which may far transcend its moral power. When the moral power is feeble,
the faculty of measurement, or of distinct delineation, may be supreme;
and of comprehension none. But here, again, I want the help of the
physical science schools. I believe the eagle has no scent, and hunts by
sight, yet flies higher than any other bird. Now, I want to know what
the appearance is to an eagle, two thousand feet up, of a sparrow in a
hedge, or of a partridge in a stubble-field. What kind of definition on
the retina do these brown spots take to manifest themselves as signs of
a thing eatable; and if an eagle sees a partridge so, does it see
everything else so? And then tell me, farther, does it see only a square
yard at a time, and yet, as it flies, take summary of the square yards
beneath it? When next you are travelling by express sixty miles an hour,
past a grass bank, try to see a grasshopper, and you will get some idea
of an eagle's optical business, if it takes only the line of ground
underneath it. Does it take more?
112. Then, besides this faculty of clear vision, you have to consider
the faculty of metric vision. Neither an eagle, nor a kingfisher, nor
any other darting bird, can see things with both their eyes at the same
time as completely as you and I can; but think of their faculty of
measurement as compared with ours! You will find that it takes you
months of labour before you can acquire accurate power, even of
_deliberate_ estimate of distances with the eye; it is one of the points
to which, most of all, I have to direct your work. And the curious thing
is that, given the degree of practice, you will measure ill or well with
the eye in proportion to the quantity of life in you. No one can measure
with a glance, when they are tired. Only the other day I got half an
inch out of a foot, in drawing merely a coat of arms, because I was
tired. But fancy what would happen to a swallow, if _it_ was half an
inch out in a foot, in flying round a corner!
113. Well, that is the first branch of the questions which we want
answered by optical science;--the actual distortion, contraction, and
other modification, of the sight of different animals, as far as it can
be known from the forms of their eyes. Then, secondly, we ourselves need
to be taught the connection of the sense of colour with health; the
difference in the physical conditions which lead us to seek for gloom,
or brightness of hue; and the nature of purity in colour, first in the
object seen, and then in the eye which prefers it.
* * * * *
(The portion of lecture here omitted referred to illustrations of
vulgarity and delicacy in colour, showing that the vulgar colours, even
when they seemed most glaring, were in reality impure and dull; and
destroyed each other by contention; while noble colour, intensely bright
and pure, was nevertheless entirely governed and calm, so that every
colour bettered and aided all the rest.)
114. You recollect how I urged you in my opening course of lectures
rather to work in the school of crystalline colour than in that of
shade.
Since I gave that first course of lectures, my sense of the necessity of
this study of brightness primarily, and of purity and gaiety beyond all
other qualities, has deeply been confirmed by the influence which the
unclean horror and impious melancholy of the modern French school--most
literally the school of death--has gained over the popular mind. I will
not dwell upon the evil phrenzy to-day. But it is in order, at once to
do the best I can, in counteraction of its deadly influence, though not
without other and constant reasons, that I give you heraldry, with all
its splendour and its pride, its brightness of colour, and
honourableness of meaning, for your main elementary practice.
115. To-day I have only time left to press on your thoughts the deeper
law of this due joy in colour and light.
On any morning of the year, how many pious supplications, do you
suppose, are uttered throughout educated Europe for "light"? How many
lips at least pronounce the word, and, perhaps, in the plurality of
instances, with some distinct idea attached to it? It is true the
speakers employ it only as a metaphor. But why is their language thus
metaphorical? If they mean merely to ask for spiritual knowledge or
guidance, why not say so plainly, instead of using this jaded figure of
speech? No boy goes to his father when he wants to be taught, or helped,
and asks his father to give him 'light.' He asks what he wants, advice
or protection. Why are not we also content to ask our Father for what we
want, in plain English?
The metaphor, you will answer, is put into our mouths, and felt to be a
beautiful and necessary one.
I admit it. In your educational series, first of all examples of modern
art, is the best engraving I could find of the picture which, founded
on that idea of Christ's being the Giver of Light, contains, I believe,
the most true and useful piece of religious vision which realistic art
has yet embodied. But why is the metaphor so necessary, or, rather, how
far is it a metaphor at all? Do you think the words 'Light of the World'
mean only 'Teacher or Guide of the World'? When the Sun of Justice is
said to rise with health in its wings, do you suppose the image only
means the correction of error? Or does it even mean so much? The Light
of Heaven is needed to do that perfectly. But what we are to pray for is
the Light of the _World_; nay, the Light "that lighteth _every man that
cometh into the world_."
116. You will find that it is no metaphor--nor has it ever been so.
To the Persian, the Greek, and the Christian, the sense of the power of
the God of Light has been one and the same. That power is not merely in
teaching or protecting, but in the enforcement of purity of body, and of
equity or justice in the heart; and this, observe, not heavenly purity,
nor final justice; but, now, and here, actual purity in the midst of the
world's foulness,--practical justice in the midst of the world's
iniquity. And the physical strength of the organ of sight,--the physical
purity of the flesh, the actual love of sweet light and stainless
colour,--are the necessary signs, real, inevitable, and visible, of the
prevailing presence, with any nation, or in any house, of the "Light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
117. _Physical_ purity;--actual love of sweet light, and of fair colour.
This is one palpable sign, and an entirely needful one, that we have got
what we pretend to pray for every morning. That, you will find, is the
meaning of Apollo's war with the Python--of your own St. George's war
with the dragon. You have got that battle stamped again on every
sovereign in your pockets, but do you think the sovereigns are helping,
at this instant, St. George in his battle? Once, on your gold of the
Henrys' times, you had St. Michael and the dragon, and called your coins
'angels.' How much have they done lately, of angelic work, think you, in
purifying the earth?
118. Purifying, literally, purging and cleansing. That is the first
"sacred art" all men have to learn. And the words I deferred to the
close of this lecture, about the proposed improvements in Oxford, are
very few. Oxford is, indeed, capable of much improvement, but only by
undoing the greater part of what has been done to it within the last
twenty years; and, at present, the one thing that I would say to
well-meaning persons is, 'For Heaven's sake--literally for Heaven's
sake--let the place alone, and clean it.' I walked last week to
Iffley--not having been there for thirty years. I did not know the
church inside; I found it pitch-dark with painted glass of barbarous
manufacture, and the old woman who showed it infinitely proud of letting
me in at the front door instead of the side one. But close by it, not
fifty yards down the hill, there was a little well--a holy well it
should have been; beautiful in the recess of it, and the lovely ivy and
weeds above it, had it but been cared for in a human way; but so full of
frogs that you could not have dipped a cup in it without catching one.
What is the use of pretty painted glass in your churches when you have
the plagues of Egypt outside of them?
119. I walked back from Iffley to Oxford by what was once the most
beautiful approach to an academical city of any in Europe. Now it is a
wilderness of obscure and base buildings. You think it a fine thing to
go into Iffley church by the front door;--and you build cheap
lodging-houses over all the approach to the chief university of English
literature! That, forsooth, is your luminous cloister, and porch of
Polygnotus to your temple of Apollo. And in the centre of that temple,
at the very foot of the dome of the Radclyffe, between two principal
colleges, the lane by which I walked from my own college half an hour
ago, to this place,--Brasen-nose Lane--is left in a state as loathsome
as a back-alley in the East end of London.
120. These, I suppose, are the signs of extending liberality, and
disseminated advantages of education.
Gentlemen, if, as was lately said by a leading member of your
Government, the function of a university be only to examine, it may
indeed examine the whole mob of England in the midst of a dunghill; but
it cannot teach the gentlemen of England in the midst of a dunghill; no,
nor even the people of England. How many of her people it _ought_ to
teach is a question. We think, now-a-days, our philosophy is to light
every man that cometh into the world, and to light every man equally.
Well, when indeed you give up all other commerce in this island, and, as
in Bacon's "New Atlantis," only buy and sell to get God's first
creature, which was light, there may be some equality of gain for us in
that possession. But until then,--and we are very far from such a
time--the light cannot be given to all men equally. Nay, it is becoming
questionable whether, instead of being equally distributed to all, it
may not be equally withdrawn from us all: whether the ideas of purity
and justice,--of loveliness which is to sanctify our peace,--and of
justice which is to sanctify our battle, are not vanishing from the
purpose of our policy, and even from the conception of our education.
The uses, and the desire, of seclusion, of meditation, of restraint, and
of correction--are they not passing from us in the collision of worldly
interests, and restless contests of mean hope, and meaner fear? What
light, what health, what peace, or what security,--youths of England--do
you come here now to seek? In what sense do you receive--with what
sincerity do you adopt for yourselves--the ancient legend of your
schools, "Dominus illuminatio mea, et salus mea; quem timebo"?
121. Remember that the ancient theory on which this university was
founded,--not the theory of any one founder, observe, nor even the
concluded or expressed issue of the wisdom of many; but the tacit
feeling by which the work and hope of all were united and
completed--was, that England should gather from among her children a
certain number of purest and best, whom she might train to become, each
in their day of strength, her teachers and patterns in religion, her
declarers and doers of justice in law and her leaders in battle. Bred,
it might be, by their parents, in the fond poverty of learning, or
amidst the traditions and discipline of illustrious houses,--in either
manner separate, from their youth up, to their glorious offices--they
came here to be kindled into the lights that were to be set on the hills
of England, brightest of the pious, the loyal, and the brave. Whatever
corruption blighted, whatever worldliness buried, whatever sin polluted
their endeavour, this conception of its meaning remained; and was indeed
so fulfilled in faithfulness, that to the men whose passions were
tempered, and whose hearts confirmed, in the calm of these holy places,
you, now living, owe all that is left to you of hope in heaven, and all
of safety or honour that you have to trust and defend on earth.
Their children have forfeited, some by guilt, and many in folly, the
leadership they inherited; and every man in England now is to do and to
learn what is right in his own eyes. How much need, therefore, that we
should learn first of all what eyes are; and what vision they ought to
possess--science of sight granted only to clearness of soul; but granted
in its fulness even to mortal eyes: for though, after the skin, worms
may destroy their body, happy the pure in heart, for they, yet in their
flesh, shall see the Light of Heaven, and know the will of God.
LECTURE VII.
THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF INORGANIC FORM.
_February 9th, 1872._
122. I did not wish in my last lecture, after I had directed your
attention to the special bearing of some of the principles I pleaded
for, to enforce upon you any farther general conclusions. But it is
necessary now to collect the gist of what I endeavoured to show you
respecting the organs of sight; namely, that in proportion to the
physical perfectness or clearness of them is the degree in which they
are raised from the perception of prey to the perception of beauty and
of affection. The imperfect and brutal instrument of the eye may be
vivid with malignity, or wild with hunger, or manifoldly detective with
microscopic exaggeration, assisting the ingenuity of insects with a
multiplied and permanent monstrosity of all things round them; but the
noble human sight, careless of prey, disdainful of minuteness, and
reluctant to anger, becomes clear in gentleness, proud in reverence, and
joyful in love. And finally, the physical splendour of light and colour,
so far from being the perception of a mechanical force by a mechanical
instrument, is an entirely spiritual consciousness, accurately and
absolutely proportioned to the purity of the moral nature, and to the
force of its natural and wise affections.
123. That was the sum of what I wished to show you in my last lecture;
and observe, that what remains to me doubtful in these things,--and it
is much--I do not trouble you with. Only what I know that on experiment
you can ascertain for yourselves, I tell you, and illustrate, for the
time, as well as I can. Experiments in art are difficult, and take years
to try; you may at first fail in them, as you might in a chemical
analysis; but in all the matters which in this place I shall urge on
your attention I can assure you of the final results.
That, then, being the sum of what I could tell you with certainty
respecting the methods of sight, I have next to assure you that this
faculty of sight, disciplined and pure, is the only proper faculty
which the graphic artist is to use in his inquiries into nature. His
office is to show her appearances; his duty is to know them. It is not
his duty, though it may be sometimes for his convenience, while it is
always at his peril, that he knows more;--knows the _causes_ of
appearances, or the essence of the things that produce them.
124. Once again, therefore, I must limit my application of the word
science with respect to art. I told you that I did not mean by 'science'
such knowledge as that triangles on equal bases and between parallels
are equal, but such knowledge as that the stars in Cassiopeia are in the
form of a _W_. But, farther still, it is not to be considered as
science, for an artist, that they are stars at all. What _he_ has to
know is that they are luminous points which twinkle in a certain manner,
and are pale yellow, or deep yellow, and may be quite deceptively
imitated at a certain distance by brass-headed nails. This he ought to
know, and to remember accurately, and his art knowledge--the science,
that is to say--of which his art is to be the reflection, is the sum of
knowledges of this sort; his memory of the look of the sun and moon at
such and such times, through such and such clouds; his memory of the
look of the mountains,--of the look of sea,--of the look of human faces.
125. Perhaps you would not call that 'science' at all. It is no matter
what either you or I call it. It _is_ science of a certain order of
facts. Two summers ago, looking from Verona at sunset, I saw the
mountains beyond the Lago di Garda of a strange blue, vivid and rich
like the bloom of a damson. I never saw a mountain-blue of that
particular quality before or since. My science as an artist consists in
my knowing that sort of blue from every other sort, and in my perfect
recollection that this particular blue had such and such a green
associated with it in the near fields. I have nothing whatever to do
with the atmospheric causes of the colour: that knowledge would merely
occupy my brains wastefully, and warp my artistic attention and energy
from their point. Or to take a simpler instance yet: Turner, in his
early life, was sometimes good-natured, and would show people what he
was about. He was one day making a drawing of Plymouth harbour, with
some ships at the distance of a mile or two, seen against the light.
Having shown this drawing to a naval officer, the naval officer
observed with surprise, and objected with very justifiable indignation,
that the ships of the line had no port-holes. "No," said Turner,
"certainly not. If you will walk up to Mount Edgecumbe, and look at the
ships against the sunset, you will find you can't see the port-holes."
"Well, but," said the naval officer, still indignant, "you know the
port-holes are there." "Yes," said Turner, "I know that well enough; but
my business is to draw what I see, and not what I know is there."
126. Now, that is the law of all fine artistic work whatsoever; and,
more than that, it is, on the whole, perilous to you, and undesirable,
that you _should_ know what is there. If, indeed, you have so perfectly
disciplined your sight that it cannot be influenced by prejudice;--if
you are sure that none of your knowledge of what is there will be
allowed to assert itself; and that you can reflect the ship as simply as
the sea beneath it does, though you may know it with the intelligence of
a sailor,--then, indeed, you may allow yourself the pleasure, and what
will sometimes be the safeguard from error, of learning what ships or
stars, or mountains, are in reality; but the ordinary powers of human
perception are almost certain to be disturbed by the knowledge of the
real nature of what they draw: and, until you are quite fearless of your
faithfulness to the appearances of things, the less you know of their
reality the better.
127. And it is precisely in this passive and naïve simplicity that art
becomes, not only greatest in herself, but most useful to science. If
she _knew_ anything of what she was representing, she would exhibit that
partial knowledge with complacency; and miss the points beside it, and
beyond it. Two painters draw the same mountain; the one has got
unluckily into his head some curiosity about glacier marking; and the
other has a theory of cleavage. The one will scratch his mountain all
over;--the other split it to pieces; and both drawings will be equally
useless for the purposes of honest science.
128. Any of you who chance to know my books cannot but be surprised at
my saying these things; for, of all writers on art, I suppose there is
no one who appeals so often as I do to physical science. But observe, I
appeal as a critic of art, never as a master of it. Turner made drawings
of mountains and clouds which the public said were absurd. I said, on
the contrary, they were the only true drawings of mountains and clouds
ever made yet: and I proved this to be so, as only it could be proved,
by steady test of physical science: but Turner had drawn his mountains
rightly, long before their structure was known to any geologist in
Europe; and has painted perfectly truths of anatomy in clouds which I
challenge any meteorologist in Europe to explain at this day.
129. And indeed I was obliged to leave "Modern Painters" incomplete, or,
rather, as a mere sketch of intention, in analysis of the forms of cloud
and wave, because I had not scientific data enough to appeal to. Just
reflect for an instant how absolutely whatever has been done in art to
represent these most familiar, yet most spectral forms of cloud--utterly
inorganic, yet, by spiritual ordinance, in their kindness fair, and in
their anger frightful,--how all that has yet been done to represent
them, from the undulating bands of blue and white which give to heraldry
its nebule bearing, to the finished and deceptive skies of Turner, has
been done without one syllable of help from the lips of science.[F]
[F] Rubens' rainbow, in the Loan Exhibition this year, was of dull
blue, _darker_ than the sky, in a scene lighted from the side of
the rainbow. Rubens is not to be blamed for ignorance of optics,
but for never having so much as looked at a rainbow carefully: and
I do not believe that my friend Mr. Alfred Hunt, whose study of
rainbow, in the rooms of the Water Colour Society last year, was
unrivalled, for vividness and truth, by any I know, learned how to
paint it by studying optics.
130. The rain which flooded our fields the Sunday before last, was
followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of which Tuesday the
20th was, in London, notable for the splendour, towards the afternoon,
of its white cumulus clouds. There has been so much black east wind
lately, and so much fog and artificial gloom, besides, that I find it is
actually some two years since I last saw a noble cumulus cloud under
full light. I chanced to be standing under the Victoria Tower at
Westminster, when the largest mass of them floated past, that day, from
the north-west; and I was more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness
of the cloud-form, and its unaccountableness, in the present state of
our knowledge. The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude: it
was like looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of cloud-snow
were heaped as definitely; their broken flanks were as grey and firm as
rocks, and the whole mountain, of a compass and height in heaven which
only became more and more inconceivable as the eye strove to ascend it,
was passing behind the tower with a steady march, whose swiftness must
in reality have been that of a tempest: yet, along all the ravines of
vapour, precipice kept pace with precipice, and not one thrust another.
131. What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue sky pure
there,--cloud solid here; and edged like marble: and why does the state
of the blue sky pass into the state of cloud, in that calm advance?
It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of cloud with
explosive vapour or steam; but the steam melts instantly, and the
explosive vapour dissipates itself. The cloud, of perfect form, proceeds
unchanged. It is not an explosion, but an enduring and advancing
presence. The more you think of it, the less explicable it will become
to you.
132. That this should yet be unexplained in the kingdom of the air is,
however, no marvel, since aspects of a similar kind are unexplained in
the earth, which we tread, and in the water which we drink and wash
with. You seldom pass a day without receiving some pleasure from the
cloudings in marble; can you explain how the stone was clouded? You
certainly do not pass a day without washing your hands. Can you explain
the frame of a soap-bubble?
133. I have allowed myself, by way of showing at once what I wanted to
come to, to overlook the proper arrangement of my subject, and I must
draw back a little.