Born in the early part of the century, John Ruskin was of those faithful souls who have guarded the Lamp of Truth amid the rough storm of commercial upheaval, and the dead calm of international prosperity; one who has never ceased in his endeavor to induce his fellow men to see this light, and let it illumine their work, of whatever nature or quality.
He was one of the torch hearers of the nineteenth century who has not feared to cast the light he carried into the darkest phases of our civilization, his enthusiasm has never flagged, his direct truthfulness has not faltered. Like one of the prophets of old crying to the people to leave their idols and turn to the true god, he has ever proclaimed the highest, the best and the noblest. "There is in man," says Carlyle, "a higher than love of happiness, he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness. Was it not to preach forth this same higher that sages and martyrs, poet and priest, in all times have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony through life and death, of the God-like that is in man, and how in the Godlike only has he strength and freedom!"
This counsel of perfection is Ruskin's gospel. "For all noble things," he says, "the time is long and the way rude. Patience and submission to the eternal laws of Pain and Time, and acceptance of them as inevitable, smiling at the grief, with heart of peace accept the pain, and attend the hours; and as the husbandman in his waiting, you shall see first the blade, and then the ear, and then the laughing of the valleys. But refuse the law and seek to do your work in your own time — and you shall have no harvest."
"A great idealist never can be egotistic," says Ruskin, "the whole of his power depends upon his losing his sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and scribe of visions, always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting continually that he cannot completely reflect, nor clearly utter all he has seen." Again he writes. "I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility doubt of his own powers, or hesitation of speaking his opinions; but a right understanding of the revelation between what he can do and say and the rest of the world's doings and sayings." Such men have "a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that greatness is not in them, but through them, that they could not do or be anything else than God made them; and they see something divine and god-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful."
John Ruskin was born in 1819; he spent most of his childhood at Herne Hill, where his father, a prosperous wine merchant, had purchased a house. Recounting some of the advantages of his childish education he says: "Best and truest of all blessings I had been taught the perfect meaning of peace, in thought, act, and word." Never, he says, had he heard his father's or mother's voice raised in any question with each other, nor seen an angry, or even a slightly hurt, or offended glance in the eyes of either; never heard or saw a servant scolded, nor saw any disorder in household matters, nor had he any idea of anxiety. In this way was preserved to him what he calls, "This priceless gift of peace." He also received a perfect understanding of the nature of obedience and faith, he learned to obey every word of father and mother, simply as a ship her helm. Nothing was promised that was not given, nothing ever threatened that was not inflicted, and nothing told that was not true. "Peace, obedience, faith, these three for chief good, next to these the habit of fixed attention, with both eyes and mind, — this being the main practical faculty of my life, but," he goes on to say, "I had nothing to love."
This want of love was deeply felt. He pathetically relates that his parents were to him "in a sort, visible powers of nature, no more loved than the sun and moon." So this little being spent an isolated childhood, though so carefully trained and anxiously watched. Still he was happy, living in a world of his own creation. Anne Richie (Thackeray's daughter), writing of the childhood of Ruskin, says: "Almost every child has some natural glamour and instinct of its own, by which the glare of life is softened, and the first steep ways garlanded, and eased, and charmed. We call those men poets who retain this divine faculty all their lives, and who are able to continue looking at the world with the clear gaze of childhood. Such a poet was Ruskin if ever man was one."
Ruskin was entered at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1837, his parents having set their hearts on his going into the church, but though that was not to be, he has ever been a teacher, and a preacher of the church not built with hands. The great Universal Brotherhood of men acknowledge him as one of the teachers who have been sent by those who know, for he has ever upheld truth, and declaimed against falseness. Ruskin describes the first sermon he ever preached, he remembers himself as a very little boy, thumping on a red cushion before him, saying, "People be good!" This has been his theme ever since. After taking his degree at Oxford, he began to ask himself what his work in the world was to be. What should he do so as to be of the greatest help to his fellow men? and soon after this, on publishing the first volume of Modem Painters, he seemed to feel where his power lay, and to understand the message he had to deliver. It is the right understanding of the work he has to do that often constitutes the success or failure of the worker. Speaking of his time he says. "I must get on to the days of opening sight, and effective labor, and to the scenes of noble education which all men who keep their hearts open receive to the end of their days.'" That he has kept this open heart all through his life, is very apparent, as one perceives how his earlier ideas and criticisms are modified, and often altered for broader, wider views of life and art.
Writing of Modern Painters, he says, the second volume was not meant to be in "the least like what it is.'" Going to Italy to revise his first impressions of art, he found much to see that had before escaped him. and much that he had already seen that was viewed through a different medium; his gaze was now profounder, his insight deeper. Writing of his life in Italy at this period, he says: "Serious, enthusiastic, worship and wonder and work; up at six, drawing, studying, thinking, breaking bread and drinking wine at intervals; homeward the moment the sun went down."' This was the sort of life our poet and seer led, while he was putting his noble thoughts into words.
It is about this period that Ruskin seems to have come under the influence of Carlyle, whom he speaks of as one of the three great masters who had helped to form his character, the others being Tinteretto and Turner, the first having died two hundred years before, while Turner was still in his prime. What Carlyle thought of Ruskin is shown by a letter he wrote to Emerson about this time. He says: "There is nothing going on among us as notable to me as these fierce lightning bolts Ruskin is copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of anarchy all around him. No other man in England that I meet has the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and baseness, that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to have."
Ruskin's intuition and vivid imagination, when brought into combination with his capacity for work, and his great love of nature, were not to be exceeded. "My entire delight," he writes, "was in observing without being observed: if I could have been invisible all the better. I was absolutely interested in men and their ways, as I was interested in marmots, and chamois, and trout, the living habitation of the world, the grazing and nesting in it, the spiritual power of the air, the rocks, the water; to be in the midst of it, and rejoice and wonder at it; this is the root of all that I have usefully become." This extract shows his sympathy with all creatures, all that lives, from the elements up to man: all life he saw was but part of the One Life, that divine essence that throbs through the universe.
All architecture Ruskin held embodied certain stages and crises of the human evolution. "The Seven Lamps" was written to show that "certain right states of temper, and moral feeling, were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced." In the Stones of Venice, he endeavors to prove that the Gothic architecture of Venice sprang from, and displayed "a state of pure faith, and of domestic virtue, and that its renaissance architecture rose from a state of concealed national infidelity and domestic corruption."
Everything had for him a moral and a meaning. He loved to dwell on things as they should be, rather than as they are. "In these books of mine," he says in Modern Painters, "their distinctive character as essays on art is their bringing everything to a root in a human passion, or a human hope." Ruskin has many wonderful thoughts on color harmony and symbolism. In Deucalion we note this passage: "In these natural relations of color the human sight, in health, is joyfully sensitive, as the ear is to the harmonies of sound: but what healthy sight is you may well suppose I have not time to define — the nervous powers of the eye being dependent on the perfect purity of the blood supplied to the brain, as well as on the entire soundness of the nervous tissue to which that blood is supplied: and how much is required through the thoughts and conduct of generations to make the new blood of our race of children, it is for your physicians to tell you when they have themselves discovered this medicinal truth, that the divine laws of the life of men cannot be learned in the pain and death of brutes."
Writing on the symbolic meaning of colors, he tells us that "Or, or gold, stands between the light and darkness as the sun who rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course, between morning and evening. Its heraldic name is Sol, and it stands for the strength and honor of all men who run their race in noble work, whose path is as a shining light. Purpure, or purple, is the kingly color: it is rose color darkened or saddened with blue, the color of love in noble or divine sorrow, borne by the kings whose witness is in heaven, and their labor on the earth. Its stone is Jacinth. Hyacinth and Amethyst." "You hear me tell you this positively and without hesitation." he says, "what these things mean, but mind you I tell you so after thirty years' work, and that directed wholly to the end of finding out the truth, whether it was pretty or ugly to look in the face of." He goes on to tell us that he has found that "the ultimate truth, the central truth, is always pretty, but there is a superficial truth, or halfway truth which may be very ugly, which the earnest and faithful worker has to face, and fight, and pass over the body of, feeling it to be his enemy, but which a careless-seeker may be stopped by, and a misbelieving seeker will be delighted and stay with gladly."
Of symbols he says: "It is perfectly true that every great symbol, as it has on one side a meaning of comfort, has on the other side one of terror; and if to noble persons it speaks of noble things, to ignoble persons it will as necessarily speak of ignoble things." Again he says, "Under all these heraldic symbols, as there is for thoughtful and noble persons the spiritual sense, so for thoughtless and sensual persons there is the sensual one, and can be no other. Every word has only the meaning its hearer can receive." "The symbols can only reflect to you what you have made your own mind, what you have determined for your own fate."
Ruskin has recorded that he perceived very early in life the deep sanctity of nature, from the least object to the greatest. Nature he seems to view as a great entity which caused him a feeling of intense awe mixed with delight; it was as if he recognised a vast being — a Planetary Spirit — causing an indefinable thrill, indicative of an entity beyond the normal human ken, but recognizable by one who can ascend into the higher realms of vision. "It is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies," he writes; "not in the clash of the hail, or in the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice."
Ruskin is one of the most eloquent writers on the beauties of nature that England has produced, and sees plainly that every form of life is simply another medium through which the divine manifests; "this life that passes through form after form," he says, "from rocks, flowers, trees, animals, culminates in man — man within whom the divine essence is able to function — and returns to God who gave it." And again he writes, "Nature worship will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a great spirit as no mere reasoning can induce."
Some years ago Ruskin wrote an article in a current magazine on the "Nature and Authority of Miracles." In this paper he says he thinks it impossible to know what are the laws of Nature, and also impossible to determine if the laws so called by man are absolute, or if they are not amenable to other forces of which our finite intellect is not cognizant. "I know so little," he says, "and this little I know is so inexplicable, that I dare not say anything is wonderful because it is strange to me, and not wonderful because it is familiar." He implies that it is the abnormal that often gives the key to the normal, as the momentary flash of the lightning illumines the landscape. It is not the uniform forces, but the rare ones, that put us in connection with those divine powers which we know encircle us, though our corporeal eyes are not yet able to view them. Spiritual influence has ever been intermittent; in other words, the medium is not always able to transmit the light, and then occur those periods of spiritual darkness when there is no "open vision," no power to reflect the light. So Ruskin seems to say that what are called miracles, though superhuman, need not be supernatural. It is indeed true that the laws of Nature are far too vast for our interpretation; we may be quite sure that those laws, did we know them, are absolute and eternally fixed, but with our limited knowledge how can we tell what is a law, or what its limits are? When we can lay claim to true wisdom, when our intelligence is illuminated by the light of divine insight, then, perhaps, we might venture to say if the laws of nature extend to the marvels we sometimes call miracles, and if they are not the outcome of some law of which we are now ignorant.
The bond that unites us to our fellow men, "the electric chain by which we are darkly bound," is a subject of deep thought for our philosopher; in unity he perceives the strength of the race for action. He says, "The love of the human race is increased by their individual differences, and the unity of the creature made perfect by each having something to bestow, and to receive, bound to the rest by a thousand various necessities, and various gratitudes, humility in each rejoicing to admire in his fellows that which he finds not in himself, and each being, in some respect, the complement of his race." And again he says, "There is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature but it is capable of a unity of some kind with other creatures. The unity of earthly creatures is their power, and their peace, the living peace of trust, and the living power of support of hands that hold each other and are still."
"It is good," says Ruskin, "to read of that kindness and humility of Saint Francis of Assisi, who spoke never to bird, or cicada, nor even to wolf, and beasts of prey, but as his brothers, and so we find are moved the minds of all good and mighty men." Ruskin, who felt this brotherhood with all that lives, was much drawn to St. Francis. He tells a story of his own life while in Rome which might be mentioned here as typical of this brotherhood. He was in the habit of giving alms to the poor he met in the streets, and among these he was especially attracted, by his beautiful and sad expression, to a begging friar, who stood on the steps of the Pincio. This man generally received a gift from him as he passed. One day the grateful beggar endeavored to kiss the hand of his benefactor, who, drawing his hand away with sudden impulse, bent down and kissed the beggar's cheek. The next day the poor man called at Ruskin's house to offer a gift, which he said was a relic of St. Francis d'Assisi, a small portion of rough brown cloth, that had formed part of the saint's robe. Ruskin then remembered that he had once dreamed that he was a Franciscan friar, and in this way he was led to make a pilgrimage to the convent of St. Francis of Assisi, where he first saw those frescoes of Giotto, which he found more beautiful than anything that Tintoretto, whom he had so much admired, had produced.
Was it, perhaps, St. Francis himself, who, in the form of the beggar, led the master to the shrine where he found what so delighted him? At least it shows that the love of all beings, the seeing the divine shining through the lowliest of creatures brings its own reward, and whoso gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones hears the refrain, "Ye have done it unto me." So he who has such power to penetrate into the heart of things, into the life of the crystal, nay, even that in the commonest stone, or bit of stick, he has also power to see that the divine spirit of harmony and life permeates all men.
Deucalion, which Ruskin calls "A collection of studies of lapse of waves, and life of stones," he dedicates to Proserpine and Deucalion, "because," he says, "I think it well that young students should first learn the myths of betrayal and redemption and the spirit which moved on the face of the wide first waters as taught to the heathen world, and because in this power, Proserpine and Deucalion are at least as true as Eve or Noah, and all four incomparably truer than the Darwinian theory. And in general the reader may take it for a first principle both in science and literature, that the feeblest myth is better than the strongest theory; the one recording a national impression on the imaginations of great men and unpretending multitudes; the other an unnatural exertion of the wits of little men, and half wits of impertinent multitudes."
Speaking of the tendency to burlesque everything, so prevalent in our time, Ruskin says that it is the "effervescence from the putrid instincts which fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the luxury of European capitals, the mocking levity and gloom being equally signs of the death of the soul; just as contrariwise, a passionate seriousness, and a passionate joyfulness are signs of its full life." He goes on to say, "It is to recover this stern seriousness, this pure and thrilling joy, together with perpetual sense of spiritual presence, that all true education of youth must now be directed. This seriousness, this passion, this universal religion, are the first principles, the true root of all art, as they are of all doing, and all being. Get this vis viva first and all great work will follow."
Ruskin defines the difference between religion and superstition in the following passage, "Superstition," he says, "is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man, who is present in some places, not in others, who makes some places holy, and not others; who is kind or unkind, pleased or angry, according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest." This, he says, "whatever form of faith it colors is the essence of superstition. And Religion is the belief in a spirit, — to whom all creatures, times, or things are everlastingly holy, and who claims all the days we live, and all the things we are, but who claims that totally because he delights only in the delight of his creatures; and because, therefore, the one duty they owe Him, and the only service they can render Him, — is to be happy. A spirit, therefore, whose eternal benevolence cannot be angered, cannot be appeased; whose laws are everlasting, so that heaven and earth must indeed pass away if one jot of them failed; laws which attach to every wrong and every error a measured, inevitable penalty; to every rightness and prudence an assured reward; penalty of which the remittance cannot be purchased; and reward of which the promise cannot be broken."
This sounds like an exposition of the Law of Karma. Ruskin goes on to show us the effect of this true religion on Art, and the baleful influence of superstition. "Religion" he remarks, "devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of the Gods; superstition makes him the slave of ecclestiastic pride, or forbids his work altogether in terror or disdain. Religion perfects the form of the divine statue, superstition distorts it into ghastly grotesque. Religion contemplates the Gods as the lords of healing and life, surrounds them with glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human beauty. Superstition contemplates its idols as lords of death, appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture and solitude. Religion proselytes by love, superstition by persecution. Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptians, golden temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian."
Ruskin tells us that there is only one way in which we can assure good art, and that is "to enjoy it." If what is false or second rate appeals to us, we shall only get that. He says "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." Of all the greatest works we do not say, "there has been great effort," but there has been great power here. This he adds, "is not the weariness of mortality but the strength of divinity." But, he thinks the man of genius is, as a rule, more ready to work than other people, and is often so little conscious of the divinity in himself, that he is apt to ascribe his power to his work, and has said when asked how he became what he is, "If I am anything, which I much doubt, I have made myself so merely by labor." This was Newton's way of speaking of himself, and Ruskin thinks that it would be the general tone of men whose genius had been devoted to natural sciences.
Genius in art, he thinks, must be more self conscious, "It is no man's business whether he has genius or not," he continues, "work he must, whatever he is, but quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced result of such work will be always the things God meant him to do and will be his best. No agonies nor heart rendings will enable him to do any better. If he be a great man they will be great things; if a small man, small things; but always if thus peacefully done, good and right; always if restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and despicable."
Ruskin speaks of the men who have made art their profession, and says that they are not generally happy men; the reason, he thinks, is that "they are expected, and themselves expect, to make their bread by being clever — not by steady or quiet work; and are therefore, for the most part, trying to be clever, and so living in an utterly false state of mind and action." What is the artist's true function? What his real work? Ruskin believes that that work is a religious one, that the artist has power to give reality to forms of faith, and truth to ancient myths and histories, by giving visible shape to them. The art of any country, he says, is the "exponent of its social and political virtues."
Speaking of the morality of art, he says, "So far from Art being immoral, little else except Art is moral; life without industry is guilt, and industry without Art is brutality; and for the words 'good,' and 'wicked,' used of men, you may almost substitute the words 'makers,' or 'destroyers.' " The true workers, he says, "redeem inch by inch the wilderness into the garden ground; by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely sustained, there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on toward the perfect day."
One of the most popular of Ruskin's books is "Sesame and Lilies." It is divided into two parts: "Sesame, or King's treasuries," and "Lilies, or Queen's gardens." Under the former heading he has much to say to us of books and how to read them.
He tells us of "Bread made of that old enchanted Arabic grain the Sesame, which opens doors; doors not of robbers, but of Kings' Treasuries." He says this food for the mind, this power we all have, of becoming conversant with the thoughts and feelings of great and divinely taught men, is given us through books. All books, he tells us, "are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour and the book of all time." "The real book is written when the author has something to say which he believes to be ture, and useful or helpfully beautiful," and this he must say as clearly and melodiously as he can. "He would fain set it down for ever, engrave it on rock if he could; saying 'this is the best of me,' for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, and loved, and hated, like another, my life was as the vapor and is not; but this I saw and knew." He goes on to say that books of this kind have been written in all ages by great thinkers; that we have the choice of all these, and that life is short, — then speaking of the possibilities of this short life he says: "Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable boy, when you may talk with Queens and Kings! Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on no other terms; you must, in a word, love these people if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use."
If an author is worth anything, we cannot get at his meaning all at once, for while he says what he means, he cannot say it all; the deepest thought is hidden away and given as a reward to those who seek long enough. "No book is worth anything which is not worth much, nor is it serviceable until it has been read and re-read and loved and loved again, and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it as the soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store."
Of education, Ruskin says it is not "the equalizer, but the discerner of men." So far from being instrumental for gathering riches, "the first lesson of wisdom is to disdain them and of gentleness to diffuse." He thinks it is not yet possible for all men to be gentlemen, as even under the best training some will be too selfish to refuse wealth and some too dull to desire leisure, but even that might be possible, he says, "if England truly desired her supremacy among the nations to be in kindness and in learning," and he continues, "above all, it is needful that we do this by redeeming the people from their present pain of self contempt, and by giving them rest." We ought, he says, to aim at an "ideal national life," when none of the employments shall be unhappy, or debasing in their tendency.
Speaking of the Theatre and the Museum as means of noble education, he says: "Dramatic and Didactic Art should be universally national, but the museum is only for what is eternally right and well done according to divine law and human skill; the least things are to be there, and the greatest; but all good with the goodness that makes a child cheerful and an old man calm; the simple should go there to learn, the wise to remember." Ruskin spent some of the best years of his life in endeavoring to show the beauty and excellence of Turner's work; he then had perfect faith in the power of great truth, or beauty to prevail, and take its rightful place. But he found, or seemed to find, that his time had been wasted, and what grieved him most in this disappointment was the discovery that the most splendid genius in art might be allowed to labor and perish unknown, "that in the very fineness of this art there might be something rendering it invisible to ordinary eyes." That was the first mystery of life revealed to him.
But he goes on to tell us that the more his life disappointed him, "the more solemn and wonderful it became;" it seemed as if "the vanity of it was indeed given in vain, but that there was something behind the veil of it which was not vanity." He saw that the failure, and the success in petty things, that was worse than failure, both came from "an earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of existence, and to bring it to a noble end;" and he came to see that all enduring success in art, or in any occupation, comes from a solemn faith in the advancing power of human nature, however gradual; and in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that the mortal part would be swallowed up in immortality. Ruskin speaks of Turner as "a man of sympathy absolutely infinite, a sympathy so all-embracing," that he knows of "nothing comparable to it but that of Shakespeare." Contrasting Turner and Millais, he says: "They stand at opposite poles, making culminating points of art. They are among the few men who have defied all false teaching, and have, therefore, in great measure done justice to the gift with which they were entrusted." So Ruskin gives out his gospel of Love and Beauty. To him the Artist is one of the chief mediums through which this message reaches the people. The function of the true artist is to be a seeing and a feeling creature, an instrument, so sensitive, so tender, that the most evanescent expression of things visible shall not escape him, and the invisible also shall so affect his work that the soul of it shall be understood by those that look on it; his place is neither to judge nor to argue, but to gaze, to perceive both what is visible to the outer vision and that inner sight "which is the bliss of solitude."
Let us all cultivate this artistic vision and endeavor to attain to this fount of joy and beauty, that might be such a power wherewith to aid Humanity. All literature, all art, should be studied with the view of gaining power to help those who have not this knowledge. It is this power over the illiterate, the unhappy, which is in the truest sense "kingly," and this, the "only one pure kind of kingship," enables one to guide and raise others not so endowed.
All true education should be used first to obtain this kingship, this divine power over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over those around us, who need our aid. Ruskin recognizes in all his works the idea of humanity advancing through long ages to a state of perfection; and that this natural evolution can be hastened by the mutual aid of each individual, when banded together in a strong phalanx. Already those of clear vision discern signs of a change, a new influence is abroad, occult powers are working, and there seems to be a presentiment in the hearts of many that a new era is dawning, when all men will indeed be brothers.