The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)

by John Ruskin

By Venetian piety,

And by the Ducal crown,

Died 1708.”

The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of these epitaphs is also interesting from its mention, in an age now altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honor, of that “Venetian piety” which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph, and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre.

§ LXXXV. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance spirit, the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason of the fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence against them had gone forth from everlasting. “Thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart ... Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil come upon thee ...; thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every one to his quarter; none shall save thee.”[21]

§ LXXXVI. III. Pride of System. I might have illustrated these evil principles from a thousand other sources, but I have not time to pursue the subject farther, and must pass to the third element above named, the Pride of System. It need not detain us so long as either of the others, for it is at once more palpable and less dangerous. The manner in which the pride of the fifteenth century corrupted the sources of knowledge, and diminished the majesty, while it multiplied the trappings, of state, is in general little observed; but the reader is probably already well and sufficiently aware of the curious tendency to formulization and system which, under the name of philosophy, encumbered the minds of the Renaissance schoolmen. As it was above stated, grammar became the first of sciences; and whatever subject had to be treated, the first aim of the philosopher was to subject its principles to a code of laws, in the observation of which the merit of the speaker, thinker, or worker, in or on that subject, was thereafter to consist; so that the whole mind of the world was occupied by the exclusive study of Restraints. The sound of the forging of fetters was heard from sea to sea. The doctors of all the arts and sciences set themselves daily to the invention of new varieties of cages and manacles; they themselves wore, instead of gowns, a chain mail, whose purpose was not so much to avert the weapon of the adversary as to restrain the motions of the wearer; and all the acts, thoughts, and workings of mankind,—poetry, painting, architecture, and philosophy,—were reduced by them merely to so many different forms of fetter-dance.

§ LXXXVII. Now, I am very sure that no reader who has given any attention to the former portions of this work, or the tendency of what else I have written, more especially the last chapter of the “Seven Lamps,” will suppose me to underrate the importance, or dispute the authority, of law. It has been necessary for me to allege these again and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged, against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of civilization; heady and high-minded, despisers of discipline, and refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and system, and is not written upon the heart,—as it is, in a Divine loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait about the throne of the Eternal Lawgiver,—this lower and formally expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains, forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught among responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and foolishness are in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to submit themselves painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their need of being corrected, and to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate things which are governed by law altogether; yet yielding, in the manner of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of man,—being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their greatness.[22] But, so far as men become good and wise, and rise above the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in the fulness and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law; a law so universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep it.

§ LXXXVIII. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this Divine law in two opposite ways: either by brute resistance, which is the way of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether; or by formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, exalting himself while he pretends to obedience, and making void the infinite and spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered commandment. And it is easy to know which law we are obeying: for any law which we magnify and keep through pride, is always the law of the letter; but that which we love and keep through humility, is the law of the Spirit: And the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.

§ LXXXIX. In the appliance of this universal principle to what we have at present in hand, it is to be noted, that all written or writable law respecting the arts is for the childish and ignorant: that in the beginning of teaching, it is possible to say that this or that must or must not be done; and laws of color and shade may be taught, as laws of harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the moment a man begins to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law has become a matter of course with him; and if, thenceforth, he boast himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working out such magnificent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and fulfilled in the single stroke of a great workman, than could be written in a volume. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by his Maker, not in any wise communicable or imitable.[23] Neither can any written or definitely observable laws enable us to do any great thing. It is possible, by measuring and administering quantities of color, to paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there are no laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to measure and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse; but there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the picture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study them with advantage, to the better understanding of the existing poem or picture; but no more write or paint another, than by discovering laws of vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we find the system and formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by force of intellect or of piety; for it was not possible that, either in literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind, so as materially to interfere with its originality: and the crabbed discipline and exact scholarship became an advantage to the men who could pass through and despise them; so that in spite of the rules of the drama we had Shakspeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had Tintoret,—both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the vulgar scholarship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude.

§ XC. But in architecture it was not so; for that was the art of the multitude, and was affected by all their errors; and the great men who entered its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the architecture merely its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had their way with it: and the reader can have no conception of the inanities and puerilities of the writers, who, with the help of Vitruvius, re-established its “five orders,” determined the proportions of each, and gave the various recipes for sublimity and beauty, which have been thenceforward followed to this day, but which may, I believe, in this age of perfect machinery, be followed out still farther. If, indeed, there are only five perfect forms of columns and architraves, and there be a fixed proportion to each, it is certainly possible, with a little ingenuity, so to regulate a stonecutting machine, as that it shall furnish pillars and friezes to the size ordered, of any of the five orders, on the most perfect Greek models, in any quantity; an epitome, also, of Vitruvius, may be made so simple, as to enable any bricklayer to set them up at their proper distances, and we may dispense with our architects altogether.