"As opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, Repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the 'I am' of the Creator, opposed to the 'I become' of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labour, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures."
We must proceed. Chapter viii. treats Of Symmetry, or the Type of Divine Justice. Perhaps the nature of this chapter will be sufficiently indicated to the reader, now somewhat informed of Mr Ruskin's mode of thinking, by the title itself. At all events, we shall pass on to the next chapter, ix.—Of Purity, or the Type of Divine Energy. Here, the reader will perhaps expect to find himself somewhat more at home. One type, at all events, of Divine Purity has often been presented to his mind. Light has generally been considered as the fittest emblem or manifestation of the Divine Presence,
"That never but in unapproachëd light
Dwelt from eternity."
But if the reader has formed any such agreeable expectation he will be disappointed. Mr Ruskin travels on no beaten track. He finds some reasons, partly theological, partly gathered from his own theory of the Beautiful, for discarding this ancient association of Light with Purity. As the Divine attributes are those which the visible object typifies, and by no means the human, and as Purity, which is "sinlessness," cannot, he thinks, be predicted of the Divine nature, it follows that he cannot admit Light to be a type of Purity. We quote the passage, as it will display the working of his theory:—
"It may seem strange to many readers that I have not spoken of purity in that sense in which it is most frequently used, as a type of sinlessness. I do not deny that the frequent metaphorical use of it in Scripture may have, and ought to have, much influence on the sympathies with which we regard it; and that probably the immediate agreeableness of it to most minds arises far more from this source than from that to which I have chosen to attribute it. But, in the first place, if it be indeed in the signs of Divine and not of human attributes that beauty consists, I see not how the idea of sin can be formed with respect to the Deity; for it is the idea of a relation borne by us to Him, and not in any way to be attached to His abstract nature; while the Love, Mercifulness, and Justice of God I have supposed to be symbolised by other qualities of beauty: and I cannot trace any rational connection between them and the idea of Spotlessness in matter, nor between this idea nor any of the virtues which make up the righteousness of man, except perhaps those of truth and openness, which have been above spoken of as more expressed by the transparency than the mere purity of matter. So that I conceive the use of the terms purity, spotlessness, &c., on moral subjects, to be merely metaphorical; and that it is rather that we illustrate these virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire material purity because it is illustrative of those virtues. I repeat, then, that the only idea which I think can be legitimately connected with purity of matter is this of vital and energetic connection among its particles."
We have been compelled to quote some strange passages, of most difficult and laborious perusal; but our task is drawing to an end. The last of these types we have to mention is that Of Moderation, or the Type of Government by Law. We suspect there are many persons who have rapidly perused Mr Ruskin's works (probably skipping where the obscurity grew very thick) who would be very much surprised, if they gave a closer attention to them, at the strange conceits and absurdities which they had passed over without examination. Indeed, his very loose and declamatory style, and the habit of saying extravagant things, set all examination at defiance. But let any one pause a moment on the last title we have quoted from Mr Ruskin—let him read the chapter itself—let him reflect that he has been told in it that "what we express by the terms chasteness, refinement, and elegance," in any work of art, and more particularly "that finish" so dear to the intelligent critic, owe their attractiveness to being types of God's government by law!—we think he will confess that never in any book, ancient or modern, did he meet with an absurdity to outrival it.
We have seen why the curve in general is beautiful; we have here the reason given us why one curve is more beautiful than another:—
"And herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted respecting the subtilty and almost invisibility of natural curves and colours, and why it is that we look on those lines as least beautiful which fall into wide and far license of curvature, and as most beautiful which approach nearest (so that the curvilinear character be distinctly asserted) to the government of the right line, as in the pure and severe curves of the draperies of the religious painters."
There is still the subject of "vital beauty" before us, but we shall probably be excused from entering further into the development of "Theoria." It must be quite clear by this time to our readers, that, whatever there is in it really wise and intelligible, resolves itself into one branch of that general theory of association of ideas, of which Alison and others have treated. But we are now in a condition to understand more clearly that peculiar style of language which startled us so much in the first volume of the Modern Painters. There we frequently heard of the Divine mission of the artist, of the religious office of the painter, and how Mr Turner was delivering God's message to man. What seemed an oratorical climax, much too frequently repeated, proves to be a logical sequence of his theoretical principles. All true beauty is religious; therefore all true art, which is the reproduction of the beautiful, must be religious also. Every picture gallery is a sort of temple, every great painter a sort of prophet. If Mr Ruskin is conscious that he never admires anything beautiful in nature or art, without a reference to some attribute of God, or some sentiment of piety, he may be a very exalted person, but he is no type of humanity. If he asserts this, we must be sufficiently courteous to believe him; we must not suspect that he is hardly candid with us, or with himself; but we shall certainly not accept him as a representative of the genus homo. He finds "sermons in stones," and sermons always; "books in the running brooks," and always books of divinity. Other men not deficient in reflection or piety do not find it thus. Let us hear the poet who, more than any other, has made a religion of the beauty of nature. Wordsworth, in a passage familiar to every one of his readers, runs his hand, as it were, over all the chords of the lyre. He finds other sources of the beautiful not unworthy his song, besides that high contemplative piety which he introduces as a noble and fit climax. He recalls the first ardours of his youth, when the beautiful object itself of nature seemed to him all, in all:—