set aside by lot, or any other convention, to do the rougher labour
necessary for the whole society, they themselves being maintained by the
daily allotment of a certain quantity of food, clothing, etc. Then, if
it were agreed that the stones spotted with red should be signs of a
Government order for the labour of these men; and that any person
presenting a spotted stone at the office of the labourers, should be
entitled to a man's work for a week or a day, the red stones would be
money; and might--probably would--immediately pass current in the island
for as much food, or clothing, or iron, or any other article, as a man's
work for the period secured by the stone was worth. But if the
Government issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for the
body of men they employed to comply with the orders,--as, suppose, if
they only employed twelve men, and issued eighteen spotted stones daily,
ordering a day's work each,--then the six extra stones would be forged
or false money; and the effect of this forgery would be the depreciation
of the value of the whole coinage by one-third, that being the period of
shortcoming which would, on the average, necessarily ensue in the
execution of each order. Much occasional work may be done in a state or
society, by help of an issue of false money (or false promises) by way
of stimulants; and the fruit of this work, if it comes into the
promiser's hands, may sometimes enable the false promises at last to be
fulfilled: hence the frequent issue of false money by governments and
banks, and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and proper
consequences of such false issues, so as to cause a confused conception
in most people's minds of what money really is. I am not sure whether
some quantity of such false issue may not really be permissible in a
nation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce of the
labour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less unsound;
and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply one of the
absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed human wits.
150. The use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as gold,
jewellery, etc., is barbarous; and it always expresses either the
measure of the distrust in the society of its own government, or the
proportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it has to deal.
A metal not easily corroded or imitated, it is a desirable medium of
currency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience, but, were it
possible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the metal itself, the
better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained by the use of valuable
media, has always hitherto involved, and is therefore supposed to
involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least improperly extended, issue;
but we might as well suppose that a man must necessarily issue unlimited
promises because his words cost nothing. Intercourse with foreign
nations must, indeed, for ages yet to come, at the world's present rate
of progress, be carried on by valuable currencies; but such
transactions are nothing more than forms of barter. The gold used at
present as a currency is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but the
real property[21] which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measure
its quantity, and mingling with the real currency occasionally by
barter.
151. The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless currencies
have been terribly illustrated while these sheets have been passing
through the press; I have not had time to examine the various conditions
of dishonest or absurd trading which have led to the late 'panic' in
America and England; this only I know, that no merchant deserving the
name ought to be more liable to 'panic' than a soldier should; for his
name should never be on more paper than he can at any instant meet the
call of, happen what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same
time how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits
between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of the
same temper which makes the English soldier do always all that is
possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with
that of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant into risks which
he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain; and the same
passion for adventure which our travellers gratify every summer on
perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompassed precipices, surrounds with
a romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds
the clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more
serious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temptation; and men
apply themselves to the task of growing rich, as to a labour of
providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without
culpability, nor retire without dishonour. Our large trading cities
bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which
the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other
devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is
conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant
rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and
expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of
the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance
that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact
remains the same, that by far the greater number of the transactions
which lead to these times of commercial embarrassment may be ranged
simply under two great heads--gambling and stealing; and both of these
in their most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not
ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought a
day might come, when the nation would perceive that a well-educated man
who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving the entire means of
subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a
punishment as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, or
a mug from a pantry.
[Note 21: Or rather, equivalent to such real property, because
everybody has been accustomed to look upon it as valuable; and therefore
everybody is willing to give labour or goods for it. But real property
does ultimately consist only in things that nourish body or mind; gold
would be useless to us if we could not get mutton or books for it.
Ultimately all commercial mistakes and embarrassments result from people
expecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them after
they have got them. A nation which labours, and takes care of the fruits
of labour, would be rich and happy though there were no gold in the
universe. A nation which is idle, and wastes the produce of what work it
does, would be poor and miserable, though all its mountains were of
gold, and had glens filled with diamond instead of glacier.]
152. But without hoping for this excess of clear-sightedness, we may at
least labour for a system of greater honesty and kindness in the minor
commerce of our daily life; since the great dishonesty of the great
buyers and sellers is nothing more than the natural growth and outcome
from the little dishonesty of the little buyers and sellers. Every
person who tries to buy an article for less than its proper value, or
who tries to sell it at more than its proper value--every consumer who
keeps a tradesman waiting for his money, and every tradesman who bribes
a consumer to extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according to
his own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable
commerce, and forcing his country down into poverty and shame. And
people of moderate means and average powers of mind would do far more
real good by merely carrying out stern principles of justice and honesty
in common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious schemes of
extended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theological
doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law--justice, mercy,
and truth; and of these the Teacher puts truth last, because that cannot
be known but by a course of acts of justice and love. But men put, in
all their efforts, truth first, because they mean by it their own
opinions; and thus, while the world has many people who would suffer
martyrdom in the cause of what they call truth, it has few who will
suffer even a little inconvenience, in that of justice and mercy.
SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONAL PAPERS.
EDUCATION IN ART.
ART SCHOOL NOTES.
SOCIAL POLICY.
EDUCATION IN ART.
(_Read for the author before the National Association for the Promotion
of Social Science in the autumn of 1858; and printed in the Transactions
of the Society for that year, pp. 311-16._)
153. I will not attempt in this paper to enter into any general
consideration of the possible influence of art on the masses of the
people. The inquiry is one of great complexity, involved with that into
the uses and dangers of luxury; nor have we as yet data enough to
justify us in conjecturing how far the practice of art may be compatible
with rude or mechanical employments. But the question, however
difficult, lies in the same light as that of the uses of reading or
writing; for drawing, so far as it is possible to the multitude, is
mainly to be considered as a means of obtaining and communicating
knowledge. He who can accurately represent the form of an object, and
match its colour, has unquestionably a power of notation and
description greater in most instances than that of words; and this
science of notation ought to be simply regarded as that which is
concerned with the record of form, just as arithmetic is concerned with
the record of number. Of course abuses and dangers attend the
acquirement of every power. We have all of us probably known persons
who, without being able to read or write, discharged the important
duties of life wisely and faithfully; as we have also without doubt
known others able to read and write whose reading did little good to
themselves and whose writing little good to any one else. But we do not
therefore doubt the expediency of acquiring those arts, neither ought we
to doubt the expediency of acquiring the art of drawing, if we admit
that it may indeed become practically useful.
154. Nor should we long hesitate in admitting this, it we were not in
the habit of considering instruction in the arts chiefly as a means of
promoting what we call "taste" or dilettanteism, and other habits of
mind which in their more modern developments in Europe have certainly
not been advantageous to nations, or indicative of worthiness in them.
Nevertheless, true taste, or the instantaneous preference of the noble
thing to the ignoble, is a necessary accompaniment of high worthiness in
nations or men; only it is not to be acquired by seeking it as our chief
object, since the first question, alike for man and for multitude, is
not at all what they are to like, but what they are to do; and
fortunately so, since true taste, so far as it depends on original
instinct, is not equally communicable to all men; and, so far as it
depends on extended comparison, is unattainable by men employed in
narrow fields of life. We shall not succeed in making a peasant's
opinion good evidence on the merits of the Elgin and Lycian marbles; nor
is it necessary to dictate to him in his garden the preference of
gillyflower or of rose; yet I believe we may make art a means of giving
him helpful and happy pleasure, and of gaining for him serviceable
knowledge.
155. Thus, in our simplest codes of school instruction, I hope some day
to see local natural history assume a principal place, so that our
peasant children may be taught the nature and uses of the herbs that
grow in their meadows, and may take interest in observing and
cherishing, rather than in hunting or killing, the harmless animals of
their country. Supposing it determined that this local natural history
should be taught, drawing ought to be used to fix the attention, and
test, while it aided, the memory. "Draw such and such a flower in
outline, with its bell towards you. Draw it with its side towards you.
Paint the spots upon it. Draw a duck's head--her foot. Now a robin's--a
thrush's--now the spots upon the thrush's breast." These are the kinds
of tasks which it seems to me should be set to the young peasant
student. Surely the occupation would no more be thought contemptible
which was thus subservient to knowledge and to compassion; and perhaps
we should find in process of time that the Italian connexion of art with
_diletto_, or delight, was both consistent with, and even mainly
consequent upon, a pure Greek connexion of art with _arete_, or virtue.
156. It may perhaps be thought that the power of representing in any
sufficient manner natural objects such as those above instanced would be
of too difficult attainment to be aimed at in elementary instruction.
But I have had practical proof that it is not so. From workmen who had
little time to spare, and that only after they were jaded by the day's
labour, I have obtained, in the course of three or four months from
their first taking a pencil in hand, perfectly useful, and in many
respects admirable, drawings of natural objects. It is, however,
necessary, in order to secure this result, that the student's aim should
be absolutely restricted to the representation of visible fact. All more
varied or elevated practice must be deferred until the powers of true
sight and just representation are acquired in simplicity; nor, in the
case of children belonging to the lower classes, does it seem to me
often advisable to aim at anything more. At all events, their drawing
lessons should be made as recreative as possible. Undergoing due
discipline of hard labour in other directions, such children should be
painlessly initiated into employments calculated for the relief of toil.
It is of little consequence that they should know the principles of art,
but of much that their attention should be pleasurably excited. In our
higher public schools, on the contrary, drawing should be taught
rightly; that is to say, with due succession and security of preliminary
steps,--it being here of little consequence whether the student attains
great or little skill, but of much that he should perceive distinctly
what degree of skill he has attained, reverence that which surpasses it,
and know the principles of right in what he has been able to accomplish.
It is impossible to make every boy an artist or a connoisseur, but quite
possible to make him understand the meaning of art in its rudiments, and
to make him modest enough to forbear expressing, in after life,
judgments which he has not knowledge enough to render just.
157. There is, however, at present this great difficulty in the way of
such systematic teaching--that the public do not believe the principles
of art are determinable, and, in no wise, matters of opinion. They do
not believe that good drawing is good, and bad drawing bad, whatever any
number of persons may think or declare to the contrary--that there is a
right or best way of laying colours to produce a given effect, just as
there is a right or best way of dyeing cloth of a given colour, and
that Titian and Veronese are not merely accidentally admirable but
eternally right.
158. The public, of course, cannot be convinced of this unity and
stability of principle until clear assertion of it is made to them by
painters whom they respect; and the painters whom they respect are
generally too modest, and sometimes too proud, to make it. I believe the
chief reason for their not having yet declared at least the fundamental
laws of labour as connected with art-study is a kind of feeling on their
part that "_cela va sans dire_." Every great painter knows so well the
necessity of hard and systematized work, in order to attain even the
lower degrees of skill, that he naturally supposes if people use no
diligence in drawing, they do not care to acquire the power of it, and
that the toil involved in wholesome study being greater than the mass of
people have ever given, is also greater than they would ever be willing
to give. Feeling, also, as any real painter feels, that his own
excellence is a gift, no less than the reward of toil, perhaps slightly
disliking to confess the labour it has cost him to perfect it, and
wholly despairing of doing any good by the confession, he
contemptuously leaves the drawing-master to do the best he can in his
twelve lessons, and with courteous unkindness permits the young women of
England to remain under the impression that they can learn to draw with
less pains than they can learn to dance. I have had practical experience
enough, however, to convince me that this treatment of the amateur
student is unjust. Young girls will work with steadiest perseverance
when once they understand the need of labour, and are convinced that
drawing is a kind of language which may for ordinary purposes be learned
as easily as French or German; this language, also, having its grammar
and its pronunciation, to be conquered or acquired only by persistence
in irksome exercise--an error in a form being as entirely and simply an
error as a mistake in a tense, and an ill-drawn line as reprehensible as
a vulgar accent.
159. And I attach great importance to the sound education of our younger
females in art, thinking that in England the nursery and the
drawing-room are perhaps the most influential of academies. We address
ourselves in vain to the education of the artist while the demand for
his work is uncertain or unintelligent; nor can art be considered as
having any serious influence on a nation while gilded papers form the
principal splendour of the reception room, and ill-wrought though costly
trinkets the principal entertainment of the boudoir.
It is surely, therefore, to be regretted that the art-education of our
Government schools is addressed so definitely to the guidance of the
artizan, and is therefore so little acknowledged hitherto by the general
public, especially by its upper classes. I have not acquaintance enough
with the practical working of that system to venture any expression of
opinion respecting its general expediency; but it is my conviction that,
so far as references are involved in it to the designing of patterns
capable of being produced by machinery, such references must materially
diminish its utility considered as a general system of instruction.
160. We are still, therefore, driven to the same point,--the need of an
authoritative recommendation of some method of study to the public; a
method determined upon by the concurrence of some of our best painters,
and avowedly sanctioned by them, so as to leave no room for hesitation
in its acceptance.
Nor need it be thought that, because the ultimate methods of work
employed by painters vary according to the particular effects produced
by each, there would be any difficulty in obtaining their collective
assent to a system of elementary precept. The facts of which it is
necessary that the student should be assured in his early efforts, are
so simple, so few, and so well known to all able draughtsmen that, as I
have just said, it would be rather doubt of the need of stating what
seemed to them self-evident, than reluctance to speak authoritatively on
points capable of dispute, that would stand in the way of their giving
form to a code of general instruction. To take merely two instances: It
will perhaps appear hardly credible that among amateur students, however
far advanced in more showy accomplishments, there will not be found one
in a hundred who can make an accurate drawing to scale. It is much if
they can copy anything with approximate fidelity of its real size. Now,
the inaccuracy of eye which prevents a student from drawing to scale is
in fact nothing else than an entire want of appreciation of proportion,
and therefore of composition. He who alters the relations of dimensions
to each other in his copy, shows that he does not enjoy those relations
in the original--that is to say, that all appreciation of noble design
(which is based on the most exquisite relations of magnitude) is
impossible to him. To give him habits of mathematical accuracy in
transference of the outline of complex form, is therefore among the
first, and even among the most important, means of educating his taste.
A student who can fix with precision the cardinal points of a bird's
wing, extended in any fixed position, and can then draw the curves of
its individual plumes without measurable error, has advanced further
towards a power of understanding the design of the great masters than he
could by reading many volumes of criticism, or passing many months in
undisciplined examination of works of art.
161. Again, it will be found that among amateur students there is almost
universal deficiency in the power of expressing the roundness of a
surface. They frequently draw with considerable dexterity and vigour,
but never attain the slightest sense of those modulations in form which
can only be expressed by gradations in shade. They leave sharp edges to
their blots of colour, sharp angles in their contours of lines, and
conceal from themselves their incapacity of completion by redundance of
object. The assurance to such persons that no object could be rightly
seen or drawn until the draughtsman had acquired the power of modulating
surfaces by gradations wrought with some pointed instrument (whether
pen, pencil, or chalk), would at once prevent much vain labour, and put
an end to many errors of that worst kind which not only retard the
student, but blind him; which prevent him from either attaining
excellence himself, or understanding it in others.
162. It would be easy, did time admit it, to give instances of other
principles which it is equally essential that the student should know,
and certain that all painters of eminence would sanction; while even
those respecting which some doubt may exist in their application to
consummate practice, are yet perfectly determinable, so far as they are
needed to guide a beginner. It may, for instance, be a question how far
local colour should be treated as an element of chiaroscuro in a
master's drawing of the human form. But there can be no question that it
must be so treated in a boy's study of a tulip or a trout.
163. A still more important point would be gained if authoritative
testimony of the same kind could be given to the merit and exclusive
sufficiency of any series of examples of works of art, such as could at
once be put within the reach of masters of schools. For the modern
student labours under heavy disadvantages in what at first sight might
appear an assistance to him, namely, the number of examples of many
different styles which surround him in galleries or museums. His mind is
disturbed by the inconsistencies of various excellences, and by his own
predilection for false beauties in second or third-rate works. He is
thus prevented from observing any one example long enough to understand
its merit, or following any one method long enough to obtain facility in
its practice. It seems, therefore, very desirable that some such
standard of art should be fixed for all our schools,--a standard which,
it must be remembered, need not necessarily be the highest possible,
provided only it is the rightest possible. It is not to be hoped that
the student should imitate works of the most exalted merit, but much to
be desired that he should be guided by those which have fewest faults.
164. Perhaps, therefore, the most serviceable examples which could be
set before youth might be found in the studies or drawings, rather than
in the pictures, of first-rate masters; and the art of photography
enables us to put renderings of such studies, which for most practical
purposes are as good as the originals, on the walls of every school in
the kingdom. Supposing (I merely name these as examples of what I mean),
the standard of manner in light-and-shade drawing fixed by Leonardo's
study, No. 19, in the collection of photographs lately published from
drawings in the Florence Gallery; the standard of pen drawing with a
wash, fixed by Titian's sketch, No. 30 in the same collection; that of
etching, fixed by Rembrandt's spotted shell; and that of point work with
the pure line, by Dürer's crest with the cock; every effort of the
pupil, whatever the instrument in his hand, would infallibly tend in a
right direction, and the perception of the merits of these four works,
or of any others like them, once attained thoroughly, by efforts,
however distant or despairing, to copy portions of them, would lead
securely in due time to the appreciation of other modes of excellence.