
than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that the
real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms delightedly,
consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like
alms to the people in the street; but they will not take alms consisting
only of bread and water and coals, because everybody would understand
what those meant. Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who
ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I
should indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects
involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: but
the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity is
not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not that
they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that they
are unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence they wish to
avoid, but gratitude. They will take places in which they know there is
nothing to be done--they will borrow money they know they cannot
repay--they will carry on a losing business with other people's
capital--they will cheat the public in their shops, or sponge on their
friends at their houses; but to say plainly they are poor men, who need
the nation's help and go into an almshouse,--this they loftily
repudiate, and virtuously prefer being thieves to being paupers.
131. I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear
independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to remain
independent, may both be in some degree checked by a better
administration and understanding of laws respecting the poor. But the
ordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour must go together;
otherwise distress caused by misfortune will always be confounded, as
it is now, with distress caused by idleness, unthrift, and fraud. It is
only when the State watches and guides the middle life of men, that it
can, without disgrace to them, protect their old age, acknowledging in
that protection that they have done their duty, or at least some portion
of their duty, in better days.
I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these suggestions
will appear to most of the business men of this day; men who conceive
the proper state of the world to be simply that of a vast and
disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, trampling down
its children and old men in the mire, and doing what work it finds
_must_ be done with any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe or
inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal
may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed and
strong-hearted as we are--not easily frightened by pushing, nor
discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right way of doing things,
for people who call themselves Christians. Every so named soul of man
claims from every other such soul, protection and education in
childhood,--help or punishment in middle life,--reward or relief, if
needed, in old age; all of these should be completely and unstintingly
given; and they can only be given by the organization of such a system
as I have described.
* * * * *
Note 3rd, p. 27.--"_Trial Schools._"
132. It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of painting
talent we really lose on our present system,[17] and how much we should
gain by the proposed trial schools. For it might be thought that, as
matters stand at present, we have more painters than we ought to have,
having so many bad ones, and that all youths who had true painters'
genius forced their way out of obscurity.
[Note 17: It will be observed that, in the lecture, it is _assumed_
that works of art are national treasures; and that it is desirable to
withdraw all the hands capable of painting or carving from other
employments, in order that they may produce this kind of wealth. I do
not, in assuming this, mean that works of art add to the monetary
resources of a nation, or form part of its wealth, in the vulgar sense.
The result of the sale of a picture in the country itself is merely that
a certain sum of money is transferred from the hands of B, the
purchaser, to those of A, the producer; the sum ultimately to be
distributed remaining the same, only A ultimately spending it instead of
B, while the labour of A has been in the meantime withdrawn from
productive channels; he has painted a picture which nobody can live
upon, or live in, when he might have grown corn or built houses: when
the sale therefore is effected in the country itself, it does not add
to, but diminishes, the monetary resources of the country, except only
so far as it may appear probable, on other grounds, that A is likely to
spend the sum he receives for his picture more rationally and usefully
than B would have spent it. If, indeed, the picture, or other work of
art, be sold in foreign countries, either the money or the useful
products of the foreign country being imported in exchange for it, such
sale adds to the monetary resources of the selling, and diminishes those
of the purchasing nation. But sound political economy, strange as it may
at first appear to say so, has nothing whatever to do with separations
between national interests. Political economy means the management of
the affairs of _citizens_; and it either regards exclusively the
administration of the affairs of one nation, or the administration of
the affairs of the world considered as one nation. So when a transaction
between individuals which enriches A impoverishes B in precisely the
same degree, the sound economist considers it an unproductive
transaction between the individuals; and if a trade between two nations
which enriches one, impoverishes the other in the same degree, the sound
economist considers it an unproductive trade between the nations. It is
not a general question of political economy, but only a particular
question of local expediency, whether an article, in itself valueless,
may bear a value of exchange in transactions with some other nation. The
economist considers only the actual value of the thing done or produced;
and if he sees a quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss,
in producing woodwork for sale to the English, he at once sets the
commercial impoverishment of the English purchaser against the
commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and considers the whole
transaction productive only as far as the woodwork itself is a real
addition to the wealth of the world. For the arrangement of the laws of
a nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leave
the smallest advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science
of political economy, but merely a broad application of the science of
fraud. Considered thus in the abstract, pictures are not an _addition_
to the monetary wealth of the world, except in the amount of pleasure or
instruction to be got out of them day by day: but there is a certain
protective effect on wealth exercised by works of high art which must
always be included in the estimate of their value. Generally speaking,
persons who decorate their houses with pictures will not spend so much
money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and perishable
luxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books,
exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in; and the
wall of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those
of other rooms are repapered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is
still more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either
on canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco;
involving, of course, the preservation of the building from all
unnecessary and capricious alteration. And, generally speaking, the
occupation of a large number of hands in painting or sculpture in any
nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition to indulge
in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that works of
art are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral monetary
result. I consider them treasures, merely as permanent means of pleasure
and instruction; and having at other times tried to show the several
ways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus
useful, and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can.]
This is not so. It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind which
cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour to become
artists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact is, that
multitudes of young men do this, and that by far the greater number of
living artists are men who have mistaken their vocation. The peculiar
circumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form to
the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency to
fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with
imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either
felt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young
men to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or
go to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business
of the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves,
follow it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, if
ambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic,
meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill;
while finally, many men, earnest in feeling, and conscientious in
principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and
their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in
painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify us
in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the other hand, I
believe that much of the best artistical intellect is daily lost in
other avocations. Generally, the temper which would make an admirable
artist is humble and observant, capable of taking much interest in
little things, and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullest
circumstances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steady
conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be placed,
and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of ingenious invention in
almost any practical department of human skill, and it can hardly be
doubted that the very humility and conscientiousness which would have
perfected the painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming
one; and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen--sagacious
manufacturers, and uncomplaining clerks--there may frequently be
concealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of our
public works, or to be the mark of our public praises.
133. It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art will
conquer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding circumstances
are such as at all to present the idea of such conquest to the mind; but
we have no ground for concluding that Giotto would ever have been more
than a shepherd, if Cimabue had not by chance found him drawing; or that
among the shepherds of the Apennines there were no other Giottos,
undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too much in the habit of considering
happy accidents as what are called 'special Providences'; and thinking
that when any great work needs to be done, the man who is to do it will
certainly be pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or seaboy; and
prepared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the best
possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in other
matters prove the contrary of this; we find that "of thousand seeds, He
often brings but one to bear," often not one; and the one seed which He
appoints to bear is allowed to bear crude or perfect fruit according to
the dealings of the husbandman with it. And there cannot be a doubt in
the mind of any person accustomed to take broad and logical views of the
world's history, that its events are ruled by Providence in precisely
the same manner as its harvests; that the seeds of good and evil are
broadcast among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; and
that according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of our
husbandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that
when it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the world,
and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that God did not
wish it to be done; and therefore sent no men able to do it. The
probability (if I wrote my own convictions, I should say certainty) is,
that He sent many men, hundreds of men, able to do it; and that we have
rejected them, or crushed them; by our previous folly of conduct or of
institution, we have rendered it impossible to distinguish, or
impossible to reach them; and when the need for them comes, and we
suffer for the want of them, it is not that God refuses to send us
deliverers, and specially appoints all our consequent sufferings; but
that He has sent, and we have refused, the deliverers; and the pain is
then wrought out by His eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought out
by eternal law for a nation which will neither plough nor sow. No less
are we in error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be
found, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to be done,
as the key is to the lock: and that every accident which happened in the
forging him, only adapted him more truly to the wards. It is pitiful to
hear historians beguiling themselves and their readers, by tracing in
the early history of great men the minor circumstances which fitted them
for the work they did, without ever taking notice of the other
circumstances which as assuredly unfitted them for it; so concluding
that miraculous interposition prepared them in all points for
everything, and that they did all that could have been desired or hoped
for from them; whereas the certainty of the matter is that, throughout
their lives, they were thwarted and corrupted by some things as
certainly as they were helped and disciplined by others; and that, in
the kindliest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of them,
they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with a world more
profoundly mistaken than they;--assuredly sinned against or sinning in
thousands of ways, and bringing out at last a maimed result--not what
they might or ought to have done, but all that could be done against the
world's resistance, and in spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to
themselves.
134. And this being so, it is the practical duty of a wise nation, first
to withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructive
influences;--then to try its material as far as possible, and to lose
the use of none that is good. I do not mean by "withdrawing from
destructive influences" the keeping of youths out of trials; but the
keeping them out of the way of things purely and absolutely mischievous.
I do not mean that we should shade our green corn in all heat, and
shelter it in all frost, but only that we should dyke out the inundation
from it, and drive the fowls away from it. Let your youth labour and
suffer; but do not let it starve, nor steal, nor blaspheme.
135. It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details of
schemes of education; and it will be long before the results of
experiments now in progress will give data for the solution of the most
difficult questions connected with the subject, of which the principal
one is the mode in which the chance of advancement in life is to be
extended to all, and yet made compatible with contentment in the pursuit
of lower avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify them for the
higher. But the general principle of trial schools lies at the root of
the matter--of schools, that is to say, in which the knowledge offered
and discipline enforced shall be all a part of a great assay of the
human soul, and in which the one shall be increased, the other directed,
as the tried heart and brain will best bear, and no otherwise. One
thing, however, I must say, that in this trial I believe all emulation
to be a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All that
you can depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, likely to
issue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work's sake, not his
desire to surpass his school-fellows; and the aim of the teaching you
give him ought to be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own
separate gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are
everlastingly greater than he: still less ought you to hang favours and
ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make the
rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, not struggle
with him.
136. There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest both
progress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make the
students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their own true
positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in which to carry
away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in the course of the
lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative capacity and
individual character, as the roots of all real _value_ in Art. We are
too much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if Art worth a price
in the market were a commodity which people could be generally taught to
produce, and as if the _education_ of the artist, not his _capacity_,
gave the sterling value to his work. No impression can possibly be more
absurd or false. Whatever people can teach each other to do, they will
estimate, and ought to estimate, only as common industry; nothing will
ever fetch a high price but precisely that which cannot be taught, and
which nobody can do but the man from whom it is purchased. No state of
society, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the natural
pre-eminence of one man over another; and it is that pre-eminence, and
that only, which will give work high value in the market, or which ought
to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, and bad omen for the
progress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to possess many artists of
equal merit. Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great
soul; and great souls are not common things. If ever we confound their
work with that of others, it is not through liberality, but through
blindness.
* * * * *
Note 4th, p. 28.--"_Public favour._"
137. There is great difficulty in making any short or general statement
of the difference between great and ignoble minds in their behaviour to
the 'public.' It is by no means _universally_ the case that a mean mind,
as stated in the text, will bend itself to what you ask of it: on the
contrary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of all, which
perpetually complains of the public, and contemplates and proclaims
itself as a 'genius,' refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office,
and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin; also, the greatest minds are
marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and
acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter.
They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks of
them, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would think
degradation. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises
some day between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of
humiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to see
something the public don't see. This something he will assuredly persist
in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be as _he_ sees it, not
as _they_ see it; and all the world in a heap on the other side, will
not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying,
he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not in the
least matter to him; if the world has no particular objection to the
saying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and be
merely taken for an idiot; that also does not matter to him--mutter it
he will, according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at all
according to the roaring of the walls of Red Sea on the right hand or
left of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at some time or other to be started
between the public and him; while your mean man, though he will spit and
scratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will
bow to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has
got its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap; and thus, as
stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together.
There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man looks very
like the obstinacy of the great one; but if you look closely into the
matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of the first is in the
pronunciation of "I;" and of the second, in the pronunciation of "It."
* * * * *
Note 5th, p. 56.--"_Invention of new wants._"
138. It would have been impossible for political economists long to have
endured the error spoken of in the text,[18] had they not been confused
by an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and refinements, as
well as the riches of civilised life, arose from imaginary wants. It is
quite true, that the savage who knows no needs but those of food,
shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his venison and patched the
rents of his hut, passes the rest of his time in animal repose, is in a
lower state than the man who labours incessantly that he may procure for
himself the luxuries of civilisation; and true also, that the difference
between one and another nation in progressive power depends in great
part on vain desires; but these idle motives are merely to be
considered as giving exercise to the national body and mind; they are
not sources of wealth, except so far as they give the habits of industry
and acquisitiveness. If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do good if we
can persuade him to carve cherry-stones and fly kites; and this use of
his fingers and limbs may eventually be the cause of his becoming a
wealthy and happy man; but we must not therefore argue that
cherry-stones are valuable property, or that kite-flying is a profitable
mode of passing time. In like manner, a nation always wastes its time
and labour _directly_, when it invents a new want of a frivolous kind,
and yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthy
activity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want may lead,
_indirectly_, to useful discoveries or to noble arts; so that a nation
is not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is either too weak or
foolish to be moved to exertion by anything but fancies, or has attended
to its serious business first. If a nation will not forge iron, but
likes distilling lavender, by all means give it lavender to distil; only
do not let its economists suppose that lavender is as profitable to it
as oats, or that it helps poor people to live, any more than the
schoolboy's kite provides him his dinner. Luxuries, whether national or
personal, must be paid for by labour withdrawn from useful things; and
no nation has a right to indulge in them until all its poor are
comfortably housed and fed.