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Title: Lectures on Art
       Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870

Author: John Ruskin

Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19164]

Language: English

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[Transcriber's note:  Transliteration of Greek words appears between + signs.]




        Library Edition

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN


       CROWN OF WILD OLIVE

         TIME AND TIDE

        QUEEN OF THE AIR

  LECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPE

         ARATRA PENTELICI


     NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
          NEW YORK CHICAGO

               ***

          LECTURES ON ART.

            DELIVERED

            BEFORE THE

        UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

        IN HILARY TERM, 1870.

               ***




             CONTENTS.


             LECTURE I.

INAUGURAL                             1

             LECTURE II.

THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION      24

             LECTURE III.

THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS        46

             LECTURE IV.

THE RELATION OF ART TO USE           66

             LECTURE V.

LINE                                 86

             LECTURE VI.

LIGHT                               102

             LECTURE VII.

COLOUR                              123




PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1887.


The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work
done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of
circumstance. They were written and delivered while my mother yet lived,
and had vividest sympathy in all I was attempting;--while also my
friends put unbroken trust in me, and the course of study I had followed
seemed to fit me for the acceptance of noble tasks and graver
responsibilities than those only of a curious traveler, or casual
teacher.

Men of the present world may smile at the sanguine utterances of the
first four lectures: but it has not been wholly my own fault that they
have remained unfulfilled; nor do I retract one word of hope for the
success of other masters, nor a single promise made to the sincerity of
the student's labor, on the lines here indicated. It would have been
necessary to my success, that I should have accepted permanent residence
in Oxford, and scattered none of my energy in other tasks. But I chose
to spend half my time at Coniston Waterhead; and to use half my force in
attempts to form a new social organization,--the St. George's
Guild,--which made all my Oxford colleagues distrustful of me, and many
of my Oxford hearers contemptuous. My mother's death in 1871, and that
of a dear friend in 1875, took away the personal joy I had in anything I
wrote or designed: and in 1876, feeling unable for Oxford duty, I
obtained a year's leave of rest, and, by the kind and wise counsel of
Prince Leopold, went to Venice, to reconsider the form into which I had
cast her history in the abstract of it given in the "Stones of Venice."

The more true and close view of that history, begun in "St. Mark's
Rest," and the fresh architectural drawings made under the stimulus of
it, led me forward into new fields of thought, inconsistent with the
daily attendance needed by my Oxford classes; and in my discontent with
the state I saw them in, and my inability to return to their guidance
without abandonment of all my designs of Venetian and Italian history,
began the series of vexations which ended in the very nearly mortal
illness of 1878.

Since, therefore, the period of my effective action in Oxford was only
from 1870 to 1875, it can scarcely be matter of surprise or reproof that
I could not in that time obtain general trust in a system of teaching
which, though founded on that of Da Vinci and Reynolds, was at variance
with the practice of all recent European academy schools; nor
establish--on the unassisted resources of the Slade Professorship--the
schools of Sculpture, Architecture, Metal-work, and manuscript
Illumination, of which the design is confidently traced in the four
inaugural lectures.

In revising the book, I have indicated as in the last edition of the
"Seven Lamps," passages which the student will find generally
applicable, and in all their bearings useful, as distinguished from
those regarding only their immediate subject. The relative importance of
these broader statements, I again indicate by the use of capitals or
italics; and if the reader will index the sentences he finds useful for
his own work, in the blank pages left for that purpose at the close of
the volume, he will certainly get more good of them than if they had
been grouped for him according to the author's notion of their contents.

SANDGATE, _10th January, 1888_.




LECTURES ON ART




LECTURE I

INAUGURAL


1. The duty which is to-day laid on me, of introducing, among the
elements of education appointed in this great University, one not only
new, but such as to involve in its possible results some modification of
the rest, is, as you well feel, so grave, that no man could undertake it
without laying himself open to the imputation of a kind of insolence;
and no man could undertake it rightly, without being in danger of having
his hands shortened by dread of his task, and mistrust of himself.

And it has chanced to me, of late, to be so little acquainted either
with pride or hope, that I can scarcely recover so much as I now need,
of the one for strength, and of the other for foresight, except by
remembering that noble persons, and friends of the high temper that
judges most clearly where it loves best, have desired that this trust
should be given me: and by resting also in the conviction that the
goodly tree whose roots, by God's help, we set in earth to-day, will not
fail of its height because the planting of it is under poor auspices, or
the first shoots of it enfeebled by ill gardening.


2. The munificence of the English gentleman to whom we owe the founding
of this Professorship at once in our three great Universities, has
accomplished the first great group of a series of changes now taking
gradual effect in our system of public education, which, as you well
know, are the sign of a vital change in the national mind, respecting
both the principles on which that education should be conducted, and the
ranks of society to which it should extend. For, whereas it was formerly
thought that the discipline necessary to form the character of youth was
best given in the study of abstract branches of literature and
philosophy, it is now thought that the same, or a better, discipline may
be given by informing men in early years of the things it will be of
chief practical advantage to them afterwards to know; and by permitting
to them the choice of any field of study which they may feel to be best
adapted to their personal dispositions. I have always used what poor
influence I possessed in advancing this change; nor can any one rejoice
more than I in its practical results. But the completion--I will not
venture to say, correction--of a system established by the highest
wisdom of noble ancestors, cannot be too reverently undertaken: and it
is necessary for the English people, who are sometimes violent in change
in proportion to the reluctance with which they admit its necessity, to
be now, oftener than at other times, reminded that the object of
instruction here is not primarily attainment, but discipline; and that a
youth is sent to our Universities, not (hitherto at least) to be
apprenticed to a trade, nor even always to be advanced in a profession;
but, always, to be made a gentleman and a scholar.


3. To be made these,--if there is in him the making of either. The
populaces of civilised countries have lately been under a feverish
impression that it is possible for all men to be both; and that having
once become, by passing through certain mechanical processes of
instruction, gentle and learned, they are sure to attain in the sequel
the consummate beatitude of being rich.

Rich, in the way and measure in which it is well for them to be so, they
may, without doubt, _all_ become. There is indeed a land of Havilah open
to them, of which the wonderful sentence is literally true--"The gold of
_that_ land is good." But they must first understand, that education, in
its deepest sense, is not the equaliser, but the discerner, of men;[1]
and that, so far from being instruments for the collection of riches,
the first lesson of wisdom is to disdain them, and of gentleness, to
diffuse.

[Footnote 1: The full meaning of this sentence, and of that which closes
the paragraph, can only be understood by reference to my more developed
statements on the subject of Education in "Modern Painters" and in "Time
and Tide." The following fourth paragraph is the most pregnant summary
of my political and social principles I have ever been able to give.]

It is not therefore, as far as we can judge, yet possible for all men to
be gentlemen and scholars. Even under the best training some will remain
too selfish to refuse wealth, and some too dull to desire leisure. But
many more might be so than are now; nay, perhaps all men in England
might one day be so, if England truly desired her supremacy among the
nations to be in kindness and in learning. To which good end, it will
indeed contribute that we add some practice of the lower arts to our
scheme of University education; but the thing which is vitally necessary
is, that we should extend the spirit of University education to the
practice of the lower arts.


4. And, above all, it is needful that we do this by redeeming them from
their present pain of self-contempt, and by giving them _rest_. It has
been too long boasted as the pride of England, that out of a vast
multitude of men, confessed to be in evil case, it was possible for
individuals, by strenuous effort, and rare good fortune, occasionally to
emerge into the light, and look back with self-gratulatory scorn upon
the occupations of their parents, and the circumstances of their
infancy. Ought we not rather to aim at an ideal of national life, when,
of the employments of Englishmen, though each shall be distinct, none
shall be unhappy or ignoble; when mechanical operations, acknowledged to
be debasing in their tendency,[2] shall be deputed to less fortunate and
more covetous races; when advance from rank to rank, though possible to
all men, may be rather shunned than desired by the best; and the chief
object in the mind of every citizen may not be extrication from a
condition admitted to be disgraceful, but fulfilment of a duty which
shall be also a birthright?

[Footnote 2: "+technai epirretoi+," compare page 81.]


5. And then, the training of all these distinct classes will not be by
Universities of general knowledge, but by distinct schools of such
knowledge as shall be most useful for every class: in which, first the
principles of their special business may be perfectly taught, and
whatever higher learning, and cultivation of the faculties for receiving
and giving pleasure, may be properly joined with that labour, taught in
connection with it. Thus, I do not despair of seeing a School of
Agriculture, with its fully-endowed institutes of zoology, botany, and
chemistry; and a School of Mercantile Seamanship, with its institutes of
astronomy, meteorology, and natural history of the sea: and, to name
only one of the finer, I do not say higher, arts, we shall, I hope, in a
little time, have a perfect school of Metal-work, at the head of which
will be, not the ironmasters, but the goldsmiths: and therein, I
believe, that artists, being taught how to deal wisely with the most
precious of metals, will take into due government the uses of all
others.

But I must not permit myself to fail in the estimate of my immediate
duty, while I debate what that duty may hereafter become in the hands of
others; and I will therefore now, so far as I am able, lay before you a
brief general view of the existing state of the arts in England, and of
the influence which her Universities, through these newly-founded
lectureships, may, I hope, bring to bear upon it for good.


6. We have first to consider the impulse which has been given to the
practice of all the arts by the extension of our commerce, and enlarged
means of intercourse with foreign nations, by which we now become more
familiarly acquainted with their works in past and in present times. The
immediate result of these new opportunities, I regret to say, has been
to make us more jealous of the genius of others, than conscious of the
limitations of our own; and to make us rather desire to enlarge our
wealth by the sale of art, than to elevate our enjoyments by its
acquisition.

Now, whatever efforts we make, with a true desire to produce, and
possess, things that are intrinsically beautiful, have in them at least
one of the essential elements of success. But efforts having origin only
in the hope of enriching ourselves by the sale of our productions, are
_assuredly_ condemned to dishonourable failure; not because, ultimately,
a well-trained nation is forbidden to profit by the exercise of its
peculiar art-skill; but because that peculiar art-skill can never be
developed _with a view_ to profit. The right fulfilment of national
power in art depends always on THE DIRECTION OF ITS AIM BY THE
EXPERIENCE OF AGES. Self-knowledge is not less difficult, nor less
necessary for the direction of its genius, to a people than to an
individual; and it is neither to be acquired by the eagerness of
unpractised pride, nor during the anxieties of improvident distress. No
nation ever had, or will have, the power of suddenly developing, under
the pressure of necessity, faculties it had neglected when it was at
ease; nor of teaching itself in poverty, the skill to produce, what it
has never, in opulence, had the sense to admire.


7. Connected also with some of the worst parts of our social system, but
capable of being directed to better result than this commercial
endeavour, we see lately a most powerful impulse given to the production
of costly works of art, by the various causes which promote the sudden
accumulation of wealth in the hands of private persons. We have thus a
vast and new patronage, which, in its present agency, is injurious to
our schools; but which is nevertheless in a great degree earnest and
conscientious, and far from being influenced chiefly by motives of
ostentation. Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the true
interests of art in this country: and even those who buy for vanity,
found their vanity on the possession of what they suppose to be best.

It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists themselves if
they suffer from this partly unintelligent, but thoroughly
well-intended, patronage. If they seek to attract it by eccentricity, to
deceive it by superficial qualities, or take advantage of it by
thoughtless and facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves
and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will
not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real
power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse to
be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success,
there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the contrary,
true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm guidance. It
is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years enables me to
assert without qualification, that a really good picture is ultimately
always approved and bought, unless it is wilfully rendered offensive to
the public by faults which the artist has been either too proud to
abandon or too weak to correct.


8. The development of whatever is healthful and serviceable in the two
modes of impulse which we have been considering, depends however,
ultimately, on the direction taken by the true interest in art which has
lately been aroused by the great and active genius of many of our
living, or but lately lost, painters, sculptors, and architects. It may
perhaps surprise, but I think it will please you to hear me, or (if you
will forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of fancying that some
may recognise me by an old name) to hear the author of "Modern Painters"
say, that his chief error in earlier days was not in over estimating,
but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living men. The great
painter whose power, while he was yet among us, I was able to perceive,
was the first to reprove me for my disregard of the skill of his
fellow-artists; and, with this inauguration of the study of the art of
all time,--a study which can only by true modesty end in wise
admiration,--it is surely well that I connect the record of these words
of his, spoken then too truly to myself, and true always more or less
for all who are untrained in that toil,--"You don't know how difficult
it is."

You will not expect me, within the compass of this lecture, to give you
any analysis of the many kinds of excellent art (in all the three great
divisions) which the complex demands of modern life, and yet more varied
instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure or service. It
must be my endeavour, in conjunction with my colleagues in the other
Universities, hereafter to enable you to appreciate these worthily; in
the hope that also the members of the Royal Academy, and those of the
Institute of British Architects, may be induced to assist, and guide,
the efforts of the Universities, by organising such a system of
art-education for their own students, as shall in future prevent the
waste of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially removing doubt as
to the proper substance and use of materials; and requiring compliance
with certain elementary principles of right, in every picture and design
exhibited with their sanction. It is not indeed possible for talent so
varied as that of English artists to be compelled into the formalities
of a determined school; but it must certainly be the function of every
academical body to see that their younger students are guarded from what
must in every school be error; and that they are practised in the best
methods of work hitherto known, before their ingenuity is directed to
the invention of others.


9. I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of completeness in my
statement, to one form of demand for art which is wholly unenlightened,
and powerful only for evil;--namely, the demand of the classes occupied
solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and modes of art that can
amuse indolence or excite passion. There is no need for any discussion
of these requirements, or of their forms of influence, though they are
very deadly at present in their operation on sculpture, and on
jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by blame, nor guided by
instruction; they are merely the necessary result of whatever defects
exist in the temper and principles of a luxurious society; and it is
only by moral changes, not by art-criticism, that their action can be
modified.


10. Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for popular art,
multipliable by the printing-press, illustrative of daily events, of
general literature, and of natural science. Admirable skill, and some of
the best talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this want;
and there is no limit to the good which may be effected by rightly
taking advantage of the powers we now possess of placing good and lovely
art within the reach of the poorest classes. Much has been already
accomplished; but great harm has been done also,--first, by forms of art
definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, in a more subtle
way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which are yet not good
enough to retain their influence on the public mind;--which weary it by
redundant quantity of monotonous average excellence, and diminish or
destroy its power of accurate attention to work of a higher order.

Especially this is to be regretted in the effect produced on the schools
of line engraving, which had reached in England an executive skill of a
kind before unexampled, and which of late have lost much of their more
sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have seen plates produced
quite recently, more beautiful, I think, in some qualities than anything
ever before attained by the burin: and I have not the slightest fear
that photography, or any other adverse or competitive operation, will in
the least ultimately diminish,--I believe they will, on the contrary,
stimulate and exalt--the grand old powers of the wood and the steel.


11. Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of art with which
we have to deal; and I conceive it to be the function of this
Professorship, with respect to them, to establish both a practical and
critical school of fine art for English gentlemen: practical, so that if
they draw at all, they may draw rightly; and critical, so that being
first directed to such works of existing art as will best reward their
study, they may afterwards make their patronage of living artists
delightful to themselves in their consciousness of its justice, and, to
the utmost, beneficial to their country, by being given to the men who
deserve it; in the early period of their lives, when they both need it
most, and can be influenced by it to the best advantage.


12. And especially with reference to this function of patronage, I
believe myself justified in taking into account future probabilities as
to the character and range of art in England: and I shall endeavour at
once to organise with you a system of study calculated to develop
chiefly the knowledge of those branches in which the English schools
have shown, and are likely to show, peculiar excellence.

Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of the general plans I
wish to adopt, and for what I conceive to be necessary limitations of
them, I wish you to be fully aware of my reasons for both: and I will
therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I state the
directions of effort in which I think English artists are liable to
failure, and those also in which past experience has shown they are
secure of success.


13. I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to improve the
designs of our manufactures. Within certain limits I believe this
improvement may indeed take effect: so that we may no more humour
momentary fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; and may
produce both good tissues, of harmonious colours, and good forms and
substance of pottery and glass. But we shall never excel in decorative
design. Such design is usually produced by people of great natural
powers of mind, who have no variety of subjects to employ themselves on,
no oppressive anxieties, and are in circumstances either of natural
scenery or of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. _We_
cannot design, because we have too much to think of, and we think of it
too anxiously. It has long been observed how little real anxiety exists
in the minds of the partly savage races which excel in decorative art;
and we must not suppose that the temper of the Middle Ages was a
troubled one, because every day brought its danger or its change. The
very eventfulness of the life rendered it careless, as generally is
still the case with soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great
powers of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy and
fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you have so much intellect as
would direct the affairs of a large mercantile concern for a day, spent
all at once, quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral.

Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only to be reached by a
perpetual discipline of the hand as well as of the fancy; discipline as
attentive and painful as that which a juggler has to put himself
through, to overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profession.
The execution of the best artists is always a splendid tour-de-force;
and much that in painting is supposed to be dependent on material is
indeed only a lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when powers
of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant precision of manual dexterity,
descend uninterruptedly from generation to generation, you have at last,
what is not so much a trained artist, as a new species of animal, with
whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of contending. And thus all
our imitations of other people's work are futile. We must learn first to
make honest English wares, and afterwards to decorate them as may please
the then approving Graces.


14. Secondly--and this is an incapacity of a graver kind, yet having its
own good in it also--we shall never be successful in the highest fields
of ideal or theological art.

For there is one strange, but quite essential, character in us: ever
since the Conquest, if not earlier:--a delight in the forms of burlesque
which are connected in some degree with the foulness of evil. I think
the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best possible
temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for the
most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of an
April morning, there are even in the midst of this, sometimes
momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil--while the
power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross
persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards
degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the
greatest, wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost useless
for our youth. And yet you will find that whenever Englishmen are wholly
without this instinct, their genius is comparatively weak and
restricted.


15. Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great work in ideal
art, is the looking upon all foulness with horror, as a contemptible
though dreadful enemy. You may easily understand what I mean, by
comparing the feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity or
of base jest, with the temper in which the same things are regarded by
Shakespeare. And this strange earthly instinct of ours, coupled as it
is, in our good men, with great simplicity and common sense, renders
them shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual nature, low
or high; but precludes them from that specialty of art which is properly
called sublime. If ever we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo
or of Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in the
battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod; while in art, every attempt
in this style has hitherto been the sign either of the presumptuous
egotism of persons who had never really learned to be workmen, or it has
been connected with very tragic forms of the contemplation of death,--it
has always been partly insane, and never once wholly successful.

But we need not feel any discomfort in these limitations of our
capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have ever
yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the
portraiture of living people--a power already so accomplished in both
Reynolds and Gainsborough that nothing is left for future masters but to
add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of
perception. And of what value a true school of portraiture may become in
the future, when worthy men will desire only to be known, and others
will not fear to know them, for what they truly were, we cannot from
any past records of art influence yet conceive. But in my next address
it will be partly my endeavour to show you how much more useful, because
more humble, the labour of great masters might have been, had they been
content to bear record of the souls that were dwelling with them on
earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive glory to those they
dreamed of in heaven.


16. Secondly, we have an intense power of invention and expression in
domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in
their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this moment
towards a noble development of our art in this direction, checked by
many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,--the insufficiency
of generous civic or patriotic passion in the heart of the English
people; a fault which makes its domestic affection selfish, contracted,
and, therefore, frivolous.


17. Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good-humour, and
partly with that very love of the grotesque which debases our ideal, we
have a sympathy with the lower animals which is peculiarly our own; and
which, though it has already found some exquisite expression in the
works of Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite undeveloped. This sympathy,
with the aid of our now authoritative science of physiology, and in
association with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable us
to give to the future inhabitants of the globe an almost perfect record
of the present forms of animal life upon it, of which many are on the
point of being extinguished.

Lastly, but not as the least important of our special powers, I have to
note our skill in landscape, of which I will presently speak more
particularly.


18. Such I conceive to be the directions in which, principally, we have
the power to excel; and you must at once see how the consideration of
them must modify the advisable methods of our art study. For if our
professional painters were likely to produce pieces of art loftily ideal
in their character, it would be desirable to form the taste of the
students here by setting before them only the purest examples of Greek,
and the mightiest of Italian, art. But I do not think you will yet find
a single instance of a school directed exclusively to these higher
branches of study in England, which has strongly, or even definitely,
made impression on its younger scholars. While, therefore, I shall
endeavour to point out clearly the characters to be looked for and
admired in the great masters of imaginative design, I shall make no
special effort to stimulate the imitation of them; and above all things,
I shall try to probe in you, and to prevent, the affectation into which
it is easy to fall, even through modesty,--of either endeavouring to
admire a grandeur with which we have no natural sympathy, or losing the
pleasure we might take in the study of familiar things, by considering
it a sign of refinement to look for what is of higher class, or rarer
occurrence.


19. Again, if our artisans were likely to attain any distinguished skill
in ornamental design, it would be incumbent upon me to make my class
here accurately acquainted with the principles of earth and metal work,
and to accustom them to take pleasure in conventional arrangements of
colour and form. I hope, indeed, to do this, so far as to enable them to
discern the real merit of many styles of art which are at present
neglected; and, above all, to read the minds of semi-barbaric nations in
the only language by which their feelings were capable of expression;
and those members of my class whose temper inclines them to take
pleasure in the interpretation of mythic symbols, will not probably be
induced to quit the profound fields of investigation which early art,
examined carefully, will open to them, and which belong to it alone: for
this is a general law, that supposing the intellect of the workman the
same, the more imitatively complete his art, the less he will mean by
it; and the ruder the symbol, the deeper is its intention. Nevertheless,
when I have once sufficiently pointed out the nature and value of this
conventional work, and vindicated it from the contempt with which it is
too generally regarded, I shall leave the student to his own pleasure in
its pursuit; and even, so far as I may, discourage all admiration
founded on quaintness or peculiarity of style; and repress any other
modes of feeling which are likely to lead rather to fastidious
collection of curiosities, than to the intelligent appreciation of work
which, being executed in compliance with constant laws of right, cannot
be singular, and must be distinguished only by excellence in what is
always desirable.


20. While, therefore, in these and such other directions, I shall
endeavour to put every adequate means of advance within reach of the
members of my class, I shall use my own best energy to show them what is
consummately beautiful and well done, by men who have passed through the
symbolic or suggestive stage of design, and have enabled themselves to
comply, by truth of representation, with the strictest or most eager
demands of accurate science, and of disciplined passion. I shall
therefore direct your observation, during the greater part of the time
you may spare to me, to what is indisputably best, both in painting and
sculpture; trusting that you will afterwards recognise the nascent and
partial skill of former days both with greater interest and greater
respect, when you know the full difficulty of what it attempted, and the
complete range of what it foretold.


21. And with this view, I shall at once endeavour to do what has for
many years been in my thoughts, and now, with the advice and assistance
of the curators of the University Galleries, I do not doubt may be
accomplished here in Oxford, just where it will be preeminently
useful--namely, to arrange an educational series of examples of
excellent art, standards to which you may at once refer on any
questionable point, and by the study of which you may gradually attain
an instinctive sense of right, which will afterwards be liable to no
serious error. Such a collection may be formed, both more perfectly, and
more easily, than would commonly be supposed. For the real utility of
the series will depend on its restricted extent,--on the severe
exclusion of all second-rate, superfluous, or even attractively varied
examples,--and On the confining the students' attention to a few types
of what is insuperably good. More progress in power of judgment may be
made in a limited time by the examination of one work, than by the
review of many; and a certain degree of vitality is given to the
impressiveness of every characteristic, by its being exhibited in clear
contrast, and without repetition.

The greater number of the examples I shall choose will be only
engravings or photographs: they shall be arranged so as to be easily
accessible, and I will prepare a catalogue, pointing out my purpose in
the selection of each. But in process of time, I have good hope that
assistance will be given me by the English public in making the series
here no less splendid than serviceable; and in placing minor
collections, arranged on a similar principle, at the command also of the
students in our public schools.


22. In the second place, I shall endeavour to prevail upon all the
younger members of the University who wish to attend the art lectures,
to give at least so much time to manual practice as may enable them to
understand the nature and difficulty of executive skill. The time so
spent will not be lost, even as regards their other studies at the
University, for I will prepare the practical exercises in a double
series, one illustrative of history, the other of natural science. And
whether you are drawing a piece of Greek armour, or a hawk's beak, or a
lion's paw, you will find that the mere necessity of using the hand
compels attention to circumstances which would otherwise have escaped
notice, and fastens them in the memory without farther effort. But were
it even otherwise, and this practical training did really involve some
sacrifice of your time, I do not fear but that it will be justified to
you by its felt results: and I think that general public feeling is also
tending to the admission that accomplished education must include, not
only full command of expression by language, but command of true musical
sound by the voice, and of true form by the hand.


23. While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct you in these
exercises very definitely to natural history, and to landscape; not only
because in these two branches I am probably able to show you truths
which might be despised by my successors: but because I think the vital
and joyful study of natural history quite the principal element
requiring introduction, not only into University, but into national,
education, from highest to lowest; and I even will risk incurring your
ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that I may succeed in
making some of you English youths like better to look at a bird than to
shoot it; and even desire to make wild creatures tame, instead of tame
creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, I think, now
calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more important modes, than
that of natural science, for reasons which I will ask you to let me
state at some length.


24. Observe first;--no race of men which is entirely bred in wild
country, far from cities, ever enjoys landscape. They may enjoy the
beauty of animals, but scarcely even that: a true peasant cannot see the
beauty of cattle; but only qualities expressive of their
serviceableness. I waive discussion of this to-day; permit my assertion
of it, under my confident guarantee of future proof. Landscape can only
be enjoyed by cultivated persons; and it is only by music, literature,
and painting, that cultivation can be given. Also, the faculties which
are thus received are hereditary; so that the child of an educated race
has an innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds
of years before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the loveliest
things in human nature. In the children of noble races, trained by
surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds,
there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as
_memorial_; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable to any others;
but, in them, innate; and the seal and reward of persistence in great
national life;--the obedience and the peace of ages having extended
gradually the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral
land; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery of the Demeter from
whose bosom we came, and to whose bosom we return, surrounds and
inspires, everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the
sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of wave that none may
pollute; while records of proud days, and of dear persons, make every
rock monumental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with
noble desolateness.


25. Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive
love of landscape in us has this deep root, which, in your minds, I will
pray you to disencumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and to
strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that a nation is only
worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, by all
its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its children.

And now, I trust, you will feel that it is not in mere yielding to my
own fancies that I have chosen, for the first three subjects in your
educational series, landscape scenes;--two in England, and one in
France,--the association of these being not without purpose:--and for
the fourth Albert Duerer's dream of the Spirit of Labour. And of the
landscape subjects, I must tell you this much. The first is an engraving
only; the original drawing by Turner was destroyed by fire twenty years
ago. For which loss I wish you to be sorry, and to remember, in
connection with this first example, that whatever remains to us of
possession in the arts is, compared to what we might have had if we had
cared for them, just what that engraving is to the lost drawing. You
will find also that its subject has meaning in it which will not be
harmful to you. The second example is a real drawing by Turner, in the
same series, and very nearly of the same place; the two scenes are
within a quarter of a mile of each other. It will show you the character
of the work that was destroyed. It will show you, in process of time,
much more; but chiefly, and this is my main reason for choosing both, it
will be a permanent expression to you of what English landscape was
once;--and must, if we are to remain a nation, be again.

I think it farther right to tell you, for otherwise you might hardly pay
regard enough to work apparently so simple, that by a chance which is
not altogether displeasing to me, this drawing, which it has become, for
these reasons, necessary for me to give you, is--not indeed the best I
have, (I have several as good, though none better)--but, of all I have,
the one I had least mind to part with.

The third example is also a Turner drawing--a scene on the Loire--never
engraved. It is an introduction to the series of the Loire, which you
have already; it has in its present place a due concurrence with the
expressional purpose of its companions; and though small, it is very
precious, being a faultless, and, I believe, unsurpassable example of
water-colour painting.

Chiefly, however, remember the object of these three first examples is
to give you an index to your truest feelings about European, and
especially about your native landscape, as it is pensive and historical;
and so far as you yourselves make any effort at its representation, to
give you a motive for fidelity in handwork more animating than any
connected with mere success in the art itself.


26. With respect to actual methods of practice, I will not incur the
responsibility of determining them for you. We will take Lionardo's
treatise on painting for our first text-book; and I think you need not
fear being misled by me if I ask you to do only what Lionardo bids, or
what will be necessary to enable you to do his bidding. But you need not
possess the book, nor read it through. I will translate the pieces to
the authority of which I shall appeal; and, in process of time, by
analysis of this fragmentary treatise, show you some characters not
usually understood of the simplicity as well as subtlety common to most
great workmen of that age. Afterwards we will collect the instructions
of other undisputed masters, till we have obtained a code of laws
clearly resting on the consent of antiquity.

While, however, I thus in some measure limit for the present the methods
of your practice, I shall endeavour to make the courses of my University
lectures as wide in their range as my knowledge will permit. The range
so conceded will be narrow enough; but I believe that my proper function
is not to acquaint you with the general history, but with the essential
principles of art; and with its history only when it has been both great
and good, or where some special excellence of it requires examination of
the causes to which it must be ascribed.


27. But if either our work, or our enquiries, are to be indeed
successful in their own field, they must be connected with others of a
sterner character. Now listen to me, if I have in these past details
lost or burdened your attention; for this is what I have chiefly to say
to you. The art of any country is _the exponent of its social and
political virtues_. I will show you that it is so in some detail, in the
second of my subsequent course of lectures; meantime accept this as one
of the things, and the most important of all things, I can positively
declare to you. The art, or general productive and formative energy, of
any country, is an exact exponent of its ethical life. You can have
noble art only from noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their
time and circumstances. And the best skill that any teacher of art could
spend here in your help, would not end in enabling you even so much as
rightly to draw the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, the
work when done would not be worth the lilies themselves) unless both he
and you were seeking, as I trust we shall together seek, in the laws
which regulate the finest industries, the clue to the laws which
regulate _all_ industries, and in better obedience to which we shall
actually have henceforward to live: not merely in compliance with our
own sense of what is right, but under the weight of quite literal
necessity. For the trades by which the British people has believed it to
be the highest of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long remain
undisputed in its hands; its unemployed poor are daily becoming more
violently criminal; and a certain distress in the middle classes,
arising, _partly from their vanity in living always up to their incomes,
and partly from their folly in imagining that they can subsist in
idleness upon usury_, will at last compel the sons and daughters of
English families to acquaint themselves with the principles of
providential economy; and to learn that food can only be got out of the
ground, and competence only secured by frugality; and that although it
is not possible for all to be occupied in the highest arts, nor for any,
guiltlessly, to pass their days in a succession of pleasures, the most
perfect mental culture possible to men is founded on their useful
energies, and their best arts and brightest happiness are consistent,
and consistent only, with their virtue.


28. This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest to those among
us, and there are yet many, who are honest-hearted. And the future fate
of England depends upon the position they then take, and on their
courage in maintaining it.

There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive. Within the last few years we
have had the laws of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which
has been blinding by its brightness; and means of transit and
communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the
habitable globe. One kingdom;--but who is to be its king? Is there to be
no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his
own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon
and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a
royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of
light, a centre of peace; mistress of Learning and of the
Arts;--faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent
and ephemeral visions;--faithful servant of time-tried principles, under
temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the
cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange
valour of goodwill towards men?


29. "Vexilla regis prodeunt." Yes, but of which king? There are the two
oriflammes; which shall we plant on the farthest islands,--the one that
floats in heavenly fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of
terrestrial gold? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open to
us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group of mortal souls. But
it must be--it _is_ with us, now, "Reign or Die." And if it shall be
said of this country, "Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto;" that refusal
of the crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, the shamefullest
and most untimely.

And this is what she must either do, or perish: she must found colonies
as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and
worthiest men;--seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set
her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that their chief
virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is
to be to advance the power of England by land and sea: and that, though
they live on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider
themselves therefore disfranchised from their native land, than the
sailors of her fleets do, because they float on distant waves. So that
literally, these colonies must be fastened fleets; and every man of them
must be under authority of captains and officers, whose better command
is to be over fields and streets instead of ships of the line; and
England, in these her motionless navies (or, in the true and mightiest
sense, motionless _churches_, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake of
all the world), is to "expect every man to do his duty;" recognising
that duty is indeed possible no less in peace than war; and that if we
can get men, for little pay, to cast themselves against cannon-mouths
for love of England, we may find men also who will plough and sow for
her, who will behave kindly and righteously for her, who will bring up
their children to love her, and who will gladden themselves in the
brightness of her glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies.

But that they may be able to do this, she must make her own majesty
stainless; she must give them thoughts of their home of which they can
be proud. The England who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot
remain herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending and miserable
crowds; she must yet again become the England she was once, and in all
beautiful ways,--more: so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her
sky--polluted by no unholy clouds--she may be able to spell rightly of
every star that heaven doth show; and in her fields, ordered and wide
and fair, of every herb that sips the dew; and under the green avenues
of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter of the Sun, she
must guide the human arts, and gather the divine knowledge, of distant
nations, transformed from savageness to manhood, and redeemed from
despairing into peace.


30. You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so; refuse to accept it if
you will; but see that you form your own in its stead. All that I ask of
you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and
yourselves; no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish.
I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknowledged need: but it
is the fatallest form of error in English youths to hide their hardihood
till it fades for lack of sunshine, and to act in disdain of purpose,
till all purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, but by careless
selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull following of good,
that the weight of national evil increases upon us daily. Break through
at least this pretence of existence; determine what you will be, and
what you would win. You will not decide wrongly if you will resolve to
decide at all. Were even the choice between lawless pleasure and loyal
suffering, you would not, I believe, choose basely. But your trial is
not so sharp. It is between drifting in confused wreck among the
castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured ruin those who know not
either how to resist her, or obey; between this, I say, and the taking
of your appointed part in the heroism of Rest; the resolving to share in
the victory which is to the weak rather than the strong; and the binding
yourselves by that law, which, thought on through lingering night and
labouring day, makes a man's life to be as a tree planted by the
water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;--

     "ET FOLIUM EJUS NON DEFLUET,
      ET OMNIA, QUAECUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR."




LECTURE II

THE RELATION OF ART TO RELIGION


31. It was stated, and I trust partly with your acceptance, in my
opening lecture, that the study on which we are about to enter cannot be
rightly undertaken except in furtherance of the grave purposes of life
with respect to which the rest of the scheme of your education here is
designed. 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; and their dignity, and ultimately their very
existence, depend on their being "+meta logou alethous+," that is
to say, apprehending, with right reason, the nature of the materials
they work with, of the things they relate or represent, and of the
faculties to which they are addressed. 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. 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; every
art being properly called "fine" which demands the exercise of the full
faculties of heart and intellect. 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 I
will anticipate by an assertion which you will at present think too
bold, but which I am willing that you should think so, in order that you
may well remember it,--THE HIGHEST THING THAT ART CAN DO IS TO SET
BEFORE YOU THE TRUE IMAGE OF THE PRESENCE OF A NOBLE HUMAN BEING. IT HAS
NEVER DONE MORE THAN THIS, AND IT OUGHT NOT TO DO LESS.


32. 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; secondly, that of perfecting their ethical state; thirdly, that
of doing them material service.


33. 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. Whosoever
recognises it is exalted by it. On the other hand, it has been commonly
thought that art was a most fitting means for the enforcement of
religious doctrines and emotions; whereas there is, as I must presently
try to show you, room for grave doubt whether it has not in this
function hitherto done evil rather than good.


34. In this and the two next following lectures, I shall endeavour
therefore to show you the grave relations of human art, in these three
functions, to human life. I can do this but roughly, as you may well
suppose--since each of these subjects would require for its right
treatment years instead of hours. Only, remember, _I_ have already given
years, not a few, to each of them; and what I try to tell _you_ now will
be only so much as is absolutely necessary to set our work on a clear
foundation. You may not, at present, see the necessity for _any_
foundation, and may think that I ought to put pencil and paper in your
hands at once. On that point I must simply answer, "Trust me a little
while," asking you however also to remember, that--irrespectively of any
consideration of last or first--my true function here is not that of
your master in painting, or sculpture, or pottery; but to show you what
it is that makes any of these arts _fine_, or the contrary of _fine_:
essentially _good_, or essentially _base_. You need not fear my not
being practical enough for you; all the industry you choose to give me,
I will take; but far the better part of what you may gain by such
industry would be lost, if I did not first lead you to see what every
form of art-industry intends, and why some of it is justly called right,
and some wrong.


35. It would be well if you were to look over, with respect to this
matter, the end of the second, and what interests you of the third, book
of Plato's Republic; noting therein these two principal things, of which
I have to speak in this and my next lecture: first, the power which
Plato so frankly, and quite justly, attributes to art, of _falsifying_
our conceptions of Deity: which power he by fatal error partly implies
may be used wisely for good, and that the feigning is only wrong when it
is of evil, "+ean tis me kalos pseudetai+;" and you may trace
through all that follows the beginning of the change of Greek ideal art
into a beautiful expediency, instead of what it was in the days of
Pindar, the statement of what "could not be otherwise than so." But, in
the second place, you will find in those books of the Polity, stated
with far greater accuracy of expression than our English language
admits, the essential relations of art to morality; the sum of these
being given in one lovely sentence, which, considering that we have
to-day grace done us by fair companionship,[3] you will pardon me for
translating. "_Must it be then only with our poets that we insist they
shall either create for us the image of a noble morality, or among us
create none? or shall we not also keep guard over all other workers for
the people, and forbid them to make what is ill-customed, and
unrestrained, and ungentle, and without order or shape, either in
likeness of living things, or in buildings, or in any other thing
whatsoever that is made for the people? and shall we not rather seek for
workers who_ CAN TRACK THE INNER NATURE OF ALL THAT MAY BE SWEETLY
SCHEMED; _so that the young men, as living in a wholesome place, may be
profited by everything that, in work fairly wrought, may touch them
through hearing or sight--as if it were a breeze bringing health to them
from places strong for life?_"

[Footnote 3: There were, in fact, a great many more girls than
University men at the lectures.]


36. And now--but one word, before we enter on our task, as to the way
you must understand what I may endeavour to tell you.

Let me beg you--now and always--not to think that I mean more than I
say. In all probability, I mean just what I say, and only that. At all
events I do fully mean _that_; and if there is anything reserved in my
mind, it will be probably different from what you would guess. You are
perfectly welcome to know all that I think, as soon as I have put before
you all my grounds for thinking it; but by the time I have done so, you
will be able to form an opinion of your own; and mine will then be of no
consequence to you.


37. I use then to-day, as I shall in future use, the word "Religion" as
signifying the feelings of love, reverence, or dread with which the
human mind is affected by its conceptions of spiritual being; and you
know well how necessary it is, both to the rightness of our own life,
and to the understanding the lives of others, that we should always keep
clearly distinguished our ideas of Religion, as thus defined, and of
Morality, as the law of rightness in human conduct. 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.


38. 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; and has been assisted in
effort, and consoled in pain, by reference to the will or sympathy of
such purer spirits, whether imagined or real. I am compelled to use
these painful latitudes of expression, because no analysis has hitherto
sufficed to distinguish accurately, in historical narrative, the
difference between impressions resulting from the imagination of the
worshipper, and those made, if any, by the actually local and temporary
presence of another spirit. For instance, take the vision, which of all
others has been since made most frequently the subject of physical
representation--the appearance to Ezekiel and St. John of the four
living creatures, which throughout Christendom have been used to
symbolise the Evangelists.[4] Supposing such interpretation just, one of
those figures was either the mere symbol to St. John of himself, or it
was the power which inspired him, manifesting itself in an independent
form. Which of these it was, or whether neither of these, but a vision
of other powers, or a dream, of which neither the prophet himself knew,
nor can any other person yet know, the interpretation,--I suppose no
modestly-minded and accurate thinker would now take upon himself to
decide. Nor is it therefore anywise necessary for you to decide on that,
or any other such question; but it is necessary that you should be bold
enough to look every opposing question steadily in its face; and modest
enough, having done so, to know when it is too hard for you. 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.

[Footnote 4: Only the Gospels, "IV Evangelia," according to St. Jerome.]


39. Of these, the first, the Pride of Faith, is now, as it has been
always, the most deadly, because the most complacent and
subtle;--because it invests every evil passion of our nature with the
aspect of an angel of light, and enables the self-love, which might
otherwise have been put to wholesome shame, and the cruel carelessness
of the ruin of our fellow-men, which might otherwise have been warmed
into human love, or at least checked by human intelligence, to congeal
themselves into the mortal intellectual disease of imagining that
myriads of the inhabitants of the world for four thousand years have
been left to wander and perish, many of them everlastingly, in order
that, in fulness of time, divine truth might be preached sufficiently to
ourselves: with this farther ineffable mischief for direct result, that
multitudes of kindly-disposed, gentle, and submissive persons, who might
else by their true patience have alloyed the hardness of the common
crowd, and by their activity for good balanced its misdoing, are
withdrawn from all such true services of man, that they may pass the
best part of their lives in what they are told is the service of God;
_namely, desiring what_ _they cannot obtain, lamenting what they cannot
avoid, and reflecting on what they cannot understand_.[5]

[Footnote 5: This concentrated definition of monastic life is of course
to be understood only of its more enthusiastic forms.]


40. This, I repeat, is the deadliest, but for you, under existing
circumstances, it is becoming daily, almost hourly, the least probable
form of Pride. That which you have chiefly to guard against consists in
the overvaluing of minute though correct discovery; the groundless
denial of all that seems to you to have been groundlessly affirmed; and
the interesting yourselves too curiously in the progress of some
scientific minds, which in their judgment of the universe can be
compared to nothing so accurately as to the woodworms in the panel of a
picture by some great painter, if we may conceive them as tasting with
discrimination of the wood, and with repugnance of the colour, and
declaring that even this unlooked-for and undesirable combination is a
normal result of the action of molecular Forces.


41. Now, I must very earnestly warn you, in the beginning of my work
with you here, against allowing either of these forms of egotism to
interfere with your judgment or practice of art. On the one hand, you
must not allow the expression of your own favourite religious feelings
by any particular form of art to modify your judgment of its absolute
merit; nor allow the art itself to become an illegitimate means of
deepening and confirming your convictions, by realising to your eyes
what you dimly conceive with the brain; as if the greater clearness of
the image were a stronger proof of its truth. 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.


42. These are both vital conditions of your healthy progress. 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.

For instance, it may be quite possible to show the conditions in water
and electricity which necessarily produce the craggy outline, the
apparently self-contained silvery light, and the sulphurous blue shadow
of a thunder-cloud, and which separate these from the depth of the
golden peace in the dawn of a summer morning. Similarly, it may be
possible to show the necessities of structure which groove the fangs and
depress the brow of the asp, and which distinguish the character of its
head from that of the face of a young girl. 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.


43. Now, therefore, approaching our subject in this balanced temper,
which will neither resolve to see only what it would desire, nor expect
to see only what it can explain, we shall find our enquiry into the
relation of Art to Religion is distinctly threefold: first, we have to
ask how far art may have been literally directed by spiritual powers;
secondly, how far, if not inspired, it may have been exalted by them;
lastly, how far, in any of its agencies, it has advanced the cause of
the creeds it has been used to recommend.


44. First: 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?

It is true that the answer to so mysterious a question cannot rest alone
upon internal evidence; but it is well that you should know what might,
from that evidence alone, be concluded. 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.

The strength of this spiritual life within us may be increased or
lessened by our own conduct; it varies from time to time, as physical
strength varies; it is summoned on different occasions by our will, and
dejected by our distress, or our sin; but it is always _equally human_,
and _equally Divine_. We are men, and not mere animals, because a
special form of it is with us always; we are nobler and baser men, as it
is with us more or less; but it is never given to us in any degree which
can make us more than men.


45. Observe:--I give you this general statement doubtfully, and only as
that towards which an impartial reasoner will, I think, be inclined by
existing data. 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.

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; and
lastly, the power of rational inference and collection, of both the laws
and forms of beauty.


46. Now the faculty of vision, being closely associated with the
innermost spiritual nature, is the one which has by most reasoners been
held for the peculiar channel of Divine teaching: and it is a fact that
great part of purely didactic art has been the record, whether in
language, or by linear representation, of actual vision involuntarily
received at the moment, though cast on a mental retina blanched
by the past course of faithful life. But it is also true that
these visions, where most distinctly received, are always--I speak
deliberately--_always_, the _sign of some mental limitation or
derangement_; and that the persons who most clearly recognise their
value, exaggeratedly estimate it, choosing what they find to be useful,
and calling that "inspired," and disregarding what they perceive to be
useless, though presented to the visionary by an equal authority.


47. Thus it is probable that no work of art has been more widely
didactic than Albert Duerer's engraving, known as the "Knight and
Death."[6] But that is only one of a series of works representing
similarly vivid dreams, of which some are uninteresting, except for the
manner of their representation, as the "St. Hubert," and others are
unintelligible; some, frightful, and wholly unprofitable; so that we
find the visionary faculty in that great painter, when accurately
examined, to be a morbid influence, abasing his skill more frequently
than encouraging it, and sacrificing the greater part of his energies
upon vain subjects, two only being produced, in the course of a long
life, which are of high didactic value, and both of these capable only
of giving sad courage.[7] Whatever the value of these two, it bears more
the aspect of a treasure obtained at great cost of suffering, than of a
directly granted gift from heaven.

[Footnote 6: Standard Series, No. 9.]

[Footnote 7: The meaning of the "Knight and Death," even in this
respect, has lately been questioned on good grounds.]


48. 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.

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."


49. The second question, namely, how far art, if not inspired, has yet
been ennobled by religion, I shall not touch upon to-day; for it both
requires technical criticism, and would divert you too long from the
main question of all,--How far religion has been helped by art?

You will find that the operation of formative art--(I will not speak
to-day of music)--the operation of formative art on religious creed is
essentially twofold; the realisation, to the eyes, of imagined spiritual
persons; and the limitation of their imagined presence to certain
places. We will examine these two functions of it successively.


50. And first, consider accurately what the agency of art is, in
realising, to the sight, our conceptions of spiritual persons.

For instance. Assume that we believe that the Madonna is always present
to hear and answer our prayers. Assume also that this is true. I think
that persons in a perfectly honest, faithful, and humble temper, would
in that case desire only to feel so much of the Divine presence as the
spiritual Power herself chose to make felt; and, above all things, not
to think they saw, or knew, anything except what might be truly
perceived or known.

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.

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; and, in the midst of other occupations, will familiarise more
or less, and even mechanically associate with common or faultful states
of mind, the appearance of the supposed Divine person.


51. 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. 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; and not because we have seen
pictures of them.[8]

[Footnote 8: 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.]


52. 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. 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.

For instance, the Greek design of Apollo crossing the sea to Delphi,
which is one of the most interesting of Le Normant's series, so far as
it is only an expression, under the symbol of a human form, of what may
be rightly imagined respecting the solar power, is right and ennobling;
but so far as it conveyed to the Greek the idea of there being a real
Apollo, it was mischievous, whether there be, or be not, a real Apollo.
If there is no real Apollo, then the art was mischievous because it
deceived; but if there is a real Apollo, then it was still more
mischievous,[9] for it not only began the degradation of the image of
that true god into a decoration for niches, and a device for seals; but
prevented any true witness being borne to his existence. For if the
Greeks, instead of multiplying representations of what they imagined to
be the figure of the god, had given us accurate drawings of the heroes
and battles of Marathon and Salamis, and had simply told us in plain
Greek what evidence they had of the power of Apollo, either through his
oracles, his help or chastisement, or by immediate vision, they would
have served their religion more truly than by all the vase-paintings and
fine statues that ever were buried or adored.


53. Now in this particular instance, and in many other examples of fine
Greek art, the two conditions of thought, symbolic and realistic, are
mingled; and the art is helpful, as I will hereafter show you, in one
function, and in the other so deadly, that I think no degradation of
conception of Deity has ever been quite so base as that implied by the
designs of Greek vases in the period of decline, say about 250 B. C.

[Footnote 9: I am again doubtful, here. The most important part of the
chapter is from Sec. 60 to end.]

But though among the Greeks it is thus nearly always difficult to say
what is symbolic and what realistic, in the range of Christian art the
distinction is clear. 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.


54. Again, there is another division of Christian work in which the
persons represented, though nominally real, are treated as
dramatis-personae of a poem, and so presented confessedly as subjects of
imagination. All this poetic art is also good when it is the work of
good men.


55. There remains only therefore to be considered, as truly religious,
the work which definitely implies and modifies the conception of the
existence of a real person. There is hardly any great art which entirely
belongs to this class; but Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola is as
accurate a type of it as I can give you; Holbein's Madonna at Dresden,
the Madonna di San Sisto, and the Madonna of Titian's Assumption, all
belong mainly to this class, but are removed somewhat from it (as, I
repeat, nearly all great art is) into the poetical one. It is only the
bloody crucifixes and gilded virgins and other such lower forms of
imagery (by which, to the honour of the English Church, it has been
truly claimed for her, that "she has never appealed to the madness or
dulness of her people,") which belong to the realistic class in strict
limitation, and which properly constitute the type of it.

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.


56. The effect of this realistic art on the religious mind of Europe
varies in scope more than any other art power; for in its higher
branches it touches the most sincere religious minds, affecting an
earnest class of persons who cannot be reached by merely poetical
design; while, in its lowest, it addresses itself not only to the most
vulgar desires for religious excitement, but to the mere thirst for
sensation of horror which characterises the uneducated orders of
partially civilised countries; nor merely to the thirst for horror, but
to the strange love of death, as such, which has sometimes in Catholic
countries showed itself peculiarly by the endeavour to paint the images
in the chapels of the Sepulchre so as to look deceptively like corpses.
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.


57. When any of you next go abroad, observe, and consider the meaning
of, the sculptures and paintings, which of every rank in art, and in
every chapel and cathedral, and by every mountain path, recall the
hours, and represent the agonies, of the Passion of Christ: and try to
form some estimate of the efforts that have been made by the four arts
of eloquence, music, painting, and sculpture, since the twelfth century,
to wring out of the hearts of women the last drops of pity that could be
excited for this merely physical agony: for the art nearly always dwells
on the physical wounds or exhaustion chiefly, and degrades, far more
than it animates, the conception of pain.

Then try to conceive the quantity of time, and of excited and thrilling
emotion, which have been wasted by the tender and delicate women of
Christendom during these last six hundred years, in thus picturing to
themselves, under the influence of such imagery, the bodily pain, long
since passed, of One Person:--which, so far as they indeed conceived it
to be sustained by a Divine Nature, could not for that reason have been
less endurable than the agonies of any simple human death by torture:
and then try to estimate what might have been the better result, for the
righteousness and felicity of mankind, if these same women had been
taught the deep meaning of the last words that were ever spoken by their
Master to those who had ministered to Him of their substance: "Daughters
of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your
children." 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; those to whom the cradle was
a curse, and for whom the words they cannot hear, "ashes to ashes," are
all that they have ever received of benediction. These,--you who would
fain have wept at His feet, or stood by His cross,--these you have
always with you! Him, you have not always.


58. 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. And consider how the arts have thus
followed the worship of the crowd. You have paintings of saints and
angels, innumerable;--of petty courtiers, and contemptible or cruel
kings, innumerable. Few, how few you have, (but these, observe, almost
always by great painters) of the best men, or of their actions. But
think for yourselves,--I have no time now to enter upon the mighty
field, nor imagination enough to guide me beyond the threshold of
it,--think, what history might have been to us now;--nay, what a
different history that of all Europe might have become, if it had but
been the object both of the people to discern, and of their arts to
honour and bear record of, the great deeds of their worthiest men. 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.


59. Such I conceive generally, though indeed with good arising out of
it, for every great evil brings some good in its backward eddies--such I
conceive to have been the deadly function of art in its ministry to
what, whether in heathen or Christian lands, and whether in the
pageantry of words, or colours, or fair forms, is truly, and in the deep
sense, to be called (idolatry)--the serving with the best of our hearts
and minds, some dear or sad fantasy which we have made for ourselves,
while we disobey the present call of the Master, who is not dead, and
who is not now fainting under His cross, but requiring us to take up
ours.


60. I pass to the second great function of religious art, the limitation
of the idea of Divine presence to particular localities. It is of course
impossible within my present limits to touch upon this power of art, as
employed on the temples of the gods of various religions; we will
examine that on future occasions. To-day, I want only to map out main
ideas, and I can do this best by speaking exclusively of this localising
influence as it affects our own faith.

Observe first, that the localisation is almost entirely dependent upon
human art. You must at least take a stone and set it up for a pillar, if
you are to mark the place, so as to know it again, where a vision
appeared. A persecuted people, needing to conceal their places of
worship, may perform every religious ceremony first under one crag of
the hill-side, and then under another, without invalidating the
sacredness of the rites or sacraments thus administered. It is,
therefore, we all acknowledge, inessential, that a particular spot
should be surrounded with a ring of stones, or enclosed within walls of
a certain style of architecture, and so set apart as the only place
where such ceremonies may be properly performed; and it is thus less by
any direct appeal to experience or to reason, but in consequence of the
effect upon our senses produced by the architecture, that we receive the
first strong impressions of what we afterwards contend for as absolute
truth. 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. Put a
rough stone for an altar under the hawthorn on a village
green;--separate a portion of the green itself with an ordinary paling
from the rest;--then consecrate, with whatever form you choose, the
space of grass you have enclosed, and meet within the wooden fence as
often as you desire to pray or preach; yet you will not easily fasten an
impression in the minds of the villagers, that God inhabits the space of
grass inside the fence, and does not extend His presence to the common
beyond it: and that the daisies and violets on one side of the railing
are holy,--on the other, profane. But, instead of a wooden fence, build
a wall, pave the interior space; roof it over, so as to make it
comparatively dark;--and you may persuade the villagers with ease that
you have built a house which Deity inhabits, or that you have become, in
the old French phrase, a "logeur du Bon Dieu."


61. And farther, though I have no desire to introduce any question as to
the truth of what we thus architecturally teach, I would desire you most
strictly to determine what is intended to be taught.

Do not think I underrate--I am among the last men living who would
underrate,--the importance of the sentiments connected with their church
to the population of a pastoral village. I admit, in its fullest extent,
the moral value of the scene, which is almost always one of perfect
purity and peace; and of the sense of supernatural love and protection,
which fills and surrounds the low aisles and homely porch. But the
question I desire earnestly to leave with you is, whether all the earth
ought not to be peaceful and pure, and the acknowledgment of the Divine
protection, as universal as its reality? That in a mysterious way the
presence of Deity is vouchsafed where it is sought, and withdrawn where
it is forgotten, must of course be granted as the first postulate in the
enquiry: but the point for our decision is just this, whether it ought
always to be sought in one place only, and forgotten in every other.

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.


62. But now, farther. Suppose it be admitted that by enclosing ground
with walls, and performing certain ceremonies there habitually, some
kind of sanctity is indeed secured within that space,--still the
question remains open whether it be advisable for religious purposes to
decorate the enclosure. For separation the mere walls would be enough.
What is the purpose of your decoration?

Let us take an instance--the most noble with which I am acquainted, the
Cathedral of Chartres. You have there the most splendid coloured glass,
and the richest sculpture, and the grandest proportions of building,
united to produce a sensation of pleasure and awe. We profess that this
is to honour the Deity; or, in other words, that it is pleasing to Him
that we should delight our eyes with blue and golden colours, and
solemnise our spirits by the sight of large stones laid one on another,
and ingeniously carved.


63. I do not think it can be doubted that it _is_ pleasing to Him when
we do this; for He has Himself prepared for us, nearly every morning and
evening, windows painted with Divine art, in blue and gold and
vermilion: windows lighted from within by the lustre of that heaven
which we may assume, at least with more certainty than any consecrated
ground, to be one of His dwelling-places. 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?


64. 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 do we dream that by carving
fonts and lifting pillars in His honour, who cuts the way of the rivers
among the rocks, and at whose reproof the pillars of the earth are
astonished, we shall obtain pardon for the dishonour done to the hills
and streams by which He has appointed our dwelling-place;--for the
infection of their sweet air with poison;--for the burning up of their
tender grass and flowers with fire, and for spreading such a shame of
mixed luxury and misery over our native land, as if we laboured only
that, at least here in England, we might be able to give the lie to the
song, whether of the Cherubim above, or Church beneath--"Holy, holy,
Lord God of all creatures; Heaven--_and Earth_--are full of Thy glory"?


65. And how much more there is that I long to say to you; and how much,
I hope, that you would like to answer to me, or to question me of! But I
can say no more to-day. We are not, I trust, at the end of our talks or
thoughts together; but, if it were so, and I never spoke to you more,
this that I have said to you I should have been glad to have been
permitted to say; and this, farther, which is the sum of it,--That we
may have splendour of art again, and with that, we may truly praise and
honour our Maker, and with that set forth the beauty and holiness of all
that He has made: but only after we have striven with our whole hearts
first to sanctify the temple of the body and spirit of every child that
has no roof to cover its head from the cold, and no walls to guard its
soul from corruption, in this our English land.

One word more.

What I have suggested hitherto, respecting the relations of Art to
Religion, you must receive throughout as merely motive of thought;
though you must have well seen that my own convictions were established
finally on some of the points in question. But I must, in conclusion,
tell you something that I _know_;--which, if you truly labour, you will
one day know also; and which I trust some of you will believe, now.

During the minutes in which you have been listening to me, I suppose
that almost at every other sentence those whose habit of mind has been
one of veneration for established forms and faiths, must have been in
dread that I was about to say, or in pang of regret at my having said,
what seemed to them an irreverent or reckless word touching vitally
important things.

So far from this being the fact, it is just because the feelings that I
most desire to cultivate in your minds are those of reverence and
admiration, that I am so earnest to prevent you from being moved to
either by trivial or false semblances. _This_ is the thing which I
KNOW--and which, if you labour faithfully, you shall know also,--that in
Reverence is the chief joy and power of life;--Reverence, for what is
pure and bright in your own youth; for what is true and tried in the age
of others; for all that is gracious among the living,--great among the
dead,--and marvellous, in the Powers that cannot die.




LECTURE III

THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS


66. You probably recollect that, in the beginning of my last lecture, it
was stated that fine art had, and could have, but three functions: the
enforcing of the religious sentiments of men, the perfecting their
ethical state, and the doing them material service. We have to-day to
examine, the mode of its action in the second power--that of perfecting
the morality, or ethical state, of men.

Perfecting, observe--not producing.

You must have the right moral state first, or you cannot have the art.
But when the art is once obtained, its reflected action enhances and
completes the moral state out of which it arose, and, above all,
communicates the exultation to other minds which are already morally
capable of the like.


67. For instance, take the art of singing, and the simplest perfect
master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom you can find;--a
skylark. From him you may learn what it is to "sing for joy." You must
get the moral state first, the pure gladness, then give it finished
expression; and it is perfected in itself, and made communicable to
other creatures capable of such joy. But it is incommunicable to those
who are not prepared to receive it.

Now, all right human song is, similarly, the finished expression, by
art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right causes. And
accurately in proportion to the rightness of the cause, and purity of
the emotion, is the possibility of the fine art. A maiden may sing of
her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money. And with
absolute precision, from highest to lowest, _the fineness of the
possible art is an index of the moral purity and majesty of the emotion
it expresses_. You may test it practically at any instant. Question with
yourselves respecting any feeling that has taken strong possession of
your mind, "Could this be sung by a master, and sung nobly, with a true
melody and art?" Then it is a right feeling. Could it not be sung at
all, or only sung ludicrously? It is a base one. And that is so in all
the arts; so that with mathematical precision, subject to no error or
exception, the art of a nation, so far as it exists, is an exponent of
its ethical state.


68. An exponent, observe, and exalting influence; but not the root or
cause. You cannot paint or sing yourselves into being good men; you must
be good men before you can either paint or sing, and then the colour and
sound will complete in you all that is best.

And this it was that I called upon you to hear, saying, "listen to me at
least now," in the first lecture, namely, that no art-teaching could be
of use to you, but would rather be harmful, unless it was grafted on
something deeper than all art. For indeed not only with this, of which
it is my function to show you the laws, but much more with the art of
all men, which you came here chiefly to learn, that of language, the
chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of
supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and
accent, instead of simply the careful expression of right thought. All
the virtues of language are, in their roots, moral; it becomes accurate
if the speaker desires to be true; clear, if he speaks with sympathy and
a desire to be intelligible; powerful, if he has earnestness; pleasant,
if he has sense of rhythm and order. There are no other virtues of
language producible by art than these: but let me mark more deeply for
an instant the significance of one of them. Language, I said, is only
clear when it is sympathetic. You can, in truth, understand a man's word
only by understanding his temper. Your own word is also as of an unknown
tongue to him unless he understands yours. And it is this which makes
the art of language, if any one is to be chosen separately from the
rest, that which is fittest for the instrument of a gentleman's
education. To teach the meaning of a word thoroughly, is to teach the
nature of the spirit that coined it; the secret of language is the
secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
And thus the principles of beautiful speech have all been fixed by
sincere and kindly speech. On the laws which have been determined by
sincerity, false speech, apparently beautiful, may afterwards be
constructed; but all such utterance, whether in oration or poetry, is
not only without permanent power, but it is destructive of the
principles it has usurped. So long as no words are uttered but in
faithfulness, so long the art of language goes on exalting itself; but
the moment it is shaped and chiselled on external principles, it falls
into frivolity, and perishes. And this truth would have been long ago
manifest, had it not been that in periods of advanced academical science
there is always a tendency to deny the sincerity of the first masters of
language. Once learn to write gracefully in the manner of an ancient
author, and we are apt to think that he also wrote in the manner of some
one else. But no noble nor right style was ever yet founded but out of a
sincere heart.

No man is worth reading to form your style, who does not mean what he
says; nor was any great style ever invented but by some man who meant
what he said. Find out the beginner of a great manner of writing, and
you have also found the declarer of some true facts or sincere passions:
and your whole method of reading will thus be quickened, for, being sure
that your author really meant what he said, you will be much more
careful to ascertain what it is that he means.


69. And of yet greater importance is it deeply to know that every beauty
possessed by the language of a nation is significant of the innermost
laws of its being. Keep the temper of the people stern and manly; make
their associations grave, courteous, and for worthy objects; occupy them
in just deeds; and their tongue must needs be a grand one. Nor is it
possible, therefore--observe the necessary reflected action--that any
tongue should be a noble one, of which the words are not so many
trumpet-calls to action. All great languages invariably utter great
things, and command them; they cannot be mimicked but by obedience; the
breath of them is inspiration because it is not only vocal, but vital;
and you can only learn to speak as these men spoke, by becoming what
these men were.


70. Now for direct confirmation of this, I want you to think over the
relation of expression to character in two great masters of the absolute
art of language, Virgil and Pope. You are perhaps surprised at the last
name; and indeed you have in English much higher grasp and melody of
language from more passionate minds, but you have nothing else, in its
range, so perfect. I name, therefore, these two men, because they are
the two most accomplished _Artists_, merely as such, whom I know in
literature; and because I think you will be afterwards interested in
investigating how the infinite grace in the words of the one, and the
severity in those of the other, and the precision in those of both,
arise wholly out of the moral elements of their minds:--out of the deep
tenderness in Virgil which enabled him to write the stories of Nisus and
Lausus; and the serene and just benevolence which placed Pope, in his
theology, two centuries in advance of his time, and enabled him to sum
the law of noble life in two lines which, so far as I know, are the most
complete, the most concise, and the most lofty expression of moral
temper existing in English words:--

    _"Never elated, while one man's oppress'd;_
    _Never dejected, while another's bless'd."_

I wish you also to remember these lines of Pope, and to make yourselves
entirely masters of his system of ethics; because, putting Shakespeare
aside as rather the world's than ours, I hold Pope to be the most
perfect representative we have, since Chaucer, of the true English mind;
and I think the Dunciad is the most absolutely chiselled and monumental
work "exacted" in our country. You will find, as you study Pope, that
he has expressed for you, in the strictest language and within the
briefest limits, every law of art, of criticism, of economy, of policy,
and, finally, of a benevolence, humble, rational, and resigned,
contented with its allotted share of life, and trusting the problem of
its salvation to Him in whose hand lies that of the universe.


71. And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in
which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more
difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as
cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and I
can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly
shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to
tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical
state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision, of
that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many
distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs.

And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman: but,
being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is not an
easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental
characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the
evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know
what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he
is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most
subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by
having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know
impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am
myself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient and
indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me than
to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you all, when
I make it manifest,--and as soon as we begin our real work, and you have
learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able to make manifest
to you,--and indisputably so,--that the day's work of a man like
Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, uninterrupted
succession of movements of the hand more precise than those of the
finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving at another, not
only with unerring precision at the extremity of the line, but with an
unerring and yet varied course--sometimes over spaces a foot or more in
extent--yet a course so determined everywhere, that either of these men
could, and Veronese often does, draw a finished profile, or any other
portion of the contour of the face, with one line, not afterwards
changed. Try, first, to realise to yourselves the muscular precision of
that action, and the intellectual strain of it; for the movement of a
fencer is perfect in practised monotony; but the movement of the hand of
a great painter is at every instant governed by a direct and new
intention. Then imagine that muscular firmness and subtlety, and the
instantaneously selective and ordinant energy of the brain, sustained
all day long, not only without fatigue, but with a visible joy in the
exertion, like that which an eagle seems to take in the wave of his
wings; and this all life long, and through long life, not only without
failure of power, but with visible increase of it, until the actually
organic changes of old age. And then consider, so far as you know
anything of physiology, what sort of an ethical state of body and mind
that means! ethic through ages past! what fineness of race there must be
to get it, what exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And
then, finally, determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is
consistent with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any
gnawing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of
rebellion against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious
violation of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the
glory of life and the pleasing of its Giver.


72. It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep
faults of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is
true that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young,
or they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our
misapprehension in the whole matter is from our not having well known
who the great painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that
was bred in the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who
breathed empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi
and the crags of Cadore.


73. It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the
strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and
natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of
beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognise in a moment by
their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there are
two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making clearly
understandable to you during my three years here, it is all I need care
to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name to you, and the other
I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one knows his name, except
the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little Bernard"--Bernardino, called
from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino.
The other is a Venetian, of whom many of you probably have never heard,
and of whom, through me, you shall not hear, until I have tried to get
some picture by him over to England.


74. Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though
sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact reverse
of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or disdain of
beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought to proceed
from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and show you how the
moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking lovely forms and
thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his hand in expression.
But I need not now urge this part of the proof on you, because you are
already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the truth in this matter,
and also I have already said enough of it in my writings; whereas I have
not at all said enough of the infallibleness of fine technical work as a
proof of every other good power. And indeed it was long before I myself
understood the true meaning of the pride of the greatest men in their
mere execution, shown for a permanent lesson to us, in the stories
which, whether true or not, indicate with absolute accuracy the general
conviction of great artists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and
Protogenes in a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know
the meaning to some purpose in a little while),--the story of the circle
of Giotto, and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed, the
expression of Duerer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by
Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert Duerer
in Nuernberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor his beauty of
expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "To show him his _hand_." And you
will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior artists are
continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound work, and
either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or pluming
themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they cannot
perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is mistaken
for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent, because very
subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men always understand at
once that the first morality of a painter, as of everybody else, is to
know his business; and so earnest are they in this, that many, whose
lives you would think, by the results of their work, had been passed in
strong emotion, have in reality subdued themselves, though capable of
the very strongest passions, into a calm as absolute as that of a deeply
sheltered mountain lake, which reflects every agitation of the clouds in
the sky, and every change of the shadows on the hills, but is itself
motionless.


75. Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought
upon the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in
our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness.
Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits
and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not
only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether
he is, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or only
with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now, between the
work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as those which
you find continually disappointing expectation in the lives of men of
modern literary power; the same conditions of society having obscured or
misdirected the best qualities of the imagination, both in our
literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with any of us as
to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of Shakespeare and
Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to analyse the moral laws
of the art skill in recent poets, novelists, and painters.


76. Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you
enable yourselves to distinguish, by the truth of your own lives, what
is true in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good
has its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either
literature or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their
mistaken aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and
that, if there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come
of a sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled
by conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange
than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are
part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond our
judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And it is
sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable effect
of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might permit
yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to genius,
when they took the form of personal temptations;--it is surely, I say,
sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern, as you may with
little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives of men of that
distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are probably the most
miserable.


77. I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important
question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it
done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the extended
knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now? And here we
are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as indisputable, that,
while many peasant populations, among whom scarcely the rudest practice
of art has ever been attempted, have lived in comparative innocence,
honour and happiness, the worst foulness and cruelty of savage tribes
have been frequently associated with fine ingenuities of decorative
design; also, that no people has ever attained the higher stages of art
skill, except at a period of its civilisation which was sullied by
frequent, violent and even monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the
attaining of perfection in art power has been hitherto, in every nation,
the accurate signal of the beginning of its ruin.


78. Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never
springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with
evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of Christian
countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the morality which
gives power to art is the morality of men, not of cattle.

Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are
apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent;
and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of
temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less real
because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty faults,
or inactive malignities.


79. But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in any
kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the art
by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in these industries,
skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral training;
while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every rightly-minded
peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or Switzerland, has
associated with its needful industry a quite studied school of
pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and simple
domestic architecture.


80. Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain
in the first lecture in the book I called "The Two Paths," respecting
the arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are
the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to
expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to
disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor any
other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal energy
of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of evil, and
the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are precisely
indicative of their distorted moral nature.


81. But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race
possessing this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is
very slow, and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and
faultful animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into
bright human life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of
the nature, until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes
the period when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that
new forms of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the
one, or to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the
people is lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science
develop themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and
compromised with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same
period to a destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the
nation is then certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I
said at first, the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no
more control it in its political career than the gleam of the firefly
guides its oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are
usually obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the
precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by which
it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues of its
iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods of great
national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root of all
evil) can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of man to evil
purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been misused, how much
more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to Caliban, is that
Miranda's fault?


82. And I could easily go on to trace for you what at the moment I
speak, is signified, in our own national character, by the forms of art,
and unhappily also by the forms of what is not art, but [Greek:
atechnia], that exist among us. But the more important question is, What
_will_ be signified by them; what is there in us now of worth and
strength, which under our new and partly accidental impulse towards
formative labour, may be by that expressed, and by that fortified?

Would it not be well to know this? Nay, irrespective of all future work,
is it not the first thing we should want to know, what stuff we are made
of--how far we are +agathoi+ or +kakoi+--good, or good for
nothing? We may all know that, each of ourselves, easily enough, if we
like to put one grave question well home.


83. Supposing it were told any of you by a physician whose word you
could not but trust, that you had not more than seven days to live. And
suppose also that, by the manner of your education it had happened to
you, as it has happened to many, never to have heard of any future
state, or not to have credited what you heard; and therefore that you
had to face this fact of the approach of death in its simplicity:
fearing no punishment for any sin that you might have before committed,
or in the coming days might determine to commit; and having similarly no
hope of reward for past, or yet possible, virtue; nor even of any
consciousness whatever to be left to you, after the seventh day had
ended, either of the results of your acts to those whom you loved, or of
the feelings of any survivors towards you. Then the manner in which you
would spend the seven days is an exact measure of the morality of your
nature.


84. I know that some of you, and I believe the greater number of you,
would, in such a case, spend the granted days entirely as you ought.
Neither in numbering the errors, or deploring the pleasures of the
past; nor in grasping at vile good in the present, nor vainly lamenting
the darkness of the future; but in an instant and earnest execution of
whatever it might be possible for you to accomplish in the time, in
setting your affairs in order, and in providing for the future comfort,
and--so far as you might by any message or record of yourself,--for the
consolation, of those whom you loved, and by whom you desired to be
remembered, not for your good, but for theirs. How far you might fail
through human weakness, in shame for the past, despair at the little
that could in the remnant of life be accomplished, or the intolerable
pain of broken affection, would depend wholly on the degree in which
your nature had been depressed or fortified by the manner of your past
life. But I think there are few of you who would not spend those last
days better than all that had preceded them.


85. If you look accurately through the records of the lives that have
been most useful to humanity, you will find that all that has been done
best, has been done so;--that to the clearest intellects and highest
souls,--to the true children of the Father, with whom a thousand years
are as one day, their poor seventy years are but as seven days. The
removal of the shadow of death from them to an uncertain, but always
narrow, distance, never takes away from them their intuition of its
approach; the extending to them of a few hours more or less of light
abates not their acknowledgment of the infinitude that must remain to be
known beyond their knowledge,--done beyond their deeds: the
unprofitableness of their momentary service is wrought in a magnificent
despair, and their very honour is bequeathed by them for the joy of
others, as they lie down to their rest, regarding for themselves the
voice of men no more.


86. The best things, I repeat to you, have been done thus, and
therefore, sorrowfully. But the greatest part of the good work of the
world is done either in pure and unvexed instinct of duty, "I have
stubbed Thornaby waste," or else, and better, it is cheerful and helpful
doing of what the hand finds to do, in surety that at evening time,
whatsoever is right the Master will give. And that it be worthily done,
depends wholly on that ultimate quantity of worth which you can measure,
each in himself, by the test I have just given you. For that test,
observe, will mark to you the precise force, first of your absolute
courage, and then of the energy in you for the right ordering of things,
and the kindly dealing with persons. You have cut away from these two
instincts every selfish or common motive, and left nothing but the
energies of Order and of Love.


87. Now, where those two roots are set, all the other powers and desires
find right nourishment, and become to their own utmost, helpful to
others and pleasurable to ourselves. And so far as those two springs of
action are not in us, all other powers become corrupt or dead; even the
love of truth, apart from these, hardens into an insolent and cold
avarice of knowledge, which unused, is more vain than unused gold.


88. These, then, are the two essential instincts of humanity: the love
of Order and the love of Kindness. By the love of order the moral energy
is to deal with the earth, and to dress it, and keep it; and with all
rebellious and dissolute forces in lower creatures, or in ourselves. By
the love of doing kindness it is to deal rightly with all surrounding
life. And then, grafted on these, we are to make every other passion
perfect; so that they may every one have full strength and yet be
absolutely under control.


89. Every one must be strong, every one perfect, every one obedient as a
war horse. And it is among the most beautiful pieces of mysticism to
which eternal truth is attached, that the chariot race, which Plato uses
as an image of moral government, and which is indeed the most perfect
type of it in any visible skill of men, should have been made by the
Greeks the continual subject of their best poetry and best art.
Nevertheless Plato's use of it is not altogether true. There is no black
horse in the chariot of the soul. One of the driver's worst faults is in
starving his horses; another, in not breaking them early enough; but
they are all good. Take, for example, one usually thought of as wholly
evil--that of Anger, leading to vengeance. I believe it to be quite one
of the crowning wickednesses of this age that we have starved and
chilled our faculty of indignation, and neither desire nor dare to
punish crimes justly. We have taken up the benevolent idea, forsooth,
that justice is to be preventive instead of vindictive; and we imagine
that we are to punish, not in anger, but in expediency; not that we may
give deserved pain to the person in fault, but that we may frighten
other people from committing the same fault. The beautiful theory of
this non-vindictive justice is, that having convicted a man of a crime
worthy of death, we entirely pardon the criminal, restore him to his
place in our affection and esteem, and then hang him, not as a
malefactor, but as a scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is,
that we send a child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of
walnuts, for fear that other children should come to steal more of our
walnuts. And we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand
families, because we think swindling is a wholesome excitement to trade.


90. But all true justice is vindictive to vice, as it is rewarding to
virtue. Only--and herein it is distinguished from personal revenge--it
is vindictive of the wrong done;--not of the wrong done _to us_. It is
the national expression of deliberate anger, as of deliberate gratitude;
it is not exemplary, or even corrective, but essentially retributive; it
is the absolute art of measured recompense, giving honour where honour
is due, and shame where shame is due, and joy where joy is due, and pain
where pain is due. It is neither educational, for men are to be educated
by wholesome habit, not by rewards and punishments; nor is it
preventive, for it is to be executed wi