any statement of the present requirements of the English operative as
regards art education. But I do not regret this, for it seems to me very
desirable that our attention should for the present be concentrated on
the more immediate object of general instruction. Whatever the public
demand the artist will soon produce; and the best education which the
operative can receive is the refusal of bad work and the acknowledgment
of good. There is no want of genius among us, still less of industry.
The least that we do is laborious, and the worst is wonderful. But there
is a want among us, deep and wide, of discretion in directing toil, and
of delight in being led by imagination. In past time, though the masses
of the nation were less informed than they are now, they were for that
very reason simpler judges and happier gazers; it must be ours to
substitute the gracious sympathy of the understanding for the bright
gratitude of innocence. An artist can always paint well for those who
are lightly pleased or wisely displeased, but he cannot paint for those
who are dull in applause and false in condemnation.
REMARKS ADDRESSED
TO THE MANSFIELD ART NIGHT CLASS
_Oct. 14th, 1873._[22]
166. It is to be remembered that the giving of prizes can only be
justified on the ground of their being the reward of superior diligence
and more obedient attention to the directions of the teacher. They must
never be supposed, because practically they never can become,
indications of superior genius; unless in so far as genius is likely to
be diligent and obedient, beyond the strength and temper of the dull.
[Note 22: This address was written for the Art Night Class,
Mansfield, but not delivered by me. In my absence--I forget from what
cause, but inevitable--the Duke of St. Albans honoured me by reading it
to the meeting.]
But it so frequently happens that the stimulus of vanity, acting on
minds of inferior calibre, produces for a time an industry surpassing
the tranquil and self-possessed exertion of real power, that it may be
questioned whether the custom of bestowing prizes at all may not
ultimately cease in our higher Schools of Art, unless in the form of
substantial assistance given to deserving students who stand in need of
it: a kind of prize, the claim to which, in its nature, would depend
more on accidental circumstances, and generally good conduct, than on
genius.
167. But, without any reference to the opinion of others, and without
any chance of partiality in your own, there is one test by which you can
all determine the rate of your real progress.
Examine, after every period of renewed industry, how far you have
enlarged your faculty of _admiration_.
Consider how much more you can see, to reverence, in the work of
masters; and how much more to love, in the work of nature.
This is the only constant and infallible test of progress. That you
wonder more at the work of great men, and that you care more for natural
objects.
You have often been told by your teachers to expect this last result:
but I fear that the tendency of modern thought is to reject the idea of
that essential difference in rank between one intellect and another, of
which increasing reverence is the wise acknowledgment.
You may, at least in early years, test accurately your power of doing
anything in the least rightly, by your increasing conviction that you
never will be able to do it as well as it has been done by others.
168. That is a lesson, I repeat, which differs much, I fear, from the
one you are commonly taught. The vulgar and incomparably false saying of
Macaulay's, that the intellectual giants of one age become the
intellectual pigmies of the next, has been the text of too many sermons
lately preached to you.
You think you are going to do better things--each of you--than Titian
and Phidias--write better than Virgil--think more wisely than Solomon.
My good young people, this is the foolishest, quite
pre-eminently--perhaps almost the harmfullest--notion that could
possibly be put into your empty little eggshells of heads. There is not
one in a million of you who can ever be great in _any_ thing. To be
greater than the greatest that _have_ been, is permitted perhaps to one
man in Europe in the course of two or three centuries. But because you
cannot be Handel and Mozart--is it any reason why you should not learn
to sing "God save the Queen" properly, when you have a mind to? Because
a girl cannot be prima donna in the Italian Opera, is it any reason that
she should not learn to play a jig for her brothers and sisters in good
time, or a soft little tune for her tired mother, or that she should not
sing to please herself, among the dew, on a May morning? Believe me,
joy, humility, and usefulness, always go together: as insolence with
misery, and these both with destructiveness. You may learn with proud
teachers how to throw down the Vendôme Column, and burn the Louvre, but
never how to lay so much as one touch of safe colour, or one layer of
steady stone: and if indeed there be among you a youth of true genius,
be assured that he will distinguish himself first, not by petulance or
by disdain, but by discerning firmly what to admire, and whom to obey.
169. It will, I hope, be the result of the interest lately awakened in
art through our provinces, to enable each town of importance to obtain,
in permanent possession, a few--and it is desirable there should be no
more than a few--examples of consummate and masterful art: an engraving
or two by Dürer--a single portrait by Reynolds--a fifteenth century
Florentine drawing--a thirteenth century French piece of painted glass,
and the like; and that, in every town occupied in a given manufacture,
examples of unquestionable excellence in that manufacture should be made
easily accessible in its civic museum.
I must ask you, however, to observe very carefully that I use the word
_manufacture_ in its literal and proper sense. It means the making of
things _by the hand_. It does not mean the making them by machinery.
And, while I plead with you for a true humility in rivalship with the
works of others, I plead with you also for a just pride in what you
really can honestly do yourself.
You must neither think your work the best ever done by man:--nor, on the
other hand, think that the tongs and poker can do better--and that,
although you are wiser than Solomon, all this wisdom of yours can be
outshone by a shovelful of coke.
170. Let me take, for instance, the manufacture of lace, for which, I
believe, your neighbouring town of Nottingham enjoys renown. There is
still some distinction between machine-made and hand-made lace. I will
suppose that distinction so far done away with, that, a pattern once
invented, you can spin lace as fast as you now do thread. Everybody then
might wear, not only lace collars, but lace gowns. Do you think they
would be more comfortable in them than they are now in plain stuff--or
that, when everybody could wear them, anybody would be proud of wearing
them? A spider may perhaps be rationally proud of his own cobweb, even
though all the fields in the morning are covered with the like, for he
made it himself--but suppose a machine spun it for him?
Suppose all the gossamer were Nottingham-made, would a sensible spider
be either prouder, or happier, think you?
A sensible spider! You cannot perhaps imagine such a creature. Yet
surely a spider is clever enough for his own ends?
You think him an insensible spider, only because he cannot understand
yours--and is apt to impede yours. Well, be assured of this, sense in
human creatures is shown also, not by cleverness in promoting their own
ends and interests, but by quickness in understanding other people's
ends and interests, and by putting our own work and keeping our own
wishes in harmony with theirs.
171. But I return to my point, of cheapness. You don't think that it
would be convenient, or even creditable, for women to wash the doorsteps
or dish the dinners in lace gowns? Nay, even for the most ladylike
occupations--reading, or writing, or playing with her children--do you
think a lace gown, or even a lace collar, so great an advantage or
dignity to a woman? If you think of it, you will find the whole value of
lace, as a possession, depends on the fact of its having a beauty which
has been the reward of industry and attention.
That the thing itself is a prize--a thing which everybody cannot have.
That it proves, by the _look_ of it, the _ability_ of its _maker_; that
it proves, by the _rarity_ of it, the _dignity_ of its _wearer_--either
that she has been so industrious as to save money, which can buy, say,
a piece of jewellery, of gold tissue, or of fine lace--or else, that she
is a noble person, to whom her neighbours concede, as an honour, the
privilege of wearing finer dresses than they.
If they all choose to have lace too--if it ceases to be a prize--it
becomes, does it not, only a cobweb?
The real good of a piece of lace, then, you will find, is that it should
show, first, that the designer of it had a pretty fancy; next, that the
maker of it had fine fingers; lastly, that the wearer of it has
worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what is difficult to obtain, and
common sense enough not to wear it on all occasions. I limit myself, in
what farther I have to say, to the question of the manufacture--nay, of
one requisite in the manufacture: that which I have just called a pretty
fancy.
172. What do you suppose I mean by a pretty fancy? Do you think that, by
learning to draw, and looking at flowers, you will ever get the ability
to design a piece of lace beautifully? By no means. If that were so,
everybody would soon learn to draw--everybody would design lace
prettily--and then,--nobody would be paid for designing it. To some
extent, that will indeed be the result of modern endeavour to teach
design. But against all such endeavours, mother-wit, in the end, will
hold her own.
But anybody who _has_ this mother-wit, may make the exercise of it more
pleasant to themselves, and more useful to other people, by learning to
draw.
An Indian worker in gold, or a Scandinavian worker in iron, or an old
French worker in thread, could produce indeed beautiful design out of
nothing but groups of knots and spirals: but you, when you are rightly
educated, may render your knots and spirals infinitely more interesting
by making them suggestive of natural forms, and rich in elements of true
knowledge.
173. You know, for instance, the pattern which for centuries has been
the basis of ornament in Indian shawls--the bulging leaf ending in a
spiral. The Indian produces beautiful designs with nothing but that
spiral. You cannot better his powers of design, but you may make them
more civil and useful by adding knowledge of nature to invention.
Suppose you learn to draw rightly, and, therefore, to know correctly the
spirals of springing ferns--not that you may give ugly names to all the
species of them--but that you may understand the grace and vitality of
every hour of their existence. Suppose you have sense and cleverness
enough to translate the essential character of this beauty into forms
expressible by simple lines--therefore expressible by thread--you might
then have a series of fern-patterns which would each contain points of
distinctive interest and beauty, and of scientific truth, and yet be
variable by fancy, with quite as much ease as the meaningless Indian
one. Similarly, there is no form of leaf, of flower, or of insect, which
might not become suggestive to you, and expressible in terms of
manufacture, so as to be interesting, and useful to others.
174. Only don't think that this kind of study will ever "pay" in the
vulgar sense.
It will make you wiser and happier. But do you suppose that it is the
law of God, or nature, that people shall be paid in money for becoming
wiser and happier? They are so, by that law, for honest work; and as all
honest work makes people wiser and happier, they are indeed, in some
sort, paid in money for becoming wise.
But if you seek wisdom only that you may get money, believe me, you are
exactly on the foolishest of all fools' errands. "She is more precious
than rubies"--but do you think that is only because she will help you to
buy rubies?
"All the things thou canst desire are not to be compared to her." Do you
think that is only because she will enable you to get all the things you
desire? She is offered to you as a blessing _in herself_. She is the
reward of kindness, of modesty, of industry. She is the prize of
Prizes--and alike in poverty or in riches--the strength of your Life
now, the earnest of whatever Life is to come.
SOCIAL POLICY
BASED ON NATURAL SELECTION.
_Paper read before the Metaphysical Society, May 11th, 1875._[23]
175. It has always seemed to me that Societies like this of ours, happy
in including members not a little diverse in thought and various in
knowledge, might be more useful to the public than perhaps they can
fairly be said to have approved themselves hitherto, by using their
variety of power rather to support intellectual conclusions by
concentric props, than to shake them with rotatory storms of wit; and
modestly endeavouring to initiate the building of walls for the Bridal
city of Science, in which no man will care to identify the particular
stones he lays, rather than complying farther with the existing
picturesque, but wasteful, practice of every knight to throw up a feudal
tower of his own opinions, tenable only by the most active pugnacity,
and pierced rather with arrow-slits from which to annoy his neighbours,
than windows to admit light or air.
[Note 23: I trust that the Society will not consider its privileges
violated by the publication of an essay, which, for such audience, I
wrote with more than ordinary care.]
176. The paper read at our last meeting was unquestionably, within the
limits its writer had prescribed to himself, so logically sound, that
(encouraged also by the suggestion of some of our most influential
members), I shall endeavour to make the matter of our to-night's debate
consequent upon it, and suggestive of possibly further advantageous
deductions.
It will be remembered that, in reference to the statement in the Bishop
of Peterborough's Paper, of the moral indifference of certain courses of
conduct on the postulate of the existence only of a Mechanical base of
Morals, it was observed by Dr. Adam Clarke that, even on such mechanical
basis, the word "moral" might still be applied specially to any course
of action which tended to the development of the human race. Whereupon I
ventured myself to inquire, in what direction such development was to be
understood as taking place; and the discussion of this point being then
dropped for want of time, I would ask the Society's permission to bring
it again before them this evening in a somewhat more extended form; for
in reality the question respecting the development of men is
twofold,--first, namely, in what direction; and secondly, in what social
relations, it is to be sought.
I would therefore at present ask more deliberately than I could at our
last meeting,--first, in what direction it is desirable that the
development of humanity should take place? Should it, for instance, as
in Greece, be of physical beauty,--emulation, (Hesiod's second
Eris),--pugnacity, and patriotism? or, as in modern England, of physical
ugliness,--envy, (Hesiod's first Eris),--cowardice, and selfishness? or,
as by a conceivably humane but hitherto unexampled education might be
attempted, of physical beauty, humility, courage, and affection, which
should make all the world one native land, and [Greek: pasa gê taphos]?
177. I do not doubt but that the first automatic impulse of all our
automatic friends here present, on hearing this sentence, will be
strenuously to deny the accuracy of my definition of the aims of modern
English education. Without attempting to defend it, I would only observe
that this automatic development of solar caloric in scientific minds
must be grounded on an automatic sensation of injustice done to the
members of the School Board, as well as to many other automatically
well-meaning and ingenious persons; and that this sense of the
injuriousness and offensiveness of my definition cannot possibly have
any other basis (if I may be permitted to continue my professional
similitudes) than the fallen remnants and goodly stones, not one now
left on another, but still forming an unremovable cumulus of ruin, and
eternal Birs Nimroud, as it were, on the site of the old belfry of
Christian morality, whose top looked once so like touching Heaven.
For no offence could be taken at my definition, unless traceable to
adamantine conviction,--that ugliness, however indefinable, envy,
however natural, and cowardice, however commercially profitable, are
nevertheless eternally disgraceful; contrary, that is to say, to the
grace of our Lord Christ, if there be among us any Christ; to the grace
of the King's Majesty, if there be among us any King; and to the grace
even of Christless and Kingless Manhood, if there be among us any
Manhood.
To this fixed conception of a difference between Better and Worse, or,
when carried to the extreme, between good and evil in conduct, we all,
it seems to me, instinctively and, therefore, rightly, attach the term
of Moral sense;--the sense, for instance, that it would be better if the
members of this Society who are usually automatically absent were,
instead, automatically present; or better, that this Paper, if (which
is, perhaps, too likely) it be thought automatically impertinent, had
been made by the molecular action of my cerebral particles, pertinent.
178. Trusting, therefore, without more ado, to the strength of rampart
in this Old Sarum of the Moral sense, however subdued into vague banks
under the modern steam-plough, I will venture to suppose the first of my
two questions to have been answered by the choice on the part at least
of a majority of our Council, of the third direction of development
above specified as being the properly called "moral" one; and will go on
to the second subject of inquiry, both more difficult and of great
practical importance in the political crisis through which Europe is
passing,--namely, what relations between men are to be desired, or with
resignation allowed, in the course of their Moral Development?
Whether, that is to say, we should try to make some men beautiful at the
cost of ugliness in others, and some men virtuous at the cost of vice in
others,--or rather, all men beautiful and virtuous in the degree
possible to each under a system of equitable education? And evidently
our first business is to consider in what terms the choice is put to us
by Nature. What can we do, if we would? What must we do, whether we will
or not? How high can we raise the level of a diffused Learning and
Morality? and how far shall we be compelled, if we limit, to exaggerate,
the advantages and injuries of our system? And are we prepared, if the
extremity be inevitable, to push to their utmost the relations implied
when we take off our hats to each other, and triple the tiara of the
Saint in Heaven, while we leave the sinner bareheaded in Cocytus?
179. It is well, perhaps, that I should at once confess myself to hold
the principle of limitation in its utmost extent; and to entertain no
doubt of the rightness of my ideal, but only of its feasibility. I am
ill at ease, for instance, in my uncertainty whether our greatly
regretted Chairman will ever be Pope, or whether some people whom I
could mention, (not, of course, members of our Society,) will ever be in
Cocytus.
But there is no need, if we would be candid, to debate the principle in
these violences of operation, any more than the proper methods of
distributing food, on the supposition that the difference between a
Paris dinner and a platter of Scotch porridge must imply that one-half
of mankind are to die of eating, and the rest of having nothing to eat.
I will therefore take for example a case in which the discrimination is
less conclusive.
180. When I stop writing metaphysics this morning it will be to arrange
some drawings for a young lady to copy. They are leaves of the best
illuminated MSS. I have, and I am going to spend my whole afternoon in
explaining to her what she is to aim at in copying them.
Now, I would not lend these leaves to any other young lady that I know
of; nor give up my afternoon to, perhaps, more than two or three other
young ladies that I know of. But to keep to the first-instanced one, I
lend her my books, and give her, for what they are worth, my time and
most careful teaching, because she at present paints butterflies better
than any other girl I know, and has a peculiar capacity for the
softening of plumes and finessing of antennæ. Grant me to be a good
teacher, and grant her disposition to be such as I suppose, and the
result will be what might at first appear an indefensible iniquity,
namely, that this girl, who has already excellent gifts, having also
excellent teaching, will become perhaps the best butterfly-painter in
England; while myriads of other girls, having originally inferior
powers, and attracting no attention from the Slade Professor, will
utterly lose their at present cultivable faculties of entomological art,
and sink into the vulgar career of wives and mothers, to which we have
Mr. Mill's authority for holding it a grievous injustice that any girl
should be irrevocably condemned.
181. There is no need that I should be careful in enumerating the
various modes, analogous to this, in which the Natural selection of
which we have lately heard, perhaps, somewhat more than enough, provokes
and approves the Professorial selection which I am so bold as to defend;
and if the automatic instincts of equity in us, which revolt against the
great ordinance of Nature and practice of Man, that "to him that hath,
shall more be given," are to be listened to when the possessions in
question are only of wisdom and virtue, let them at least prove their
sincerity by correcting, first, the injustice which has established
itself respecting more tangible and more esteemed property; and
terminating the singular arrangement prevalent in commercial Europe that
to every man with a hundred pounds in his pocket there shall annually be
given three, to every man with a thousand, thirty, and to every man with
nothing, none.
182. I am content here to leave under the scrutiny of the evening my
general statement, that as human development, when moral, is with
special effort in a given direction, so, when moral, it is with special
effort in favour of a limited class; but I yet trespass for a few
moments on your patience in order to note that the acceptance of this
second principle still leaves it debatable to what point the disfavour
of the reprobate class, or the privileges of the elect, may advisably
extend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread of
moral instruction might at least be so widely broken among the multitude
as to preserve them from utter destitution and pauperism in virtue; and
that even the simplest and lowest of the rabble should not be so
absolutely sons of perdition, but that each might say for himself,--"For
my part--no offence to the General, or any man of quality--I hope to be
saved." Whereas it is, on the contrary, implied by the habitual
expressions of the wisest aristocrats, that the completely developed
persons whose Justice and Fortitude--poles to the Cardinal points of
virtue--are marked as their sufficient characteristics by the great
Roman moralist in his phrase, "Justus, et tenax propositi," will in the
course of nature be opposed by a civic ardour, not merely of the
innocent and ignorant, but of persons developed in a contrary direction
to that which I have ventured to call "moral," and therefore not merely
incapable of desiring or applauding what is right, but in an evil
harmony, _prava jubentium_, clamorously demanding what is wrong.