My dear——: I would say much more, if I thought any one would believe me, of the especial calamity of this time, with respect to the discipline of youth—in having no food any more to offer to their imagination. Military distinction is no more possible by prowess, and the young soldier thinks of the hurdle-race as one of the lists and the field—but the noble temper will not train for that trial with equal joy. Clerical eminence—the bishopric or popular pastorship—may be tempting to men of genial pride or sensitive conceit: but the fierce blood that would have burned into a patriarch, or lashed itself into a saint—what "career" has your modern philosophy to offer to it?
The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exercised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic and casino Paradise.
All these disadvantages, you will say, are inevitable, and need not be dwelt upon. In my own school of St. George I mean to avoid them by simply making the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual work; my boys shall at least know what their fathers believed, before they make up their own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and very modest ones, at fifteen. But I shall at least ask of modern science so much help as shall enable me to begin to teach them at that age the physical laws relating to their own bodies, openly, thoroughly, and with awe; and of modern civilization, I shall ask so much help as may enable me to teach them what is indeed right, and what wrong, for the citizen of a state of noble humanity to do, and permit to be done, by others, unaccused.
And if you can found two such chairs in Oxford—one, of the Science of Physical Health; the other, of the Law of Human Honor—you need not trim your Horace, nor forbid us our chatty afternoon tea.
I could say ever so much more, of course, if there were only time, or if it would be of any use—about the mis-appliance of the imagination. But really, the essential thing is the founding of real schools of instruction for both boys and girls—first, in domestic medicine and all that it means; and secondly, in the plain moral law of all humanity: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," with all that it means.
Ever most truly yours,
J. Ruskin.
Venice, 12th February, '77.
My dear——: Two words more, and an end. I have just re-read the paper throughout. There are two omissions which seem to me to need serious notice.
The first, that the entire code of counsel which you have drawn up, as that which a father should give his son, must be founded on the assumption that, at the proper time of life, the youth will be able, no less than eager, to marry. You ought certainly to point out, incidentally, what in my St. George's work I am teaching primarily, that unless this first economical condition of human society be secured, all props and plasters of its morality will be in vain.
And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust; that is the relation in which "male and female created He them;" putting into them, indeed, to be distinctly restrained to the office of fruitfulness, the brutal passion of Lust: but giving them the spiritual power of Love, that each spirit might be greater and purer by its bond to another associate spirit, in this world, and that which is to come; help-mates, and sharers of each other's joy forever.