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THE EAGLE’S NEST.

TEN LECTURES

ON THE RELATION OF

NATURAL SCIENCE TO ART,

GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN LENT TERM, 1872

BY

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW
OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.
TWELFTH THOUSAND

LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1900
[All rights reserved]

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

[PREFACE.]

The following Lectures have been written, not with less care, but with less pains, than any in former courses, because no labour could have rendered them exhaustive statements of their subjects, and I wished, therefore, to take from them every appearance of pretending to be so: but the assertions I have made are entirely deliberate, though their terms are unstudied; and the one which to the general reader will appear most startling, that the study of anatomy is destructive to art, is instantly necessary in explanation of the system adopted for the direction of my Oxford schools.

At the period when engraving might have become to art what printing became to literature, the four greatest point-draughtsmen hitherto known, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, Dürer, and Holbein, occupied themselves in the new industry. All these four men were as high in intellect and moral sentiment as in art-power; and if they had engraved as Giotto painted, with popular and unscientific simplicity, would have left an inexhaustible series of prints, delightful to the most innocent minds, and strengthening to the most noble.

But two of them, Mantegna and Dürer, were so polluted and paralyzed by the study of anatomy that the former’s best works (the magnificent mythology of the Vices in the Louvre, for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and children; while Dürer never could draw one beautiful female form or face; and, of his important plates, only four, the Melancholia, St. Jerome in his study, St. Hubert, and The Knight and Death, are of any use for popular instruction, because in these only, the figures being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think and feel rightly, being delivered from the ghastly toil of bone-delineation.

Botticelli and Holbein studied the face first, and the limbs secondarily; and the works they have left are therefore (without exception) precious; yet saddened and corrupted by the influence which the contemporary masters of body-drawing exercised on them; and at last eclipsed by their false fame. I purpose, therefore, in my next course of lectures, to explain the relation of these two draughtsmen to other masters of design, and of engraving.

Brantwood, Sept. 2nd, 1872.

CONTENTS.

THE EAGLE’S NEST.

LECTURE I.
OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN ART.[A]

8th February, 1872.

1. The Lectures I have given hitherto, though, in the matter of them conscientiously addressed to my undergraduate pupils, yet were greatly modified in method by my feeling that this undergraduate class, to which I wished to speak, was indeed a somewhat imaginary one; and that, in truth, I was addressing a mixed audience, in greater part composed of the masters of the University, before whom it was my duty to lay down the principles on which I hoped to conduct, or prepare the way for the conduct of, these schools, rather than to enter on the immediate work of elementary teaching. But to-day, and henceforward most frequently, we are to be engaged in definite, and, I trust, continuous studies; and from this time forward, I address myself wholly to my undergraduate pupils; and wish only that my Lectures may be serviceable to them, and, as far as the subject may admit of it, interesting.

2. And, farther still, I must ask even my younger hearers to pardon me if I treat that subject in a somewhat narrow, and simple way. They have a great deal of hard work to do in other schools: in these, they must not think that I underrate their powers, if I endeavour to make everything as easy to them as possible. No study that is worth pursuing seriously can be pursued without effort; but we need never make the effort painful merely for the sake of preserving our dignity. Also, I shall make my Lectures shorter than heretofore. What I tell you I wish you to remember; and I do not think it possible for you to remember well much more than I can easily tell you in half-an-hour. I will promise that, at all events, you shall always be released so well within the hour, that you can keep any appointment accurately for the next. You will not think me indolent in doing this; for, in the first place, I can assure you, it sometimes takes me a week to think over what it does not take a minute to say: and, secondly, believe me, the least part of the work of any sound art-teacher must be his talking. Nay, most deeply also, it is to be wished that, with respect to the study which I have to bring before you to-day, in its relation to art, namely, natural philosophy, the teachers of it, up to this present century, had done less work in talking, and more in observing: and it would be well even for the men of this century, pre-eminent and accomplished as they are in accuracy of observation, if they had completely conquered the old habit of considering, with respect to any matter, rather what is to be said, than what is to be known.

3. You will, perhaps, readily admit this with respect to science; and believe my assertion of it with respect to art. You will feel the probable mischief, in both these domains of intellect, which must follow on the desire rather to talk than to know, and rather to talk than to do. But the third domain, into the midst of which, here, in Oxford, science and art seem to have thrust themselves hotly, like intrusive rocks, not without grim disturbance of the anciently fruitful plain;—your Kingdom or Princedom of Literature? Can we carry our statement into a third parallelism, for that? It is ill for Science, we say, when men desire to talk rather than to know; ill for Art, when they desire to talk rather than to do. Ill for Literature, when they desire to talk,—is it? and rather than—what else? Perhaps you think that literature means nothing else than talking?—that the triple powers of science, art, and scholarship, mean simply the powers of knowing, doing, and saying. But that is not so in any wise. The faculty of saying or writing anything well, is an art, just as much as any other; and founded on a science as definite as any other. Professor Max Müller teaches you the science of language; and there are people who will tell you that the only art I can teach you myself, is the art of it. But try your triple parallelism once more, briefly, and see if another idea will not occur to you. In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, you must not talk before you do. In literature you must not talk before you—think.

That is your third Province. The Kingdom of Thought, or Conception.

And it is entirely desirable that you should define to yourselves the three great occupations of men in these following terms:—

4. But now observe. If this division be a just one, we ought to have a word for literature, with the ‘Letter‘ left out of it. It is true that, for the most part, the modification of ideal things by our ideal power is not complete till it is expressed; nor even to ourselves delightful, till it is communicated. To letter it and label it—to inscribe and to word it rightly,—this is a great task, and it is the part of literature which can be most distinctly taught. But it is only the formation of its body. And the soul of it can exist without the body; but not at all the body without the soul; for that is true no less of literature than of all else in us or of us—“litera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.”

Nevertheless, I must be content to-day with our old word. We cannot say ‘spiriture’ nor ‘animature,’ instead of literature; but you must not be content with the vulgar interpretation of the word. Remember always that you come to this University,—or, at least, your fathers came,—not to learn how to say things, but how to think them.

5. “How to think them! but that is only the art of logic,” you perhaps would answer. No, again, not at all: logic is a method, not a power; and we have defined literature to be the modification of ideal things by ideal power, not by mechanical method. And you come to the University to get that power, or develop it; not to be taught the mere method of using it.

I say you come to the University for this; and perhaps some of you are much surprised to hear it! You did not know that you came to the University for any such purpose. Nay, perhaps you did not know that you had come to a University at all? You do not at this instant, some of you, I am well assured, know what a University means. Does it mean, for instance—can you answer me in a moment, whether it means—a place where everybody comes to learn something; or a place where somebody comes to learn everything? It means—or you are trying to make it mean—practically and at present, the first; but it means theoretically, and always, the last; a place where only certain persons come, to learn everything; that is to say, where those who wish to be able to think, come to learn to think: not to think of mathematics only, nor of morals, nor of surgery, nor chemistry, but of everything, rightly.

6. I say you do not all know this; and yet, whether you know it or not,—whether you desire it or not,—to some extent the everlasting fitness of the matter makes the facts conform to it. For we have at present, observe, schools of three kinds, in operation over the whole of England. We have—I name it first, though, I am sorry to say, it is last in influence—the body consisting of the Royal Academy, with the Institute of Architects, and the schools at Kensington, and their branches; teaching various styles of fine or mechanical art. We have, in the second place, the Royal Society, as a central body; and, as its satellites, separate companies of men devoted to each several science: investigating, classing, and describing facts with unwearied industry. And lastly and chiefly, we have the great Universities, with all their subordinate public schools, distinctively occupied in regulating,—as I think you will at once admit,—not the language merely, nor even the language principally, but the modes of philosophical and imaginative thought in which we desire that youth should be disciplined, and age informed and majestic. The methods of language, and its range; the possibilities of its beauty, and the necessities for its precision, are all dependent upon the range and dignity of the unspoken conceptions which it is the function of these great schools of literature to awaken, and to guide.

7. The range and dignity of conceptions! Let us pause a minute or two at these words, and be sure we accept them.

First, what is a conception? What is this separate object of our work, as scholars, distinguished from artists, and from men of science?

We shall discover this better by taking a simple instance of the three agencies.

Suppose that you were actually on the plain of Pæstum, watching the drift of storm-cloud which Turner has here engraved.[B] If you had occupied yourself chiefly in schools of science, you would think of the mode in which the electricity was collected; of the influence it had on the shape and motion of the cloud; of the force and duration of its flashes, and of other such material phenomena. If you were an artist, you would be considering how it might be possible, with the means at your disposal, to obtain the brilliancy of the light, or the depth of the gloom. Finally, if you were a scholar, as distinguished from either of these, you would be occupied with the imagination of the state of the temple in former times; and as you watched the thunderclouds drift past its columns, and the power of the God of the heavens put forth, as it seemed, in scorn of the departed power of the god who was thought by the heathen to shake the earth—the utterance of your mind would become, whether in actual words or not, such as that of the Psalmist:—“Clouds and darkness are round about Him—righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.” Your thoughts would take that shape, of their own accord, and if they fell also into the language, still your essential scholarship would consist, not in your remembering the verse, still less in your knowing that “judgment” was a Latin word, and “throne” a Greek one; but in your having power enough of conception, and elevation enough of character, to understand the nature of justice, and be appalled before the majesty of dominion.

8. You come, therefore, to this University, I repeat once again, that you may learn how to form conceptions of proper range or grasp, and proper dignity, or worthiness. Keeping then the ideas of a separate school of art, and separate school of science, what have you to learn in these? You would learn in the school of art, the due range and dignity of deeds; or doings—(I prefer the word to “makings,” as more general), and in the school of science, you would have to learn the range and dignity of knowledges.

Now be quite clear about this: be sure whether you really agree with me or not.

You come to the School of Literature, I say, to learn the range and dignity of conceptions.

To the School of Art, to learn the range and dignity of deeds.

To the School of Science, to learn the range and dignity of knowledges.

Do you agree to that, or not? I will assume that you admit my triple division; but do you think, in opposition to me, that a school of science is still a school of science, whatever sort of knowledge it teaches; and a school of art still a school of art, whatever sort of deed it teaches; and a school of literature still a school of literature, whatever sort of notion it teaches?

Do you think that? for observe, my statement denies that. My statement is, that a school of literature teaches you to have one sort of conception, not another sort; a school of art to do a particular sort of deed, not another sort; a school of science to possess a particular sort of knowledge, not another sort.

9. I assume that you differ with me on this point;—some of you certainly will. Well then, let me go back a step. You will all go thus far with me, that—now taking the Greek words—the school of literature teaches you to have νοῦς, or conception of things, instead of ἄνοια,—no conception of things; that the school of art teaches you τεχνὴ of things, instead of ἀτεχνία; and the school of science ἐπιστήμη, instead of ἄγνοια or ‘ignorantia.‘ But, you recollect, Aristotle names two other faculties with these three,—φρόνησις, namely, and σοφία. He has altogether five, τεχνὴ, ἐπιστήμη, φρόνησις, σοφία, νοῦς; that is to say, in simplest English,—art, science, sense, wisdom, and wit. We have got our art, science, and wit, set over their three domains; and we old people send you young ones to those three schools, that you may not remain artless, scienceless, nor witless. But how of the sense, and the wisdom? What domains belong to these? Do you think our trefoil division should become cinquefoil, and that we ought to have two additional schools; one of Philosophia, and one of Philophronesia? If Aristotle’s division were right it would be so. But his division is wrong, and he presently shows it is; for he tells you in the next page, (in the sentence I have so often quoted to you,) that “the virtue of art is the wisdom which consists in the wit of what is honourable.” Now that is perfectly true; but it of course vitiates his division altogether. He divides his entire subject into A, B, C, D, and E; and then he tells you that the virtue of A is the B which consists in C. Now you will continually find, in this way, that Aristotle’s assertions are right, but his divisions illogical. It is quite true that the virtue of art is the wisdom which consists in the wit of what is honourable; but also the virtue of science is the wit of what is honourable, and in the same sense, the virtue of νοῦς, or wit itself, consists in its being the wit or conception of what is honourable. Σοφία, therefore, is not only the ἀρετή τέχνης, but, in exactly the same sense, the ἀρετή ἐπιστήμης, and in this sense, it is the ἀρετή νόου. And if not governed by σοφία, each school will teach the vicious condition of its own special faculty. As σοφία is the ἀρετή of all three, so μωρία will be the κακία of all three.

10. Now in this, whether you agree with me or not, let me be at least sure you understand me. Σοφία, I say, is the virtue, μωρία is the vice, of all the three faculties of art, science, and literature. There is for each of them a negative and a positive side, as well as a zero. There is a nescience for zero in science—with wise science on one side, foolish science on the other: ἀτεχνία for zero in art, with wise art on one side, foolish art on the other; and ἀνοια for zero in νοῦς, with wise νοῦς on one side, foolish νοῦς on the other.

11. You will smile at that last expression, ‘foolish νοῦς.’ Yet it is, of all foolish things, the commonest and deadliest. We continually complain of men, much more of women, for reasoning ill. But it does not matter how they reason, if they don’t conceive basely. Not one person in a hundred is capable of seriously reasoning; the difference between man and man is in the quickness and quality, the accipitrine intensity, the olfactory choice, of his νοῦς. Does he hawk at game or carrion? What you choose to grasp with your mind is the question;—not how you handle it afterwards. What does it matter how you build, if you have bad bricks to build with; or how you reason, if every idea with which you begin is foul or false? And in general all fatal false reasoning proceeds from people’s having some one false notion in their hearts, with which they are resolved that their reasoning shall comply.

But, for better illustration, I will now take my own special subject out of the three;—τεχνὴ. I have said that we have, for its zero, ἀτεχνία, or artlessness—in Latin, ‘inertia,’ opposed to ‘ars.’ Well, then, we have, from that zero, wise art on the one side, foolish art on the other; and the finer the art, the more it is capable of this living increase, or deadly defect. I will take, for example, first, a very simple art, then a finer one; but both of them arts with which most of you are thoroughly acquainted.

12. One of the simplest pieces of perfect art, which you are yourselves in the habit of practising, is the stroke of an oar given in true time. We have defined art to be the wise modification of matter by the body (substantial things by substantial power, § 3). With a good oar-stroke you displace a certain quantity of water in a wise way. Supposing you missed your stroke, and caught a crab, you would displace a certain quantity of water in a foolish way, not only ineffectually, but in a way the reverse of what you intended. The perfectness of the stroke implies not only absolutely accurate knowledge or science of the mode in which water resists the blade of an oar, but the having in past time met that resistance repeatedly with greater and greater rightness of adaptation to the end proposed. That end being perfectly simple,—the advance of the boat as far as possible with a given expenditure of strength, you at once recognize the degree in which the art falls short of, or the artlessness negatives, your purpose. But your being ‘σοφός,’ as an oarsman, implies much more than this mere art founded on pure science. The fact of your being able to row in a beautiful manner depends on other things than the knowledge of the force of water, or the repeated practice of certain actions in resistance to it. It implies the practice of those actions under a resolved discipline of the body, involving regulation of the passions. It signifies submission to the authority, and amicable concurrence with the humours, of other persons; and so far as it is beautifully done at last, absolutely signifies therefore a moral and intellectual rightness, to the necessary extent influencing the character honourably and graciously. This is the sophia, or wit, of what is most honourable, which is concerned in rowing, without which it must become no rowing, or the reverse of rowing.

13. Let us next take example in an art which perhaps you will think (though I hope not) much inferior to rowing, but which is in reality a much higher art—dancing. I have just told you (§ 11) how to test the rank of arts—namely, by their corruptibility, as you judge of the fineness of organic substance. The moria,[C] or folly, of rowing, is only ridiculous, but the moria, or folly, of dancing, is much worse than ridiculous; and, therefore, you may know that its sophia, or wisdom, will be much more beautiful than the wisdom of rowing. Suppose, for instance, a minuet danced by two lovers, both highly bred, both of noble character, and very much in love with each other. You would see, in that, an art of the most highly finished kind, under the government of a sophia which dealt with the strongest passions, and most exquisite perceptions of beauty, possible to humanity.

14. For example of the contrary of these, in the same art, I cannot give you one more definite than that which I saw at, I think, the Gaiety Theatre—but it might have been at any London theatre now,—two years ago.

The supposed scene of the dance was Hell, which was painted in the background with its flames. The dancers were supposed to be demons, and wore black masks, with red tinsel for fiery eyes; the same red light was represented as coming out of their ears also. They began their dance by ascending through the stage on spring trap-doors, which threw them at once ten feet into the air; and its performance consisted in the expression of every kind of evil passion, in frantic excess.

15. You will not, I imagine, be at a loss to understand the sense in which the words sophia and moria are to be rightly used of these two methods of the same art. But those of you who are in the habit of accurate thinking will at once perceive that I have introduced a new element into my subject by taking an instance in a higher art. The folly of rowing consisted mainly in not being able to row; but this folly of dancing does not consist in not being able to dance, but in dancing well with evil purpose; and the better the dancing, the worse the result.

And now I am afraid I must tease you by asking your attention to what you may at first think a vain nicety in analysis, but the nicety is here essential, and I hope throughout this course of Lectures, not to be so troublesome to you again.

16. The mere negation of the power of art—the zero of it—you say, in rowing, is ridiculous. It is, of course, not less ridiculous in dancing. But what do you mean by ridiculous? You mean contemptible, so as to provoke laughter. The contempt, in either case, is slight, in ordinary society; because, though a man may neither know how to row, or dance, he may know many other things. But suppose he lived where he could not know many other things? By a stormy sea-coast, where there could be no fresco-painting, in a poor country, where could be none of the fine arts connected with wealth, and in a simple, and primitive society, not yet reached by refinements of literature; but where good rowing was necessary for the support of life, and good dancing, one of the most vivid aids to domestic pleasure. You would then say that inability to row, or to dance, was far worse than ridiculous; that it marked a man for a good-for-nothing fellow, to be regarded with indignation, as well as contempt.

Now, remember, the inertia or zero of art always involves this kind of crime, or at least, pitiableness. The want of opportunity of learning takes away the moral guilt of artlessness; but the want of opportunity of learning such arts as are becoming in given circumstances, may indeed be no crime in an individual, but cannot be alleged in its defence by a nation. National ignorance of decent art is always criminal, unless in earliest conditions of society; and then it is brutal.

17. To that extent, therefore, culpably or otherwise, a kind of moria, or folly, is always indicated by the zero of art-power. But the true folly, or assuredly culpable folly, is in the exertion of our art power in an evil direction. And here we need the finesse of distinction, which I am afraid will be provoking to you. Observe, first, and simply, that the possession of any art-power at all implies a sophia of some kind. These demon dancers, of whom I have just spoken, were earning their bread by severe and honest labour. The skill they possessed could not have been acquired but by great patience and resolute self-denial; and the very power with which they were able to express, with precision, states of evil passion, indicated that they had been brought up in a society which, in some measure, knew evil from good, and which had, therefore, some measure of good in the midst of it. Nay, the farther probability is, that if you inquired into the life of these men, you would find that this demon dance had been invented by some one of them with a great imaginative power, and was performed by them not at all in preference of evil, but to meet the demand of a public whose admiration was capable of being excited only by violence of gesture, and vice of emotion.

18. In all cases, therefore, observe, where the opportunity of learning has been given; the existence of the art-power indicates sophia and its absence indicates moria. That great fact I endeavoured to express to you, two years since, in my third introductory Lecture. In the present course I have to show you the action of the final, or higher sophia, which directs the skill of art to the best purposes; and of the final, or lower moria, which misdirects them to the worst. And the two points I shall endeavour to bring before you throughout will be these:—First, that the object of University teaching is to form your conceptions; not to acquaint you with arts, nor sciences. It is to give you a notion of what is meant by smith’s work, for instance;—but not to make you blacksmiths. It is to give you a notion of what is meant by medicine, but not to make you physicians. The proper academy for blacksmiths is a blacksmith’s forge; the proper academy for physicians is an hospital. Here you are to be taken away from the forge, out of the hospital, out of all special and limited labour and thought, into the ‘Universitas’ of labour and thought, that you may in peace, in leisure, in calm of disinterested contemplation, be enabled to conceive rightly the laws of nature, and the destinies of Man.

19. Then the second thing I have to show you is that over these three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, there reigns a virtue or faculty, which from all time, and by all great people, has been recognised as the appointed ruler and guide of every method of labour, or passion of soul; and the most glorious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambition of man. “She is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Lay fast hold upon her; let her not go; keep her, for she is thy life.”

Are not these, and the innumerable words like to these, which you remember as I read them, strange words, if Aristotle’s statement respecting wisdom be true; that it never contemplates anything that can make men happy, “ἡ μέν γὰρ σοφία οὐδέν θεωρει ἐξ ὦν ἔσται εὐδαίμων ἄνθρωπος”?

When we next meet, therefore, I purpose to examine what it is which wisdom, by preference, contemplates; what choice she makes among the thoughts and sciences open to her, and to what purpose she employs whatever science she may possess.

And I will briefly tell you, beforehand, that the result of the inquiry will be, that instead of regarding none of the sources of happiness, she regards nothing else; that she measures all worthiness by pure felicity; that we are permitted to conceive her as the cause even of gladness to God—“I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him,”—and that we are commanded to know her as queen of the populous world, “rejoicing in the habitable parts of the Earth, and whose delights are with the sons of Men.”

LECTURE II.
OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN SCIENCE.

10th February, 1872.

20. In my last lecture I asserted the positive and negative powers of literature, art, and science; and endeavoured to show you some of the relations of wise art to foolish art. To-day we are to examine the nature of these positive and negative powers in science; it being the object of every true school to teach the positive or constructive power, and by all means to discourage, reprove, and extinguish the negative power.

It is very possible that you may not often have thought of, or clearly defined to yourselves, this destructive or deadly character of some elements of science. You may indeed have recognized with Pope that a little knowledge was dangerous, and you have therefore striven to drink deep; you may have recognized with Bacon, that knowledge might partially become venomous; and you may have sought, in modesty and sincerity, antidote to the inflating poison. But that there is a ruling spirit or σοφία, under whose authority you are placed, to determine for you, first the choice, and then the use of all knowledge whatsoever; and that if you do not appeal to that ruler, much more if you disobey her, all science becomes to you ruinous in proportion to its accumulation, and as a net to your soul, fatal in proportion to the fineness of its thread,—this, I imagine, few of you, in the zeal of learning, have suspected, and fewer still have pressed their suspicion so far as to recognize or believe.

21. You must have nearly all heard of, many must have seen, the singular paintings; some also may have read the poems, of William Blake. The impression that his drawings once made is fast, and justly, fading away, though they are not without noble merit. But his poems have much more than merit; they are written with absolute sincerity, with infinite tenderness, and, though in the manner of them diseased and wild, are in verity the words of a great and wise mind, disturbed, but not deceived, by its sickness; nay, partly exalted by it, and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some of the most precious words of existing literature. One of these passages I will ask you to remember; it will often be serviceable to you—

“Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit,

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?”

It would be impossible to express to you in briefer terms the great truth that there is a different kind of knowledge good for every different creature, and that the glory of the higher creatures is in ignorance of what is known to the lower.

22. And, above all, this is true of man; for every other creature is compelled by its instinct to learn its own appointed lesson, and must centralize its perception in its own being. But man has the choice of stooping in science beneath himself, and striving in science beyond himself; and the “Know thyself” is, for him, not a law to which he must in peace submit; but a precept which of all others is the most painful to understand, and the most difficult to fulfil. Most painful to understand, and humiliating; and this alike, whether it be held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or above. For, singularly enough, men are always most conceited of the meanest science:—

“Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit,

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole?”

It is just those who grope with the mole, and cling with the bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings.

23. “Know thyself;” but can it indeed be sophia,—can it be the noble wisdom, which thus speaks to science? Is not this rather, you will ask, the voice of the lower virtue of prudence, concerning itself with right conduct, whether for the interests of this world or of the future? Does not sophia regard all that is above and greater than man; and by so much as we are forbidden to bury ourselves in the mole’s earth-heap, by so much also, are we not urged to raise ourselves towards the stars?

Indeed, it would at first seem so; nay, in the passage of the Ethics, which I proposed to you to-day for question, you are distinctly told so. There are, it is said, many different kinds of phronesis, by which every animal recognizes what is for its own good: and man, like any other creature, has his own separate phronesis telling him what he is to seek, and to do, for the preservation of his life: but above all these forms of prudence, the Greek sage tells you, is the sophia of which the objects are unchangeable and eternal, the methods consistent, and the conclusions universal: and this wisdom has no regard whatever to the things in which the happiness of man consists, but acquaints itself only with the things that are most honourable; so that “we call Anaxagoras and Thales, and such others, wise indeed, but not prudent, in that they know nothing of what is for their own advantage, but know surpassing things, marvellous things, difficult things, and divine things.”

24. Now here is a question which evidently touches us closely. We profess at this day to be an especially prudent nation;—to regard only the things which are for our own advantage; to leave to other races the knowledge of surpassing things, marvellous things, divine things, or beautiful things; and in our exceeding prudence we are, at this moment, refusing the purchase of, perhaps, the most interesting picture by Raphael in the world, and, certainly, one of the most beautiful works ever produced by the art-wisdom of man, for five-and-twenty thousand pounds, while we are debating whether we shall not pay three hundred millions to the Americans, as a fine for selling a small frigate to Captain Semmes. Let me reduce these sums from thousands of pounds, to single pounds; you will then see the facts more clearly; (there is not one person in a million who knows what a “million” means; and that is one reason the nation is always ready to let its ministers spend a million or two in cannon, if they can show they have saved twopence-halfpenny in tape). These are the facts then, stating pounds for thousands of pounds; you are offered a Nativity, by Raphael, for five-and-twenty pounds, and cannot afford it; but it is thought you may be bullied into paying three hundred thousand pounds, for having sold a ship to Captain Semmes. I do not say you will pay it. Still your present position is one of deprecation and humility, and that is the kind of result which you bring about by acting with what you call “practical common sense,” instead of Divine wisdom.

25. Perhaps you think I am losing Aristotle’s notion of common sense, by confusing it with our vulgar English one; and that selling ships or ammunition to people whom we have not courage to fight either for or against, would not by Aristotle have been held a phronetic, or prudent proceeding. Be it so; let us be certain then, if we can, what Aristotle does mean. Take the instance I gave you in the last lecture, of the various modes of feeling in which a master of literature, of science, and of art, would severally regard the storm round the temples of Pæstum.

The man of science, we said, thought of the origin of the electricity; the artist of its light in the clouds, and the scholar, of its relation to the power of Zeus and Poseidon. There you have Episteme; Techne; and Nous; well, now what does Phronesis do?

Phronesis puts up his umbrella, and goes home as fast as he can. Aristotle’s Phronesis at least does; having no regard for marvellous things. But are you sure that Aristotle’s Phronesis is indeed the right sort of Phronesis? May there not be a commonsense, as well as an art, and a science, under the command of sophia? Let us take an instance of a more subtle kind.

26. Suppose that two young ladies, (I assume in my present lectures, that none are present, and that we may say among ourselves what we like; and we do like, do we not, to suppose that young ladies excel us only in prudence, and not in wisdom?) let us suppose that two young ladies go to the observatory on a winter night, and that one is so anxious to look at the stars that she does not care whether she gives herself cold, or not; but the other is prudent, and takes care, and looks at the stars only as long as she can without catching cold. In Aristotle’s mind the first young lady would properly deserve the name of Sophia, and the other that of Prudence. But in order to judge them fairly, we must assume that they are acting under exactly the same conditions. Assume that they both equally desire to look at the stars; then, the fact that one of them stops when it would be dangerous to look longer, does not show that she is less wise,—less interested, that is to say, in surpassing and marvellous things;—but it shows that she has more self-command, and is able therefore to remember what the other does not think of. She is equally wise, and more sensible. But suppose that the two girls are originally different in disposition; and that the one, having much more imagination than the other, is more interested in these surpassing and marvellous things; so that the self-command, which is enough to stop the other, who cares little for the stars, is not enough to stop her who cares much for them;—you would say, then, that, both the girls being equally sensible, the one that caught cold was the wisest.

27. Let us make a farther supposition. Returning to our first condition, that both the girls desire equally to look at the stars; let us put it now that both have equal self-command, and would therefore, supposing no other motives were in their minds, together go on star-gazing, or together stop star-gazing; but that one of them has greater consideration for her friends than the other, and though she would not mind catching cold for her own part, would mind it much for fear of giving her mother trouble. She will leave the stars first, therefore; but should we be right now in saying that she was only more sensible than her companion, and not more wise? This respect for the feelings of others, this understanding of her duty towards others, is a much higher thing than the love of stars. It is an imaginative knowledge, not of balls of fire or differences of space, but of the feelings of living creatures, and of the forces of duty by which they justly move. This is a knowledge, or perception, therefore, of a thing more surpassing and marvellous than the stars themselves, and the grasp of it is reached by a higher sophia.

28. Will you have patience with me for one supposition more? We may assume the attraction of the spectacle of the heavens to be equal in degree, and yet, in the minds of the two girls, it may be entirely different in kind. Supposing the one versed somewhat in abstract Science, and more or less acquainted with the laws by which what she now sees may be explained; she will probably take interest chiefly in questions of distance and magnitude, in varieties of orbit, and proportions of light. Supposing the other not versed in any science of this kind, but acquainted with the traditions attached by the religion of dead nations to the figures they discerned in the sky: she will care little for arithmetical or geometrical matters, but will probably receive a much deeper emotion, from witnessing in clearness what has been the amazement of so many eyes long closed; and recognizing the same lights, through the same darkness, with innocent shepherds and husbandmen, who knew only the risings and settings of the immeasurable vault, as its lights shone on their own fields or mountains; yet saw true miracle in them, thankful that none but the Supreme Ruler could bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion. I need not surely tell you, that in this exertion of the intellect and the heart, there would be a far nobler sophia than any concerned with the analysis of matter, or the measurement of space.

29. I will not weary you longer with questions, but simply tell you, what you will find ultimately to be true, that sophia is the form of thought, which makes common sense unselfish,—knowledge unselfish,—art unselfish,—and wit and imagination unselfish. Of all these, by themselves, it is true that they are partly venomous; that, as knowledge puffeth up, so does prudence—so does art—so does wit; but, added to all these, wisdom, or (you may read it as an equivalent word), added to all these—charity, edifieth.

30. Note the word; builds forward, or builds up, and builds securely because on modest and measured foundation, wide, though low, and in the natural and living rock.

Sophia is the faculty which recognizes in all things their bearing upon life, in the entire sum of life that we know, bestial and human; but, which, understanding the appointed objects of that life, concentrates its interest and its power on Humanity, as opposed on the one side to the Animalism which it must rule, and distinguished on the other side from the Divinity which rules it, and which it cannot imagine.

It is as little the part of a wise man to reflect much on the nature of beings above him, as of beings beneath him. It is immodest to suppose that he can conceive the one, and degrading to suppose that he should be busied with the other. To recognize his everlasting inferiority, and his everlasting greatness; to know himself, and his place; to be content to submit to God without understanding Him; and to rule the lower creation with sympathy and kindness, yet neither sharing the passion of the wild beast, nor imitating the science of the Insect;—this you will find is to be modest towards God, gentle to His creatures, and wise for himself.

31. I think you will now be able to fasten in your minds, first the idea of unselfishness, and secondly, that of modesty, as component elements of sophia; and having obtained thus much, we will at once make use of our gain, by rendering more clear one or two points respecting its action on art, that we may then see more surely its obscurer function in science.

It is absolutely unselfish, we say, not in the sense of being without desire, or effort to gratify that desire; on the contrary, it longs intensely to see, or know the things it is rightly interested in. But it is not interested specially in itself. In the degree of his wisdom, an artist is unconcerned about his work as his own;—concerned about it only in the degree in which he would be, if it were another man’s—recognizing its precise value, or no value, from that outer standpoint. I do not think, unless you examine your minds very attentively, that you can have any conception of the difficulty of doing this. Absolutely to do it is impossible, for we are all intended by nature to be a little unwise, and to derive more pleasure, therefore, from our own success than that of others. But the intense degree of the difference is usually unmeasured by us. In preparing the drawings for you to use as copies in these schools, my assistant and I are often sitting beside each other; and he is at work, usually, on the more important drawing of the two. I so far recognize that greater importance, when it exists, that if I had the power of determining which of us should succeed, and which fail, I should be wise enough to choose his success rather than my own. But the actual effect on my own mind, and comfort, is very different in the two cases. If he fails, I am sorry, but not mortified;—on the contrary, perhaps a little pleased. I tell him, indulgently, ‘he will do better another time,’and go down with great contentment to my lunch. But, if I fail, though I would rather, for the sake of the two drawings, have had it so, the effect on my temper is very different. I say, philosophically, that it was better so—but I can’t eat any lunch.

[32]. Now, just imagine what this inherently selfish passion—unconquerable as you will find it by the most deliberate and maintained efforts—fancy what it becomes, when instead of striving to subdue, we take every means in our power to increase and encourage it; and when all the circumstances around us concur in the deadly cultivation. In all base schools of Art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be recognized as distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus;—what must be the effect of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular! and what the effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to produce—it being also at our peril not to produce—something different from the work of our neighbours? In all great schools of art these conditions are exactly reversed. An artist is praised in these, not for what is different in him from others, nor for solitary performance of singular work; but only for doing most strongly what all are endeavouring; and for contributing, in the measure of his strength, to some great achievement, to be completed by the unity of multitudes, and the sequence of ages.

33. And now, passing from art to science, the unselfishness of sophia is shown by the value it therein attaches to every part of knowledge, new or old, in proportion to its real utility to mankind, or largeness of range in creation. The selfishness which renders sophia impossible, and enlarges the elastic and vaporous kingdom of folly, is shown by our caring for knowledge only so far as we have been concerned in its discovery, or are ourselves skilled and admired in its communication. If there is an art which “puffeth up,” even when we are surrounded by magnificence of achievement of past ages, confessedly not by us to be rivalled, how much more must there be a science which puffeth up, when, by the very condition of science, it must be an advance on the attainments of former time, and however slight, or however slow, is still always as the leaf of a pleasant spring compared to the dried branches of years gone by? And, for the double calamity of the age in which we live, it has chanced that the demand of the vulgar and the dull for originality in Art, is associated with the demand of a sensual economy for originality in science; and the praise which is too readily given always to discoveries that are new, is enhanced by the reward which rapidity of communication now ensures to discoveries that are profitable. What marvel if future time shall reproach us with having destroyed the labours, and betrayed the knowledge of the greatest nations and the wisest men, while we amused ourselves with fantasy in art, and with theory in science: happy, if the one was idle without being vicious, and the other mistaken without being mischievous. Nay, truth, and success, are often to us more deadly than error. Perhaps no progress more triumphant has been made in any science than that of Chemistry; but the practical fact which will remain for the contemplation of the future, is that we have lost the art of painting on glass, and invented gun-cotton and nitroglycerine. “Can you imagine,” the future will say, “those English fools of the nineteenth century, who went about putting up memorials of themselves in glass which they could not paint, and blowing their women and children to pieces with cartridges they would not fight with?”

34. You may well think, gentlemen, that I am unjust and prejudiced in such sayings;—you may imagine that when all our mischievous inventions have done their worst, and the wars they provoked by cowardice have been forgotten in dishonour, our great investigators will be remembered, as men who laid first the foundations of fruitful knowledge, and vindicated the majesty of inviolable law. No, gentlemen; it will not be so. In a little while, the discoveries of which we are now so proud will be familiar to all. The marvel of the future will not be that we should have discerned them, but that our predecessors were blind to them. We may be envied, but shall not be praised, for having been allowed first to perceive and proclaim what could be concealed no longer. But the misuse we made of our discoveries will be remembered against us, in eternal history; our ingenuity in the vindication, or the denial, of species, will be disregarded in the face of the fact that we destroyed, in civilized Europe, every rare bird and secluded flower; our chemistry of agriculture will be taunted with the memories of irremediable famine; and our mechanical contrivance will only make the age of the mitrailleuse more abhorred than that of the guillotine.

35. Yes, believe me, in spite of our political liberality, and poetical philanthropy; in spite of our almshouses, hospitals, and Sunday-schools; in spite of our missionary endeavours to preach abroad what we cannot get believed at home; and in spite of our wars against slavery, indemnified by the presentation of ingenious bills,—we shall be remembered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth:—the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility,—the most unwise in proportion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever inflicted so much: no people, understanding facts, ever acted on them so little. You execrate the name of Eccelin of Padua, because he slew two thousand innocent persons to maintain his power; and Dante cries out against Pisa that she should be sunk in the sea, because, in revenge for treachery, she put to death, by the slow pangs of starvation, not the traitor only, but his children. But we men of London, we of the modern Pisa, slew, a little while since, five hundred thousand men instead of two thousand—(I speak in official terms, and know my numbers)—these we slew, all guiltless; and these we slew, not for defence, nor for revenge, but most literally in cold blood; and these we slew, fathers and children together, by slow starvation—simply because, while we contentedly kill our own children in competition for places in the Civil Service, we never ask, when once they have got the places, whether the Civil Service is done.

36. That was our missionary work in Orissa, some three or four years ago;—our Christian miracle of the five loaves, assisted as we are in its performance, by steam-engines for the threshing of the corn, and by railroads for carrying it, and by proposals from English noblemen to cut down all the trees in England, for better growing it. That, I repeat, is what we did, a year or two ago; what are we doing now? Have any of you chanced to hear of the famine in Persia? Here, with due science, we arrange the roses in our botanic garden, thoughtless of the country of the rose. With due art of horticulture, we prepare for our harvest of peaches;—it might perhaps seriously alarm us to hear, next autumn, of a coming famine of peaches. But the famine of all things, in the country of the peach—do you know of it, care for it:—quaint famine that it is, in the fruitfullest, fairest, richest of the estates of earth; from which the Magi brought their treasures to the feet of Christ?

How much of your time, scientific faculty, popular literature, has been given, since this year began, to ascertain what England can do for the great countries under her command, or for the nations that look to her for help; and how much to discuss the chances of a single impostor’s getting a few thousands a year?

Gentlemen, if your literature, popular and other; or your art, popular and other; or your science, popular and other, is to be eagle-eyed, remember that question I to-day solemnly put to you—will you hawk at game or carrion? Shall it be only said of the thoughts of the heart of England—“Wheresoever the carcase is, thither shall the eagles be gathered together”?

LECTURE III.
THE RELATION OF WISE ART TO WISE SCIENCE.

“The morrow after St. Valentine’s,” 1872.

37. Our task to-day is to examine the relation between art and science, each governed by sophia, and becoming capable, therefore, of consistent and definable relation to each other. Between foolish art and foolish science, there may indeed be all manner of reciprocal mischievous influence; but between wise art and wise science there is essential relation, for each other’s help and dignity.

You observe, I hope, that I always use the term ‘science,’ merely as the equivalent of ‘knowledge.’ I take the Latin word, rather than the English, to mark that it is knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events: but you had better lose even that distinction, and receive the word “scientia” as merely the equivalent of our English “knowledge,” than fall into the opposite error of supposing that science means systematization or discovery. It is not the arrangement of new systems, nor the discovery of new facts, which constitutes a man of science; but the submission to an eternal system; and the proper grasp of facts already known.

38. And, at first, to-day, I use the word “art” only of that in which it is my special office to instruct you; graphic imitation; or, as it is commonly called, Fine art. Of course, the arts of construction,—building, carpentering, and the like, are directly dependent on many sciences, but in a manner which needs no discussion, so that we may put that part of the business out of our way. I mean by art, to-day, only imitative art; and by science, to-day, not the knowledge of general laws, but of existent facts. I do not mean by science, for instance, the knowledge that triangles with equal bases and between parallels, are equal, but the knowledge that the stars in Cassiopeia are in the form of a W.

Now, accepting the terms ‘science’ and ‘art’ under these limitations, wise art is only the reflex or shadow of wise science. Whatever it is really desirable and honourable to know, it is also desirable and honourable to know as completely and as long as possible; therefore, to present, or re-present, in the most constant manner; and to bring again and again, not only within the thoughts, but before the eyes; describing it, not with vague words, but distinct lines, and true colours, so as to approach always as nearly as may be to the likeness of the thing itself.

39. Can anything be more simple, more evidently or indisputably natural and right, than such connection of the two powers? That you should desire to know what you ought; what is worthy of your nature, and helpful to your life: to know that;—nothing less,—nothing more; and to keep record and definition of such knowledge near you, in the most vivid and explanatory form?

Nothing, surely, can be more simple than this; yet the sum of art judgment and of art practice is in this. You are to recognize, or know, beautiful and noble things—notable, notabilia, or nobilia; and then you are to give the best possible account of them you can, either for the sake of others, or for the sake of your own forgetful or apathetic self, in the future.

Now as I gave you and asked you to remember without failing, an aphorism which embraced the law of wise knowledge, so, to-day, I will ask you to remember, without fail, one, which absolutely defines the relation of wise art to it. I have, already, quoted our to-day’s aphorism to you, at the end of my fourth lecture on sculpture. Read the few sentences at the end of that lecture now, down to

“THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS.”

That is Shakspeare’s judgment of his own art. And by strange coincidence, he has put the words into the mouth of the hero whose shadow, or semblance in marble, is admittedly the most ideal and heroic we possess, of man; yet, I need not ask you, whether of the two, if it were granted you to see the statue by Phidias, or the hero Theseus himself, you would choose rather to see the carved stone, or the living King. Do you recollect how Shakspeare’s Theseus concludes his sentence, spoken of the poor tradesmen’s kindly offered art, in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream”?

“The best in this kind are but shadows: and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.”

It will not burden your memories painfully, I hope, though it may not advance you materially in the class list, if you will learn this entire sentence by heart, being, as it is, a faultless and complete epitome of the laws of mimetic art.

40. “But Shadows!” Make them as beautiful as you can; use them only to enable you to remember and love what they are cast by. If ever you prefer the skill of them to the simplicity of the truth, or the pleasure of them to the power of the truth, you have fallen into that vice of folly, (whether you call her κακία or μωρία,) which concludes the subtle description of her given by Prodicus, that she might be seen continually εἰς τὴν ἑαυτης σκιὰν ἀποβλέπειν—to look with love, and exclusive wonder, at her own shadow.

41. There is nothing that I tell you with more eager desire that you should believe—nothing with wider ground in my experience for requiring you to believe, than this, that you never will love art well, till you love what she mirrors better.

It is the widest, as the clearest experience I have to give you; for the beginning of all my own right art work in life, (and it may not be unprofitable that I should tell you this,) depended not on my love of art, but of mountains and sea. All boys with any good in them are fond of boats, and of course I liked the mountains best when they had lakes at the bottom; and I used to walk always in the middle of the loosest gravel I could find in the roads of the midland counties, that I might hear, as I trod on it, something like the sound of the pebbles on sea-beach. No chance occurred for some time to develop what gift of drawing I had; but I would pass entire days in rambling on the Cumberland hill-sides, or staring at the lines of surf on a low sand; and when I was taken annually to the Water-colour Exhibition, I used to get hold of a catalogue before-hand, mark all the Robsons, which I knew would be of purple mountains, and all the Copley Fieldings, which I knew would be of lakes or sea; and then go deliberately round the room to these, for the sake, observe, not of the pictures, in any wise, but only of the things painted.

And through the whole of following life, whatever power of judgment I have obtained, in art, which I am now confident and happy in using, or communicating, has depended on my steady habit of always looking for the subject principally, and for the art, only as the means of expressing it.

42. At first, as in youth one is almost sure to be, I was led too far by my certainty of the rightness of this principle: and provoked into its exclusive assertion by the pertinacity with which other writers denied it: so that, in the first volume of “Modern Painters,” several passages occurred setting the subject or motive of the picture so much above the mode of its expression, that some of my more feebly gifted disciples supposed they were fulfilling my wishes by choosing exactly the subjects for painting which they were least able to paint. But the principle itself, I maintain, now in advanced life, with more reverence and firmness than in earliest youth: and though I believe that among the teachers who have opposed its assertion, there are few who enjoy the mere artifices of composition or dexterities of handling so much as I, the time which I have given to the investigation of these has only farther assured me that the pictures were noblest which compelled me to forget them.

43. Now, therefore, you see that on this simple theory, you have only to ask what will be the subjects of wise science; these also, will be, so far as they can be imitatively or suggestively represented, the subjects of wise art: and the wisdom of both the science and art will be recognized by their being lofty in their scope, but simple in their language; clear in fancy, but clearer in interpretation; severe in discernment, but delightful in display.

44. For example’s sake, since we have just been listening to Shakspeare as a teacher of science and art, we will now examine him as a subject of science and art.

Suppose we have the existence and essence of Shakspeare to investigate, and give permanent account of; we shall see that, as the scope and bearing of the science become nobler, art becomes more helpful to it; and at last, in its highest range, even necessary to it; but still only as its minister.

We examine Shakspeare, first, with the science of chemistry, which informs us that Shakspeare consists of about seventy-five parts in the hundred of water, some twelve or fifteen of nitrogen, and the rest, lime, phosphorus, and essential earthy salts.

We next examine him by the science of anatomy, which tells us (with other such matters,) that Shakspeare has seven cervical, twelve dorsal, and five lumbar vertebræ; that his fore arm has a wide sphere of rotation; and that he differs from other animals of the ape species by being more delicately prehensile in the fingers, and less perfectly prehensile in the toes.

We next approach Shakspeare with the science of natural history, which tells us the colour of his eyes and hair, his habits of life, his temper, and his predilection for poaching.

There ends, as far as this subject is concerned, our possible science of substantial things. Then we take up our science of ideal things: first of passion, then of imagination; and we are told by these that Shakspeare is capable of certain emotions, and of mastering or commanding them in certain modes. Finally, we take up our science of theology, and ascertain that he is in relation, or in supposed relation, with such and such a Being, greater than himself.

45. Now, in all these successive stages of scientific description, we find art become powerful as an aid or record, in proportion to the importance of the inquiry. For chemistry, she can do scarcely anything: merely keep note of a colour, or of the form of a crystal. For anatomy, she can do somewhat more; and for natural history, almost all things: while in recording passion, and affectionate intellect, she walks hand in hand with the highest science; and to theology, can give nobler aid even than verbal expression of literature.

46. And in considering this power of hers, remember that the theology of art has only of late been thought deserving of attention: Lord Lindsay, some thirty years ago, was the first to recognize its importance; and when I entered upon the study of the schools of Tuscany in 1845, his “Christian Mythology” was the only guide I could trust. Even as late as 1860, I had to vindicate the true position, in Christian science, of Luini, the despised pupil of Leonardo. But only assuming, what with general assent I might assume, that Raphael’s dispute of the Sacrament—(or by its less frequently given, but true name—Raphael’s Theologia,) is the most perfect effort yet made by art to illustrate divine science, I am prepared hereafter to show you that the most finished efforts of theologic literature, as compared with that piece of pictorial interpretation, have expressed less fully the condition of wise religious thought; and have been warped more dangerously into unwise religious speculation.

47. Upon these higher fields of inquiry we are not yet to enter. I shall endeavour for some time only to show you the function of modest art, as the handmaid of natural science; and the exponent, first of the beauty of the creatures subject to your own human life; and then of the history of that life in past time; of which one chief source of illustration is to be found in the most brilliant, and in its power on character, hitherto the most practically effective of the arts—Heraldry.

In natural history, I at first intended to begin with the lower types of life; but as the enlarged schools now give me the means of extending the use of our examples, we will at once, for the sake of more general service, take up ornithology, of the uses of which, in general culture, I have one or two grave words to say.

48. Perhaps you thought that in the beginning of my lecture to-day I too summarily dismissed the arts of construction and action. But it was not in disrespect to them; and I must indeed ask you carefully to note one or two points respecting the arts of which an example is set us by birds;—building, and singing.

The other day, as I was calling on the ornithologist whose collection of birds is, I suppose, altogether unrivalled in Europe,—(at once a monument of unwearied love of science, and an example, in its treatment, of the most delicate and patient art)—Mr. Gould—he showed me the nest of a common English bird; a nest which, notwithstanding his knowledge of the dexterous building of birds in all the world, was not without interest even to him, and was altogether amazing and delightful to me. It was a bullfinch’s nest, which had been set in the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended foundation. And the bird had built this first story of her nest with withered stalks of clematis blossom; and with nothing else. These twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the branched heads all at the outside, producing an intricate Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently arranged both with triumphant pleasure in the art of basket-making, and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental form.

49. I fear there is no occasion to tell you that the bird had no purpose of the kind. I say that I fear this, because I would much rather have to undeceive you in attributing too much intellect to the lower animals, than too little. But I suppose the only error which, in the present condition of natural history, you are likely to fall into, is that of supposing that a bullfinch is merely a mechanical arrangement of nervous fibre, covered with feathers by a chronic cutaneous eruption; and impelled by a galvanic stimulus to the collection of clematis.

50. You would be in much greater, as well as in a more shameful, error, in supposing this, than if you attributed to the bullfinch the most deliberate rivalship with Mr. Street’s prettiest Gothic designs. The bird has exactly the degree of emotion, the extent of science, and the command of art, which are necessary for its happiness; it had felt the clematis twigs to be lighter and tougher than any others within its reach, and probably found the forked branches of them convenient for reticulation. It had naturally placed these outside, because it wanted a smooth surface for the bottom of its nest; and the beauty of the result was much more dependent on the blossoms than the bird.

51. Nevertheless, I am sure that if you had seen the nest,—much more, if you had stood beside the architect at work upon it,—you would have greatly desired to express your admiration to her; and chat if Wordsworth, or any other simple and kindly person, could even wish, for a little flower’s sake,

“That to this mountain daisy’s self were known

The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown

On the smooth surface of this naked stone,”

much more you would have yearned to inform the bright little nest-builder of your sympathy; and to explain to her, on art principles, what a pretty thing she was making.

52. Does it never occur to you, then, that to some of the best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not be always possible to explain what pretty things they are making; and that, perhaps, the very perfection of their art is in their knowing so little about it?

Whether it has occurred to you or not, I assure you that it is so. The greatest artists, indeed, will condescend, occasionally, to be scientific;—will labour, somewhat systematically, about what they are doing, as vulgar persons do; and are privileged, also, to enjoy what they have made more than birds do; yet seldom, observe you, as being beautiful, but very much in the sort of feeling which we may fancy the bullfinch had also,—that the thing, whether pretty or ugly, could not have been better done; that they could not have made it otherwise, and are thankful it is no worse. And, assuredly, they have nothing like the delight in their own work which it gives to other people.

53. But putting the special simplicities of good artists out of question, let me ask you, in the second place, whether it is not possible that the same sort of simplicity might be desirable in the whole race of mankind; and that we ought all to be doing human work which would appear better done to creatures much above us, than it does to ourselves. Why should not our nests be as interesting things to angels, as bullfinches’ nests are to us?

You will, probably, both smile at, and shrink from, such a supposition, as an insolent one. But to my thought, it seems, on the contrary, the only modest one. That we should be able to admire the work of angels seems to me the impertinent idea; not, at all, that they should be able to admire ours.

54. Under existing circumstances, I confess the difficulty. It cannot be imagined that either the back streets of our manufacturing towns, or the designs of our suburban villas, are things which the angels desire to look into: but it seems to me an inevitable logical conclusion that if we are, indeed, the highest of the brute creation, we should, at least, possess as much unconscious art as the lower brutes; and build nests which shall be, for ourselves, entirely convenient; and may, perhaps, in the eyes of superior beings, appear more beautiful than to our own.

55. “Which shall be, for ourselves, entirely convenient.” Note the word;—becoming, decorous, harmonious, satisfying. We may not be able to build anything sublime; but, at all events, we should, like other flesh-invested creatures, be able to contrive what was decent, and it should be a human privilege to think that we may be admired in heaven for our contrivance.

I have some difficulty in proceeding with what I want to say, because I know you must partly think I am jesting with you. I feel indeed some disposition to smile myself; not because I jest, but in the sense of contrast between what, logically, it seems, ought to be; and what we must confess, not jestingly, to be the facts. How great also,—how quaint, the confusion of sentiment in our minds, as to this matter! We continually talk of honouring God with our buildings; and yet, we dare not say, boldly, that, in His sight, we in the least expect to honour ourselves by them! And admitting, though I by no means feel disposed to admit, that here and there we may, at present, be honouring Him by work that is worthy of the nature He gave us, in how many places, think you, are we offending Him by work that is disgraceful to it?

56. Let me return, yet for an instant, to my bird and her nest. If not actually complacent and exultant in her architecture, we may at least imagine that she, and her mate, and the choir they join with, cannot but be complacent and exultant in their song. I gave you, in a former lecture, the skylark as a type of mastership in music; and remembering—some of you, I suppose, are not likely soon to forget,—the saint to whom yesterday was dedicated, let me read to you to-day some of the prettiest English words in which our natural feeling about such song is expressed.

“And anone, as I the day espide,

No lenger would I in my bed abide,

But unto a wood that was fast by,

I went forth alone boldely,

And held the way downe by a brook side,

Till I came to a laund of white and green,

So faire one had I never in been,

The ground was green, ypoudred with daisie,

The floures and the greves like hie,

All greene and white, was nothing els seene.

There sat I downe among the faire flours,

And saw the birds trip out of hir hours,

There as they rested hem all the night,

They were so joyfull of the dayes light,

They began of May for to done honours.

They coud that service all by rote,

There was many a lovely note,

Some sang loud, as they had plained,

And some in other manner voice yfained,

And some all out with the full throte.

They proyned hem and made hem right gay,

And daunceden and lepten on the spray,

And evermore two and two in fere,

Right so as they had chosen hem to yere

In Feverere, upon saint Valentines day.”

You recollect, perhaps, the dispute that follows between the cuckoo and the nightingale, and the promise which the sweet singer makes to Chaucer for rescuing her.

“And then came the Nightingale to me

And said Friend, forsooth I thanke thee

That thou hast liked me to rescue,

And one avow to Love make I now

That all this May, I will thy singer be.

I thanked her, and was right well apaied,

Yea, quoth she, and be not thou dismaied,

Tho’ thou have heard the cuckoo erst than me;

For, if I live, it shall amended be,

The next May, if I be not affraied.”

“If I be not affraied.” Would she not put the “if” more timidly now, in making the same promise to any of you, or in asking for the judgment between her and her enemy, which was to be past, do you remember, on this very day of the year, so many years ago, and within eight miles of this very spot?

“And this shall be without any Nay

On the morrow after St. Valentine’s day,

Under a maple that is faire and green

Before the chamber window of the Queen

At Woodstoke, upon the greene lawn.

She thanked them, and then her leave took

And into an hawthorn by that broke.

And there she sate, and sang upon that tree

‘Terme of life love hath withheld me’

So loud, that I with that song awoke.”

57. “Terme of life love hath withheld me!” Alas, how have we men reversed this song of the nightingale! so that our words must be “Terme of life, hatred hath withheld me.”

This, then, was the old English science of the song of birds; and perhaps you are indignant with me for bringing any word of it back to you? You have, I doubt not, your new science of song, as of nest-building: and I am happy to think you could all explain to me, or at least you will be able to do so before you pass your natural science examination, how, by the accurate connection of a larynx with a bill, and by the action of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon the muscular fibre, an undulatory motion is produced in the larynx, and an opening and shutting one in the bill, which is accompanied, necessarily, by a piping sound.

58. I will not dispute your statement; still less do I wish to answer for the absolute truth of Chaucer’s. You will find that the complete truth embraces great part of both; and that you may study, at your choice, in any singing bird, the action of universal heat on a marvellous mechanism, or of individual life, on a frame capable of exquisite passion. But the point I wish you to consider is the relation to this lower creature’s power, of your own human agencies in the production of sound, where you can best unite in its harmony.

59. I had occasion only the other day to wait for half an hour at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Standing as much out of the way as I could, under the shadow of the railroad bridge, I watched the faces, all eager, many anxious, and some intensely gloomy, of the hurried passers by; and listened to the ceaseless crashing, whistling, and thundering sounds which mingled with the murmur of their steps and voices. And in the midst of the continuous roar, which differed only from that of the wildest sea in storm by its complexity and its discordance, I was wondering, if the sum of what all these people were doing, or trying to do, in the course of the day, could be made manifest, what it would come to.

60. The sum of it would be, I suppose, that they had all contrived to live through the day in that exceedingly unpleasant manner, and that nothing serious had occurred to prevent them from passing the following day likewise. Nay, I knew also that what appeared in their way of life painful to me, might be agreeable to them; and it chanced, indeed, a little while afterwards, that an active and prosperous man of business, speaking to one of my friends of the disappointment he had felt in a visit to Italy, remarked, especially, that he was not able to endure more than three days at Venice, because there was no noise there.

61. But, granting the contentment of the inhabitants of London in consistently producing these sounds, how shall we say this vocal and instrumental art of theirs may compare, in the scheme of Nature, with the vocal art of lower animals? We may indeed rank the danger-whistle of the engines on the bridge as an excruciating human improvement on that of the marmot; and the trampling of feet and grinding of wheels, as the human accentuation of the sounds produced by insects, by the friction of their wings or thighs against their sides: but, even in this comparison, it may cause us some humiliation to note that the cicada and the cricket, when pleased to sing in their vibratory manner, have leisure to rest in their delight; and that the flight of the firefly is silent. But how will the sounds we produce compare with the song of birds? This London is the principal nest of men in the world; and I was standing in the centre of it. In the shops of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, on each side of me, I do not doubt I could have bought any quantity of books for children, which by way of giving them religious, as opposed to secular, instruction, informed them that birds praised God in their songs. Now, though, on the one hand, you may be very certain that birds are not machines, on the other hand it is just as certain that they have not the smallest intention of praising God in their songs; and that we cannot prevent the religious education of our children more utterly than by beginning it in lies. But it might be expected of ourselves that we should do so, in the songs we send up from our principal nest! And although, under the dome at the top of Ludgate Hill, some attempt of the kind may be made every seventh day, by a limited number of persons, we may again reflect, with humiliation, that the birds, for better or worse, sing all, and every day; and I could not but ask myself, with momentarily increasing curiosity, as I endeavoured to trace the emotions and occupations of the persons who passed by me, in the expression of their faces—what would be the effect on them, if any creatures of higher order were suddenly to appear in the midst of them with any such message of peace, and invitation to rejoicing, as they had all been professing to commemorate at Christmas.

62. Perhaps you recollect, in the lectures given on landscape during the spring of this year, my directing your attention to a picture of Mantegna’s in the loan exhibition, representing a flight of twelve angels in blue sky, singing that Christmas song. I ought to tell you, however, that one of our English artists of good position dissented from my opinion about the picture; and remarked that in England “we wanted good art, and not funny art.” Whereas, to me, it is this vocal and architectural art of Ludgate Hill which appears funny art; and not Mantegna’s. But I am compelled to admit that could Mantegna’s picture have been realized, the result would, in the eyes of most men, have been funnier still. For suppose that over Ludgate Hill the sky had indeed suddenly become blue instead of black; and that a flight of twelve angels, “covered with silver wings, and their feathers with gold,” had alighted on the cornice of the railroad bridge, as the doves alight on the cornices of St. Mark’s at Venice; and had invited the eager men of business below, in the centre of a city confessedly the most prosperous in the world, to join them for five minutes in singing the first five verses of such a psalm as the 103rd—“Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me” (the opportunity now being given for the expression of their most hidden feelings) “all that is within me, bless His holy name, and forget not all His benefits.” Do you not even thus, in mere suggestion, feel shocked at the thought, and as if my now reading the words were profane? And cannot you fancy that the sensation of the crowd at so violent and strange an interruption of traffic, might be somewhat akin to that which I had occasion in my first lecture on sculpture to remind you of,—the feeling attributed by Goethe to Mephistopheles at the song of the angels: “Discord I hear, and intolerable jingling”?

63. Nay, farther, if indeed none of the benefits bestowed on, or accomplished by, the great city, were to be forgotten, and if search were made, throughout its confines, into the results of its wealth, might not the literal discord in the words themselves be greater than the felt discord in the sound of them?

I have here in my hand a cutting from a newspaper, which I took with me three years ago, to a meeting in the interest of social science, held in the rooms of the Society of Arts, and under the presidency of the Prime Minister of England. Under the (so called) ‘classical’ paintings of Barry, representing the philosophy and poetry of the ancients, Mr. Gladstone was in the chair; and in his presence a member of the Society for the Promotion of Social Science propounded and supported the statement, not irrelevant to our present inquiry, that the essential nature of man was that of a beast of prey. Though, at the time, (suddenly called upon by the author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,”) I feebly endeavoured to contradict that Socially Scientific person, I do not at present desire to do so. I have given you a creature of prey for comparison of knowledge. “Doth the eagle know what is in the pit?”—and in this great nest of ours in London, it would be well if to all our children the virtue of the creature of prey were fulfilled, and that, indeed, the stir and tumult of the city were “as the eagle stirreth up her nest and fluttereth over her young.” But the slip of paper I had then, and have now, in my hand,[D] contains information about the state of the nest, inconsistent with such similitude. I am not answerable for the juxtaposition of paragraphs in it. The first is a proposal for the building of a new church in Oxford, at the cost of twenty thousand pounds; the second is the account of the inquest on a woman and her child who were starved to death in the Isle of Dogs. The bodies were found lying, without covering, on a bed made of heaped rags; and there was no furniture in the room but a wooden stool, on which lay a tract entitled “The Goodness of God.” The husband, who had been out of work for six months, went mad two days afterwards; and being refused entrance at the workhouse because it was “full of mad people,” was carried off, the “Pall Mall Gazette” says not where.

64. Now, gentlemen, the question I wish to leave with you to-day is whether the Wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, and whose delights are with the sons of men, can be supposed, under circumstances such as these, to delight herself in that most closely and increasingly inhabited portion of the globe which we ourselves now dwell on; and whether, if she cannot grant us to surpass the art of the swallow or the eagle, she may not require of us at least, to reach the level of their happiness. Or do you seriously think that, either in the life of Ludgate Hill, or death of the Isle of Dogs; in the art of Ludgate Hill, or idleness of the Isle of Dogs; and in the science and sanity of Ludgate Hill, or nescience and insanity of the Isle of Dogs, we have, as matters stand now, any clear encouragement to repeat, in that 103rd psalm, the three verses following the five I named; and to believe in our hearts, as we say with our lips, that we have yet, dwelling among us, unoffended, a God “who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases; who redeemeth our life from destruction, who crowneth us with loving-kindness and tender mercies, and who satisfieth our mouth with good things, so that our youth is RENEWED LIKE THE EAGLE’S”?

LECTURE IV.
THE POWER OF MODESTY IN SCIENCE AND ART.

17th February, 1872.

65. I believe, gentlemen, that some of you must have been surprised,—and, if I succeeded in making my last lecture clearly intelligible, many ought to have been surprised,—at the limitations I asked you to admit with respect to the idea of science, and the position which I asked you to assign to it. We are so much, by the chances of our time, accustomed to think of science as a process of discovery, that I am sure some of you must have been gravely disconcerted by my requesting, and will to-day be more disconcerted by my firmly recommending, you to use the word, and reserve the thought, of science, for the acquaintance with things long since discovered, and established as true. We have the misfortune to live in an epoch of transition from irrational dulness to irrational excitement; and while once it was the highest courage of science to question anything, it is now an agony to her to leave anything unquestioned. So that, unawares, we come to measure the dignity of a scientific person by the newness of his assertions, and the dexterity of his methods in debate; entirely forgetting that science cannot become perfect, as an occupation of intellect, while anything remains to be discovered; nor wholesome as an instrument of education, while anything is permitted to be debated.

66. It appears, doubtless, a vain idea to you that an end should ever be put to discovery; but remember, such impossibility merely signifies that mortal science must remain imperfect. Nevertheless, in many directions, the limit to practically useful discovery is rapidly being approached; and you, as students, would do well to suppose that it has been already attained. To take the science of ornithology, for instance: I suppose you would have very little hope of shooting a bird in England, which should be strange to any master of the science, or of shooting one anywhere, which would not fall under some species already described. And although at the risk of life, and by the devotion of many years to observation, some of you might hope to bring home to our museum a titmouse with a spot on its tail which had never before been seen, I strongly advise you not to allow your studies to be disturbed by so dazzling a hope, nor your life exclusively devoted even to so important an object. In astronomy, the fields of the sky have not yet, indeed, been ransacked by the most costly instruments; and it may be in store for some of you to announce the existence, or even to analyse the materials, of some luminous point which may be seen two or three times in the course of a century, by any one who will journey to India for the purpose; and, when there, is favoured by the weather. But, for all practical purposes, the stars already named and numbered are as many as we require to hear of; and if you thoroughly know the visible motions, and clearly conceive the known relations, even of those which can be seen by the naked eye, you will have as much astronomy as is necessary, either for the occupation of thought or the direction of navigation.

67. But, if you were discontented with the limit I proposed for your sciences, much more, I imagine, you were doubtful of the ranks I assigned to them. It is not, I know, in your modern system, the general practice to put chemistry, the science of atoms, lowest, and theology, the science of Deity, highest: nay, many of us have ceased to think of theology as a science at all, but rather as a speculative pursuit, in subject, separate from science; and in temper, opposed to her.

Yet it can scarcely be necessary for me to point out to you, in so many terms, that what we call theology, if true, is a science; and if false, is not theology; or that the distinction even between natural science and theology is illogical: for you might distinguish indeed between natural and unnatural science, but not between natural and spiritual, unless you had determined first that a spirit had no nature. You will find the facts to be, that entirely true knowledge is both possible and necessary—first of facts relating to matter, and then of the forces and passions that act on or in matter;—that, of all these forces, the noblest we can know is the energy which either imagines, or perceives, the existence of a living power greater than its own; and that the study of the relations which exist between this energy, and the resultant action of men, are as much subjects of pure science as the curve of a projectile. The effect, for instance, upon your temper, intellect, and conduct during the day, of your going to chapel with or without belief in the efficacy of prayer, is just as much a subject of definite science, as the effect of your breakfast on the coats of your stomach. Which is the higher knowledge, I have, with confidence, told you; and am not afraid of any test to which you may submit my assertion.

68. Assuming such limitation, then, and such rank, for our knowledge; assuming, also, what I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, that graphic art is the shadow, or image, of knowledge,—I wish to point out to you to-day the function, with respect to both, of the virtue called by the Greeks ‘σωφροσύνη’ ‘safeness of mind,’ corresponding to the ‘salus’ or ‘sanitas’ mentis, of the Latins; ‘health of heart’ is, perhaps, the best English; if we receive the words ‘mens,’ ‘μῆνις,’ or ‘φρήν,’ as expressing the passionate soul of the human being, distinguished from the intellectual; the ‘mens sana’ being possible to all of us, though the contemplative range of height her wisdom may be above our capacities; so that to each of us Heaven only permits the ambition of being σοφός, but commands the resolution to be σώφρων.

69. And, without discussing the use of the word by different writers, I will tell you that the dearest and safest idea of the mental state itself is to be gained from the representations of it by the words of ancient Christian religion, and even from what you may think its superstitions. Without any discussion also as to the personal existence or traditional character of evil spirits, you will find it a practical fact, that external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, have power against you which your health and virtue depend on your resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them will pass into your own heart, φρήν, or μῆνις; and that the ordinary and vulgarized phrase “the Devil, or betraying Spirit, is in him” is the most scientifically accurate which you can apply to any person so influenced. You will find also that, in the compass of literature, the casting out of, or cleansing from, such a state is best symbolized for you by the image of one who had been wandering wild and naked among tombs, sitting still, clothed, and in his right mind, and that in whatever literal or figurative sense you receive the Biblical statement of what followed, this is absolutely certain, that the herd of swine hastening to their destruction, in perfect sympathy with each other’s fury, is the most accurate symbol ever given, in literature, of consummate human ἀφροσύνη.

(The conditions of insanity,[E] delighting in scenes of death, which affect at the present time the arts of revolutionary Europe, were illustrated in the sequel of this lecture: but I neither choose to take any permanent notice of the examples I referred to, nor to publish any part of what I said, until I can enter more perfectly into the analysis of the elements of evil passion which always distorted and polluted even the highest arts of Greek and Christian loyal religion; and now occupy in deadly entireness, the chambers of imagination, devastated, and left desolate of joy, by impiety, and disobedience.

In relation to the gloom of gray colour characteristic especially of the modern French revolutionary school, I entered into some examination of the conditions of real temperance and reserve in colour, showing that it consisted not in refusing colour, but in governing it; and that the most pure and bright colours might be thus perfectly governed, while the most dull were probably also the most violent and intemperate. But it would be useless to print this part of the lecture without the colour-illustrations used.

Passing to the consideration of intemperance and immodesty in the choice even of landscape subjects, I referred thus for contrast, to the quietude of Turner’s “Greta and Tees.”)

70. If you wish to feel the reserve of this drawing, look, first, into the shops at their display of common chromo-lithotints; see how they are made up of Matterhorns, Monte Rosas, blue glaciers, green lakes, white towers, magnificent banditti, romantic peasantry, or always-successful sportsmen or fishermen in Highland costume; and then see what Turner is content with. No Matterhorns are needful, or even particularly pleasing to him. A bank, some eight or ten feet high, of Yorkshire shale is enough. He would not thank you for giving him all the giant forests of California:—would not be so much interested in them nor half so happy among them, as he is here with a switch of oak sapling, which the Greta has pulled down among the stones, and teased awhile, and which, now that the water is lower, tries to get up again, out of its way.

He does not want any towers or towns. Here you are to be contented with three square windows of a country gentleman’s house. He does not want resplendent banditti. Behold! here is a brown cow and a white one: what would you have more? And this scarcely-falling rapid of the Tees—here pausing to circle round a pool, and there laughing as it trips over a ledge of rock, six or seven inches high, is more to him—infinitely more—than would be the whole colossal drainage of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, which Carlyle has justly taken for a type of the Niagara of our national precipitous ἀφροσύνη.

71. I need not point out to you the true temperance of colour in this drawing—how slightly green the trees are, how softly blue the sky.

Now I put a chromo-lithotint beside it.

Well, why is that good, this bad? Simply because if you think, and work, and discipline yourselves nobly, you will come to like the Greta and Tees; if not, you will come to like this. The one is what a strong man likes; the other what a weak one likes: that is modest, full of true αἰδὼς, noble restraint, noble reverence;—this has no αἰδὼς, no fear, no measure;—not even purpose, except, by accumulation of whatever it can see or snatch, to move the vile apathy of the public ἀφροσύνη into sensation.

72. The apathy of ἀφροσύνη—note the expression! You might think that it was σωφροσύνη, which was apathetic, and that intemperance was full of passion. No; the exact contrary is the fact. It is death in ourselves which seeks the exaggerated external stimulus. I must return for a moment to the art of modern France.

The most complete rest and refreshment I can get, when I am overworked, in London (for if I try to rest in the fields, I find them turned into villas in the course of the week before) is in seeing a French play. But the French act so perfectly that I am obliged to make sure beforehand that all is to end well, or it is as bad as being helplessly present at some real misery.

I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a “Comédie,” into going to see “Frou-Frou.” Most of you probably know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, or at least playful drama, and that it plunges down, in the two last, to the sorrowfullest catastrophe of all conceivable—though too frequent in daily life—in which irretrievable grief is brought about by the passion of a moment, and the ruin of all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly ill, and I was not myself again for a week.

But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it to a lady who knew French character well; and asked her how it was possible for a people so quick in feeling to endure the action before them of a sorrow so poignant. She said, “It is because they have not sympathy enough: they are interested only by the external scene, and are, in truth, at present, dull, not quick in feeling. My own French maid went the other evening to see that very play: when she came home, and I asked her what she thought of it, she said ‘it was charming, and she had amused herself immensely.’ ‘Amused! but is not the story very sad?’ ‘Oh, yes, mademoiselle, it is bien triste, but it is charming; and then, how pretty Frou-Frou looks in her silk dress!’”

73. Gentlemen, the French maid’s mode of regarding the tragedy is, if you think of it, a most true image of the way in which fashionable society regards the world-suffering, in the midst of which, so long as it can amuse itself, all seems to it well. If the ball-room is bright, and the dresses pretty, what matter how much horror is beneath or around? Nay, this apathy checks us in our highest spheres of thought, and chills our most solemn purposes. You know that I never join in the common outcries against Ritualism; yet it is too painfully manifest to me that the English Church itself has withdrawn her eyes from the tragedy of all churches, to perk herself up anew with casement and vestment, and say of herself, complacently, in her sacred ποικιλία, “How pretty Frou-Frou is, in her silk dress!”

74. We recognize, however, without difficulty, the peril of insatiableness and immodesty in the pleasures of Art. Less recognized, but therefore more perilous, the insatiableness and immodesty of Science tempt us through our very virtues. The fatallest furies of scientific ἀφροσύνη are consistent with the most noble powers of self-restraint and self-sacrifice. It is not the lower passions, but the loftier hopes and most honourable desires which become deadliest when the charm of them is exalted by the vanity of science. The patience of the wisest of Greek heroes never fails, when the trial is by danger or pain; but do you recollect that, before his trial by the song of the Sirens, the sea becomes calm? And in the few words which Homer has told you of their song, you have not perhaps yet with enough care observed that the form of temptation is precisely that to which a man victorious over every fleshly trial would be likely to yield. The promise is not that his body shall be gratified, but that his soul shall rise into rapture; he is not urged, as by the subtlety of Comus, to disdain the precepts of wisdom, but invited, on the contrary, to learn,—as you are all now invited by the ἀφροσύνη of your age,—better wisdom from the wise.

“For we know all” (they say) “that was done in Troy according to the will of the gods, and we know everything that is upon the all-nourishing earth.”

All heavenly and earthly knowledge, you see. I will read you Pope’s expansion of the verses; for Pope never alters idly, but always illustrates when he expands.

“Oh stay, oh pride of Greece!

(You hear, they begin by flattery).

Ulysses, stay,

Oh cease thy course, and listen to our lay.

Blest is the man ordained our voice to hear,

The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear.

Approach! Thy soul shall into raptures rise;

Approach! and learn new wisdom from the wise.

We know whate’er the kings of mighty name

Achieved at Ilion in the field of Fame,

Whate’er beneath the Sun’s bright journey lies.

Oh, stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise.”

Is it not singular that so long ago the danger of this novelty of wisdom should have been completely discerned? Is it not stranger still that three thousand years have passed by, and we have not yet been able to learn the lesson, but are still eager to add to our knowledge, rather than to use it; and every day more passionate in discovering,—more violent in competition,—are every day more cold in admiration, and more dull in reverence?

75. But, gentlemen, Homer’s Ulysses, bound to the mast, survives. Dante’s Ulysses is bound to the mast in another fashion. He, notwithstanding the protection of Athena, and after all his victories over fate, is still restless under the temptation to seek new wisdom. He goes forth past the Pillars of Hercules, cheers his crew amidst the uncompassed solitudes of the Atlantic, and perishes in sudden Charybdis of the infinite sea. In hell, the restless flame in which he is wrapt continually, among the advisers of evil, is seen, from the rocks above, like the firefly’s flitting to and fro; and the waving garment of torture, which quivers as he speaks, and aspires as he moves, condemns him to be led in eternal temptation, and to be delivered from evil nevermore.

LECTURE V.
THE POWER OF CONTENTMENT IN SCIENCE AND ART.

22nd February, 1872.

76. I must ask you, in order to make these lectures of any permanent use, to be careful in keeping note of the main conclusion at which we arrive in the course of each, and of the sequence of such results. In the first, I tried to show you that Art was only wise when unselfish in her labour; in the second, that Science was only wise when unselfish in her statement; in the third, that wise Art was the shadow, or visible reflection, of wise Science; and in the fourth, that all these conditions of good must be pursued temperately and peacefully. I have now farther to tell you that they must be pursued independently.

77. You have not often heard me use that word “independence.” And, in the sense in which of late it has been accepted, you have never heard me use it but with contempt. For the true strength of every human soul is to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon, by as many inferior as it can reach.

But to-day I use the word in a widely different sense. I think you must have felt, in what amplification I was able to give you of the idea of wisdom as an unselfish influence in Art and Science, how the highest skill and knowledge were founded in human tenderness, and that the kindly Art-wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, is only another form of the lofty Scientific charity, which rejoices ‘in the truth.’ And as the first order of Wisdom is to know thyself—though the least creature that can be known—so the first order of Charity is to be sufficient for thyself, though the least creature that can be sufficed; and thus contented and appeased, to be girded and strong for the ministry to others. If sufficient to thy day is the evil thereof, how much more should be the good!

78. I have asked you to recollect one aphorism respecting Science, one respecting Art; let me—and I will ask no more at this time of asking—press you to learn, farther, by heart, those lines of the Song of the Sirens: six lines of Homer, I trust, will not be a weariness to you—

οὐ γάρ πώ τις τῇδε παρήλασε νηι μελαἰνῃ,

πρίν γ’ ἡμέων μελίγηρυν ἀπὸ στομάτων ὄπ’ ἀκοῦσαι;

ἀλλ’ ὅγε τερψάμενος νεῖται, καὶ πλεἰονα εἰδώς.

ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ’, ὄς’ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ

Ἀργεῖοι Τρῶές τε θεῶν ἰὄτητι μόγησαν;

ἴδμεν δ’, ὅσσα γένηται ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.

Hom., Od., xii. 186.

“No one ever rowed past this way in his black ship, before he had listened to the honey-sweet singing of our lips. But he stays pleased, though he may know much. For we know all things which the Greeks and Trojans did in the wide Trojan plain, by the will of the gods, and we know what things take place in the much nourishing earth.” And this, remember, is absolutely true. No man ever went past in the black ship,—obeying the grave and sad law of life by which it is appointed for mortals to be victors on the ocean,—but he was tempted, as he drew near that deadly island, wise as he might be, (καὶ πλείονα εἰδώς,) by the voices of those who told him that they knew everything which had been done by the will of God, and everything which took place in earth for the service of man.

79. Now observe those two great temptations. You are to know everything that has been done by the will of God: and to know everything that is vital in the earth. And try to realize to yourselves, for a little while, the way in which these two siren promises have hitherto troubled the paths of men. Think of the books that have been written in false explanation of Divine Providence: think of the efforts that have been made to show that the particular conduct which we approve in others, or wish ourselves to follow, is according to the will of God. Think what ghastly convulsions in thought, and vileness in action, have been fallen into by the sects which thought they had adopted, for their patronage, the perfect purposes of Heaven. Think of the vain research, the wasted centuries of those who have tried to penetrate the secrets of life, or of its support. The elixir vitæ, the philosopher’s stone, the germ-cells in meteoric iron, ‘ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.’ But at this day, when we have loosed the last band from the masts of the black ship, and when, instead of plying every oar to escape, as the crew of Homer’s Ulysses, we row like the crew of Dante’s Ulysses, and of our oars make wings for our foolish flight,

E, volta nostra poppe nel mattino

De’ remi facemmo ale al folle volo—

the song of the sirens becomes fatal as never yet it has been in time. We think ourselves privileged, first among men, to know the secrets of Heaven, and fulfil the economy of earth; and the result is, that of all the races that yet have been put to shame by their false wisdom or false art,—which have given their labour for that which is not bread, and their strength for that which satisfieth not,—we have most madly abandoned the charity which is for itself sufficing, and for others serviceable, and have become of all creatures the most insufficient to ourselves, and the most malignant to our neighbours. Granted a given degree of knowledge—granted the ‘καὶ πλείονα εἰδώς’ in science, in art, and in literature,—and the present relations of feeling between France and Germany, between England and America, are the most horrible at once in their stupidity and malignity, that have ever taken place on the globe we inhabit, even though all its great histories, are of sin, and all its great songs, of death.

80. Gentlemen, I pray you very solemnly to put that idea of knowing all things in Heaven and Earth out of your hearts and heads. It is very little that we can ever know, either of the ways of Providence, or the laws of existence. But that little is enough, and exactly enough: to strive for more than that little is evil for us; and be assured that beyond the need of our narrow being,—beyond the range of the kingdom over which it is ordained for each of us to rule in serene αὐτάρκεια and self-possession, he that increaseth toil, increaseth folly; and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.

81. My endeavour, therefore, to-day will be to point out to you how in the best wisdom, that there may be happy advance, there must first be happy contentment; that, in one sense, we must always be entering its kingdom as a little child, and pleased yet for a time not to put away childish things. And while I hitherto have endeavoured only to show how modesty and gentleness of disposition purified Art and Science, by permitting us to recognize the superiority of the work of others to our own—to-day, on the contrary, I wish to indicate for you the uses of infantine self-satisfaction; and to show you that it is by no error or excess in our nature, by no corruption or distortion of our being, that we are disposed to take delight in the little things that we can do ourselves, more than in the great things done by other people. So only that we recognize the littleness and the greatness, it is as much a part of true Temperance to be pleased with the little we know, and the little we can do, as with the little that we have. On the one side Indolence, on the other Covetousness, are as much to be blamed, with respect to our Arts, as our possessions; and every man is intended to find an exquisite personal happiness in his own small skill, just as he is intended to find happiness in his own small house or garden, while he respects, without coveting, the grandeur of larger domains.

82. Nay, more than this: by the wisdom of Nature, it has been appointed that more pleasure may be taken in small things than in great, and more in rude Art than in the finest. Were it otherwise, we might be disposed to complain of the narrow limits which have been set to the perfection of human skill.

I pointed out to you, in a former lecture, that the excellence of sculpture had been confined in past time to the Athenian and Etrurian vales. The absolute excellence of painting has been reached only by the inhabitants of a single city in the whole world; and the faultless manner of religious architecture holds only for a period of fifty years out of six thousand. We are at present tormenting ourselves with the vain effort to teach men everywhere to rival Venice and Athens,—with the practical result of having lost the enjoyment of Art altogether;—instead of being content to amuse ourselves still with the painting and carving which were possible once, and would be pleasant always, in Paris, and London, at Strasbourg, and at York.

I do not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying that greater pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than from the finest. But what do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret, (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures. That miraculous aspect of the nature around us, was because we had seen little, and knew less. Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness; every piece of new knowledge diminishes the faculty of admiration; and Death is at last appointed to take us from a scene in which, if we were to stay longer, no gift could satisfy us, and no miracle surprise.

83. Little as I myself know, or can do, as compared with any man of essential power, my life has chanced to be one of gradual progress in the things which I began in childish choice; so that I can measure with almost mathematical exactitude the degree of feeling with which less and greater degrees of wealth or skill affect my mind.

I well remember the delight with which, when I was beginning mineralogy, I received from a friend, who had made a voyage to Peru, a little bit of limestone about the size of a hazel nut, with a small film of native silver adhering to its surface. I was never weary of contemplating my treasure, and could not have felt myself richer had I been master of the mines of Copiapo.

I am now about to use as models for your rock drawings stones which my year’s income, when I was a boy, would not have bought. But I have long ceased to take any pleasure in their possession; and am only thinking, now, to whom else they can be of use, since they can be of no more to me.

84. But the loss of pleasure to me caused by advance in knowledge of drawings has been far greater than that induced by my riches in minerals.

I have placed, in your reference series, one or two drawings of architecture, made when I was a youth of twenty, with perfect ease to myself, and some pleasure to other people. A day spent in sketching then brought with it no weariness, and infinite complacency. I know better now what drawing should be; the effort to do my work rightly fatigues me in an hour, and I never care to look at it again from that day forward.

85. It is true that men of great and real power do the best things with comparative ease; but you will never hear them express the complacency which simple persons feel in partial success. There is nothing to be regretted in this; it is appointed for all men to enjoy, but for few to achieve.

And do not think that I am wasting your time in dwelling on these simple moralities. From the facts I have been stating we must derive this great principle for all effort. That we must endeavour to do, not what is absolutely best, but what is easily within our power and adapted to our temper and condition.

86. In your educational series is a lithographic drawing, by Prout, of an old house in Strasbourg. The carvings of its woodwork are in a style altogether provincial, yet of which the origin is very distant. The delicate Renaissance architecture of Italy was affected, even in its finest periods, by a tendency to throw out convex masses at the bases of its pillars; the wood-carvers of the 16th century adopted this bulged form as their first element of ornamentation, and these windows of Strasbourg are only imitations by the German peasantry of what, in its finest type, you must seek as far away as the Duomo of Bergamo.

But the burgher, or peasant, of Alsace enjoyed his rude imitation, adapted, as it was, boldly and frankly to the size of his house and the grain of the larch logs of which he built it, infinitely more than the refined Italian enjoyed the floral luxuriance of his marble; and all the treasures of a great exhibition could not have given him the tenth part of the exultation with which he saw the gable of his roof completed over its jutting fret-work; and wrote among the rude intricacies of its sculpture, in flourished black letter, that “He and his wife had built their house with God’s help, and prayed Him to let them live long in it,—they, and their children.”

87. But it is not only the rustic method of architecture which I wish you to note in this plate; it is the rustic method of drawing also. The manner in which these blunt timber carvings are drawn by Prout is just as provincial as the carvings themselves. Born in a faraway district of England, and learning to draw, unhelped, with fishing-boats for his models; making his way instinctively until he had command of his pencil enough to secure a small income by lithographic drawing; and finding picturesque character in buildings from which all the finest lines of their carving had been effaced by time; possessing also an instinct in the expression of such subjects so peculiar as to win for him a satisfying popularity, and, far better, to enable him to derive perpetual pleasure in the seclusion of country hamlets, and the quiet streets of deserted cities,—Prout had never any motive to acquaint himself with the refinements, or contend with the difficulties, of a more accomplished art. So far from this, his manner of work was, by its very imperfection, in the most perfect sympathy with the subjects he enjoyed. The broad chalk touches in which he has represented to us this house at Strasbourg are entirely sufficient to give true idea of its effect. To have drawn its ornaments with subtlety of Leonardesque delineation would only have exposed their faults, and mocked their rusticity. The drawing would have become painful to you from the sense of the time which it had taken to represent what was not worth the labour, and to direct your attention to what could only, if closely examined, be matter of offence. But here you have a simple and provincial draughtsman happily and adequately expressing a simple and provincial architecture; nor could either builder or painter have become wiser, but to their loss.

88. Is it then, you will ask me, seriously to be recommended, and, however recommendable, is it possible, that men should remain contented with attainments which they know to be imperfect? and that now, as in former times, large districts of country, and generations of men, should be enriched or amused by the products of a clumsy ignorance? I do not know how far it is possible, but I know that wherever you desire to have true art, it is necessary. Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance discontented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity. Some years since, as I was looking through the modern gallery at the quite provincial German School of Düsseldorf, I was fain to leave all their epic and religious designs, that I might stay long before a little painting of a shepherd boy carving his dog out of a bit of deal. The dog was sitting by, with the satisfied and dignified air of a personage about for the first time in his life to be worthily represented in sculpture; and his master was evidently succeeding to his mind in expressing the features of his friend. The little scene was one which, as you know, must take place continually among the cottage artists who supply the toys of Nuremberg and Berne. Happy, these! so long as, undisturbed by ambition, they spend their leisure time in work pretending only to amuse, yet capable, in its own way, of showing accomplished dexterity, and vivid perception of nature. We, in the hope of doing great things, have surrounded our workmen with Italian models, and tempted them with prizes into competitive mimicry of all that is best, or that we imagine to be best, in the work of every people under the sun. And the result of our instruction is only that we are able to produce—I am now quoting the statement I made last May, “the most perfectly and roundly ill-done things” that ever came from human hands. I should thankfully put upon my chimney-piece the wooden dog cut by the shepherd boy; but I should be willing to forfeit a large sum rather than keep in my room the number 1 of the Kensington Museum—thus described in its catalogue—“Statue in black and white marble, of a Newfoundland dog standing on a serpent, which rests on a marble cushion;—the pedestal ornamented with Pietra Dura fruits in relief.”

89. You will, however, I fear, imagine me indulging in my usual paradox, when I assure you that all the efforts we have been making to surround ourselves with heterogeneous means of instruction, will have the exactly reverse effect from that which we intend;—and that, whereas formerly we were able only to do a little well, we are qualifying ourselves now to do everything ill. Nor is the result confined to our workmen only. The introduction of French dexterity and of German erudition has been harmful chiefly to our most accomplished artists—and in the last Exhibition of our Royal Academy there was, I think, no exception to the manifest fact that every painter of reputation painted worse than he did ten years ago.