The Crown of Wild Olive
noble enchantment for those who can use them; for those who cannot, I am
content to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, in the appendix to
the _Two Paths_--
"The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and
we may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his
meaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless and unredeemable
mistake, is the fool's thought, that he had _no_ meaning."
APPENDIX VI.--(p. 84)
The derivation of words is like that of rivers: there is one real
source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up among the
hills; then, as the word flows on and comes into service, it takes in
the force of other words from other sources, and becomes quite another
word--often much more than one word, after the junction--a word as it
were of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole
force of our English "charity" depends on the guttural in "charis"
getting confused with the c of the Latin "carus;" thenceforward
throughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on together, and both got
confused with St. Paul's [Greek: agape], which expresses a different
idea in all sorts of ways; our "charity" having not only brought in the
entirely foreign sense of alms-giving, but lost the essential sense of
contentment, and lost much more in getting too far away from the
"charis" of the final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine
Christianity we have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual
grace or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enough
to hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains; and
which, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness of its own
debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the throat,
saying,--not merely "Pay me that thou owest," but "Pay me that thou
owest me _not_."
It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a difference, and
call it "Herb o' grace o' Sundays," taking consolation out of the
offertory with--"Look, what he layeth out; it shall be paid him again."
Comfortable words indeed, and good to set against the old royalty of
Largesse--
Whose moste joie was, I wis,
When that she gave, and said, "Have this."
[I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of Chaucer. We
have heard only too much lately of "Indiscriminate charity," with
implied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination merely, but of the Charity
also. We have partly succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor the
idea that it is disgraceful to receive; and are likely, without much
difficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it is
disgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great state makes
both giving and receiving graceful; and the political economy of true
religion interprets the saying that "it is more blessed to give than to
receive," not as the promise of reward in another life for mortified
selfishness in this, but as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet and
better nature, which does not mortify itself in giving.]
_Brantwood, Coniston,_
_5th October, 1871._
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[95] [Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected my
type, the "existing" war best illustrative of the sentence would be
between Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.]
[96] Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in _Aratra Pentelici_.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM
To
FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ
OF FARNLEY
THESE PAGES
WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED
BY HIS KINDNESS
ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND
JOHN RUSKIN
PREFACE.
Eight years ago, in the close of the first volume of "Modern Painters,"
I ventured to give the following advice to the young artists of
England:--
"They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her
laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to
penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and
scorning nothing." Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinite
labor and humiliation in the following it; and was therefore, for the
most part, rejected.
It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, by a
group of men who, for their reward, have been assailed with the most
scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the public
press. I have, therefore, thought it due to them to contradict the
directly false statements which have been made respecting their works;
and to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in some
respects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute.
Denmark Hill,
Aug. 1851.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to live
in this world without working: but it seems to me no less evident that
He intends every man to be happy in his work. It is written, "in the
sweat of thy brow," but it was never written, "in the breaking of thine
heart," thou shalt eat bread; and I find that, as on the one hand,
infinite misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what
was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various springs of
mischief in matters in which they should have had no concern, so on the
other hand, no small misery is caused by over-worked and unhappy people,
in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force
upon others, of work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their
being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some
kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may
be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit
for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of
success in it--not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of
other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather
knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done,
whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a
man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of
his work, but a good judge of his work.
The first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his parents or
masters have not done it for him, is to find out what he is fit for. In
which inquiry a man may be very safely guided by his likings, if he be
not also guided by his pride. People usually reason in some such
fashion as this: "I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm
of ---- & Co., therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor
of the Exchequer." Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus: "I don't
seem quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of ---- & Co., but I
daresay I might do something in a small green-grocery business; I used
to be a good judge of peas;" that is to say, always trying lower instead
of trying higher, until they find bottom: once well set on the ground, a
man may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one in
his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind of humility is
rendered especially difficult in these days, by the contumely thrown on
men in humble employments. The very removal of the massy bars which once
separated one class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold
more shameful in foolish people's, i. e. in most people's eyes, to
remain in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When a man
born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely different species of
animal from a man born of a noble, it made him no more uncomfortable or
ashamed to remain that different species of animal, than it makes a
horse ashamed to remain a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now
that a man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate himself,
unreproached, with people once far above him, not only is the natural
discontentedness of humanity developed to an unheard-of extent, whatever
a man's position, but it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in
the state he was born in, and everybody thinks it his _duty_ to try to
be a "gentleman." Persons who have any influence in the management of
public institutions for charitable education know how common this
feeling has become. Hardly a day passes but they receive letters from
mothers who want all their six or eight sons to go to college, and make
the grand tour in the long vacation, and who think there is something
wrong in the foundations of society, because this is not possible. Out
of every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason of
the writers' importunity, their desire to keep their families in such
and such a "station of life." There is no real desire for the safety,
the discipline, or the moral good of the children, only a panic horror
of the inexpressibly pitiable calamity of their living a ledge or two
lower on the molehill of the world--a calamity to be averted at any cost
whatever, of struggle, anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not
believe that any greater good could be achieved for the country, than
the change in public feeling on this head, which might be brought about
by a few benevolent men, undeniably in the class of "gentlemen," who
would, on principle, enter into some of our commonest trades, and make
them honorable; showing that it was possible for a man to retain his
dignity, and remain, in the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his
time was every day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving
customers over a counter. I do not in the least see why courtesy, and
gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, and courage, and
truth, and piety, and what else goes to make up a gentleman's character,
should not be found behind a counter as well as elsewhere, if they were
demanded, or even hoped for, there.
Let us suppose, then, that the man's way of life and manner of work have
been discreetly chosen; then the next thing to be required is, that he
do not over-work himself therein. I am not going to say anything here
about the various errors in our systems of society and commerce, which
appear (I am not sure if they ever do more than appear) to force us to
over-work ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still more
fruitful cause of unhealthy toil--the incapability, in many men, of
being content with the little that is indeed necessary to their
happiness. I have only a word or two to say about one special cause of
over-work--the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and the
hope of accomplishing them by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is
pernicious; not only making men over-work themselves, but rendering all
the work they do unwholesome to them. I say it is a vain hope, and let
the reader be assured of this (it is a truth all-important to the best
interests of humanity). _No great intellectual thing was ever done by
great effort_; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he
does it _without_ effort. Nothing is, at present, less understood by us
than this--nothing is more necessary to be understood. Let me try to say
it as clearly, and explain it as fully as I may.
I have said no great _intellectual_ thing: for I do not mean the
assertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it seems to me
that just because we are intended, as long as we live, to be in a state
of intense moral effort, we are _not_ intended to be in intense physical
or intellectual effort. Our full energies are to be given to the soul's
work--to the great fight with the Dragon--the taking the kingdom of
heaven by force. But the body's work and head's work are to be done
quietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor brain are
ever to be strained to their utmost; that is not the way in which the