John Ruskin

“ If they had but been taught to measure with their pitiful thoughts the tortures of battle-fields--the slowly consuming plagues of death in the starving children, and wasted age, of the innumerable desolate those battles left;--nay, in our own life of peace, the agony of unnurtured, untaught, unhelped creatures, awaking at the grave's edge to know how they should have lived; and the worse pain of those whose existence, not the ceasing of it, is death ”

“ I do not doubt but that you are surprised at my saying the arts can in their second function only be directed to the perfecting of ethical state, it being our usual impression that they are often destructive of morality. But it is impossible to direct fine art to an immoral end, except by giving it characters unconnected with its fineness, or by addressing it to persons who cannot perceive it to be fine. ”

“ But above all things, see that you be modest in your thoughts, for of this one thing we may be absolutely sure, that all our thoughts are but degrees of darkness. And in these days you have to guard against the fatallest darkness of the two opposite Prides;--the Pride of Faith, which imagines that the nature of the Deity can be defined by its convictions; and the Pride of Science, which imagines that the energy of Deity can be explained by its analysis. ”

“ The wretched in death you have always with you. Yes, and the brave and good in life you have always;--these also needing help, though you supposed they had only to help others; these also claiming to be thought for, and remembered. And you will find, if you look into history with this clue, that one of quite the chief reasons for the continual misery of mankind is that they are always divided in their worship between angels or saints, who are out of their sight, and need no help, and proud and evil-minded men, who are too definitely in their sight, and ought not to have their help. ”

“ I particularly wish you to notice how it is always by help of human art that such a result is attained, because, remember always, I am neither disputing nor asserting the truth of any theological doctrine;--that is not my province;--I am only questioning the expediency of enforcing that doctrine by the help of architecture. ”

“ The art which realises a creature of the imagination is only mischievous when that realisation is conceived to imply, or does practically induce a belief in, the real existence of the imagined personage, contrary to, or unjustified by the other evidence of its existence. But if the art only represents the personage on the understanding that its form is imaginary, then the effort at realisation is healthful and beneficial. ”

“ There are thus two distinct operations upon our mind: first, the art makes us believe what we would not otherwise have believed; and secondly, it makes us think of subjects we should not otherwise have thought of, intruding them amidst our ordinary thoughts in a confusing and familiar manner. ”

“ On the one hand, observe that you do not wilfully use the realistic power of art to convince yourselves of historical or theological statements which you cannot otherwise prove; and which you wish to prove:--on the other hand, that you do not check your imagination and conscience while seizing the truths of which they alone are cognizant, because you value too highly the scientific interest which attaches to the investigation of second causes. ”

“ But it is the function of the rightly-trained imagination to recognise, in these, and such other relative aspects, the unity of teaching which impresses, alike on our senses and our conscience, the eternal difference between good and evil: and the rule, over the clouds of heaven and over the creatures in the earth, of the same Spirit which teaches to our own hearts the bitterness of death, and strength of love. ”

“ For there are many religions, but there is only one morality. There are moral and immoral religions, which differ as much in precept as in emotion; but there is only one morality, WHICH HAS BEEN, IS, AND MUST BE FOR EVER, AN INSTINCT IN THE HEARTS OF ALL CIVILISED MEN, AS CERTAIN AND UNALTERABLE AS THEIR OUTWARD BODILY FORM, AND WHICH RECEIVES FROM RELIGION NEITHER LAW, NOR PLACE; BUT ONLY HOPE, AND FELICITY. ”

“ And if, instead of living, as they have always hitherto done, in a hellish cloud of contention and revenge, lighted by fantastic dreams of cloudy sanctities, they had sought to reward and punish justly, wherever reward and punishment were due, but chiefly to reward; and at least rather to bear testimony to the human acts which deserved God's anger or His blessing, than only, in presumptuous imagination, to display the secrets of Judgment, or the beatitudes of Eternity. ”

“ And so far as we can trace the connection of their powers with the moral character of their lives, we shall find that the best art is the work of good, but of not distinctively religious men, who, at least, are conscious of no inspiration, and often so unconscious of their superiority to others, that one of the greatest of them, Reynolds, deceived by his modesty, has asserted that "all things are possible to well-directed labour." ”

“ But now observe, it is here necessary to draw a distinction, so subtle that in dealing with facts it is continually impossible to mark it with precision, yet so vital, that not only your understanding of the power of art, but the working of your minds in matters of primal moment to you, depends on the effort you make to affirm this distinction strongly. ”

“ And until men have perfectly learned the laws of art in clay and wood, they can consummately know no others. Nor is it without the strange significance which you will find in what at first seems chance, in all noble histories, as soon as you can read them rightly,--that the statue of Athena Polias was of olive-wood, and that the Greek temple and Gothic spire are both merely the permanent representations of useful wooden structures. On these two first arts follow building in stone,--sculpture,--metal work,--and painting ”

“ What ground have we for thinking that art has ever been inspired as a message or revelation? What internal evidence is there in the work of great artists of their having been under the authoritative guidance of supernatural powers? ”

“ In that, a vast division of imaginative work is occupied in the symbolism of virtues, vices, or natural powers or passions; and in the representation of personages who, though nominally real, become in conception symbolic. In the greater part of this work there is no intention of implying the existence of the represented creature; Duerer's Melencolia and Giotto's Justice are accurately characteristic examples. Now all such art is wholly good and useful when it is the work of good men. ”

“ But I shall be able to show you, without any doubt, in the course of our studies, that the achievements of art which have been usually looked upon as the results of peculiar inspiration have been arrived at only through long courses of wisely directed labour, and under the influence of feelings which are common to all humanity. ”

“ On the other hand, you must not allow your scientific habit of trusting nothing but what you have ascertained, to prevent you from appreciating, or at least endeavouring to qualify yourselves to appreciate, the work of the highest faculty of the human mind,--its imagination,--when it is toiling in the presence of things that cannot be dealt with by any other power. ”

“ On the contrary, not only the highest, but the most consistent results have been attained in art by men in whom the faculty of vision, however strong, was subordinate to that of deliberative design, and tranquillised by a measured, continual, not feverish, but affectionate, observance of the quite unvisionary facts of the surrounding world. ”

“ We cannot with any certainty affirm the advantage or the harm of such accidental pieties, for their effect will be very different on different characters: but, without any question, the art, which makes us believe what we would not have otherwise believed, is misapplied, and in most instances very dangerously so. Our duty is to believe in the existence of Divine, or any other, persons, only upon rational proofs of their existence ”

“ For though the fine arts are not necessarily imitative or representative, for their essence is in being +peri genesin+--occupied in the actual _production_ of beautiful form or colour,--still, the highest of them are appointed also to relate to us the utmost ascertainable truth respecting visible things and moral feelings: and this pursuit of _fact_ is the vital _element_ of the art power;--that in which alone it can develop itself to its utmost. ”

“ And the more impartially you examine the phenomena of imagination, the more firmly you will be led to conclude that they are the result of the influence of the common and vital, but not, therefore, less Divine, spirit, of which some portion is given to all living creatures in such manner as may be adapted to their rank in creation; and that everything which men rightly accomplish is indeed done by Divine help, but under a consistent law which is never departed from. ”

“ Suppose, after forming such a conception, that we have the power to realise and preserve it, this image of a beautiful figure with a pleasant expression cannot but have the tendency of afterwards leading us to think of the Virgin as present, when she is not actually present; or as pleased with us, when she is not actually pleased; or if we resolutely prevent ourselves from such imagination, nevertheless the existence of the image beside us will often turn our thoughts towards subjects of religion, when otherwise they would have been differently occupied ”

“ It may be replied, that since it is impossible to consecrate the entire space of the earth, it is better thus to secure a portion of it than none: but surely, if so, we ought to make some effort to enlarge the favoured ground, and even look forward to a time when in English villages there may be a God's acre tenanted by the living, not the dead; and when we shall rather look with aversion and fear to the remnant of ground that is set apart as profane, than with reverence to a narrow portion of it enclosed as holy. ”

“ Must it not then be only because we love our own work better than His, that we respect the lucent glass, but not the lucent clouds; that we weave embroidered robes with ingenious fingers, and make bright the gilded vaults we have beautifully ordained--while yet we have not considered the heavens, the work of His fingers, nor the stars of the strange vault which He has ordained? ”

“ And farther, they form one united system from which it is impossible to remove any part without harm to the rest. They are founded first in mastery, by strength of _arm_, of the earth and sea, in agriculture and seamanship; then their inventive power begins, with the clay in the hand of the potter, whose art is the humblest but truest type of the forming of the human body and spirit; and in the carpenter's work, which probably was the early employment of the Founder of our religion. ”

“ The pure forms or states of religion hitherto known, are those in which a healthy humanity, finding in itself many foibles and sins, has imagined, or been made conscious of, the existence of higher spiritual personality, liable to no such fault or stain ”

“ The great arts--forming thus one perfect scheme of human skill, of which it is not right to call one division more honourable, though it may be more subtle, than another--have had, and can have, but three principal directions of purpose:--first, that of enforcing the religion of men ”

“ There is indeed an important school of sculpture in Spain, directed to the same objects, but not demanding at present any special attention. And finally, there is the vigorous and most interesting realistic school of our own, in modern times, mainly known to the public by Holman Hunt's picture of the Light of the World, though, I believe, deriving its first origin from the genius of the painter to whom you owe also the revival of interest, first here in Oxford, and then universally, in the cycle of early English legend,--Dante Rossetti. ”

“ But a mind imperfectly faithful, and impatient in its distress, or craving in its dulness for a more distinct and convincing sense of the Divinity, would endeavour to complete, or perhaps we should rather say to contract, its conception, into the definite figure of a woman wearing a blue or crimson dress, and having fair features, dark eyes, and gracefully arranged hair. ”

“ Again, in every mountain side, and cliff of rude sea shore, He has heaped stones one upon another of greater magnitude than those of Chartres Cathedral, and sculptured them with floral ornament,--surely not less sacred because living? ”

“ But of these feelings and powers which in different degrees are common to humanity, you are to note that there are three principal divisions: first, the instincts of construction or melody, which we share with lower animals, and which are in us as native as the instinct of the bee or nightingale; secondly, the faculty of vision, or of dreaming, whether in sleep or in conscious trance, or by voluntarily exerted fancy ”

“ I have expunged a sentence insisting farther on this point, having come to reverence more, as I grew older, every simple means of stimulating all religious belief and affection. It is the lower and realistic world which is fullest of false beliefs and vain loves. ”

“ But you can scarcely have at once felt all that I intended in saying so;--you cannot but be still partly under the impression that the so-called fine arts are merely modes of graceful recreation, and a new resource for your times of rest. Let me ask you, forthwith, so far as you can trust me, to change your thoughts in this matter. All the great arts have for their object either the support or exaltation of human life,--usually both ”

“ The same morbid instinct has also affected the minds of many among the more imaginative and powerful artists with a feverish gloom which distorts their finest work; and lastly--and this is the worst of all its effects--it has occupied the sensibility of Christian women, universally, in lamenting the sufferings of Christ, instead of preventing those of His people. ”