by John Ruskin
APPENDICES.
I have brought together in these last pages a few notes, which were notproperly to be incorporated with the text, and which, at the bottom ofpages, checked the reader's attention to the main argument. Theycontain, however, several statements to which I wish to be able torefer, or have already referred, in other of my books, so that I thinkright to preserve them.
APPENDIX I.--(p. 22.)
The greatest of all economists are those most opposed to the doctrine of"laissez faire," namely, the fortifying virtues, which the wisest men ofall time have arranged under the general heads of Prudence, orDiscretion (the spirit which discerns and adopts rightly); Justice (thespirit which rules and divides rightly); Fortitude (the spirit whichpersists and endures rightly); and Temperance (the spirit which stopsand refuses rightly). These cardinal and sentinel virtues are not onlythe means of protecting and prolonging life itself, but they are thechief guards, or sources, of the material means of life, and thegoverning powers and princes of economy. Thus, precisely according tothe number of just men in a nation, is their power of avoiding eitherintestine or foreign war. All disputes may be peaceably settled, if asufficient number of persons have been trained to submit to theprinciples of justice, while the necessity for war is in direct ratio tothe number of unjust persons who are incapable of determining a quarrelbut by violence. Whether the injustice take the form of the desire ofdominion, or of refusal to submit to it, or of lust of territory, orlust of money, or of mere irregular passion and wanton will, the resultis economically the same;--loss of the quantity of power and lifeconsumed in repressing the injustice, added to the material and moraldestruction caused by the fact of war. The early civil wars of England,and the existing[95] war in America, are curious examples--these undermonarchical, this under republican, institutions--of the results onlarge masses of nations of the want of education in principles ofjustice. But the mere dread or distrust resulting from the want of theinner virtues of Faith and Charity prove often no less costly than waritself. The fear which France and England have of each other costs eachnation about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides variousparalyses of commerce; that sum being spent in the manufacture of meansof destruction instead of means of production. There is no more reasonin the nature of things that France and England should be hostile toeach other than that England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire andYorkshire; and the reciprocal terrors of the opposite sides of theEnglish Channel are neither more necessary, more economical, nor morevirtuous, than the old riding and reiving on the opposite flanks of theCheviots, or than England's own weaving for herself of crowns of thorn,from the stems of her Red and White roses.
APPENDIX II.--(p. 34.)
Few passages of the book which at least some part of the nations atpresent most advanced in civilization accept as an expression of finaltruth, have been more distorted than those bearing on Idolatry. For theidolatry there denounced is neither sculpture, nor veneration ofsculpture. It is simply the substitution of an "Eidolon," phantasm, orimagination of Good, for that which is real and enduring; from theHighest Living Good, which gives life, to the lowest material goodwhich ministers to it. The Creator, and the things created, which He issaid to have "seen good" in creating, are in this their eternal goodnessappointed always to be "worshipped,"--_i. e._, to have goodness andworth ascribed to them from the heart; and the sweep and range ofidolatry extend to the rejection of any or all of these, "calling evilgood, and good evil,--putting bitter for sweet, and sweet forbitter."[96] For in that rejection and substitution we betray the firstof all Loyalties, to the fixed Law of life, and with resolute oppositeloyalty serve our own imagination of good, which is the law, not of theHouse, but of the Grave, (otherwise called the law of "mark missing,"which we translate "law of Sin"); these "two masters," between whoseservices we have to choose, being otherwise distinguished as God andMammon, which Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power ofmoney only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of false andfond desire, or "Covetousness, which is Idolatry." So thatIconoclasm--_image_-breaking--is easy; but an Idol cannot be broken--itmust be forsaken; and this is not so easy, either to do, or persuade todoing. For men may readily be convinced of the weakness of an image; butnot of the emptiness of an imagination.
APPENDIX III.--(p. 36.)
I have not attempted to support, by the authority of other writers, anyof the statements made in these papers; indeed, if such authorities wererightly collected, there would be no occasion for my writing at all.Even in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three booksof Carlyle's--Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter DayPamphlets,--all has been said that needs to be said, and far better thanI shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at presentis to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and a hundredtimes over, before it will listen; and it has revolted against thesepapers of mine as if they contained things daring and new, when thereis not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for agesknown to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. Itwould be [I had written _will_ be; but have now reached a time of lifefor which there is but one mood--the conditional,] a far greaterpleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than to add to mine;Horace's clear rendering of the substance of the passages in the textmay be found room for at once,
Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum Nec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli; Si scalpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti Compositis; metuensque velut contingere sacrum?
[Which may be roughly thus translated:--
"Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, being in no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, being no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no mind for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him a madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there between such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and does not know how to use, when he has got them?"]
With which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's statement, itbeing clearer than any English one can be, owing to the power of thegeneral Greek term for wealth, "useable things."
[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be troubled to correct theaccents, and am always nervous about them; here it is in English, aswell as I can do it:--
"This being so, it follows that things are only property to the man whoknows how to use them; as flutes, for instance, are property to the manwho can pipe upon them respectably; but to one who knows not how topipe, they are no property, unless he can get rid of themadvantageously.... For if they are not sold, the flutes are no property(being serviceable for nothing); but, sold, they become property. Towhich Socrates made answer,--'and only then if he knows how to sellthem, for if he sell them to another man who cannot play on them, stillthey are no property.'"]
APPENDIX IV.--(p. 39.)
The reader is to include here in the idea of "Government," any branch ofthe Executive, or even any body of private persons, entrusted with thepractical management of public interests unconnected directly with theirown personal ones. In theoretical discussions of legislativeinterference with political economy, it is usually, and of courseunnecessarily, assumed that Government must be always of that form andforce in which we have been accustomed to see it;--that its abuses cannever be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its powers more numerous.But, practically, the custom in most civilized countries is, for everyman to deprecate the interference of Government as long as things tellfor his personal advantage, and to call for it when they cease to do so.The request of the Manchester Economists to be supplied with cotton byGovernment (the system of supply and demand having, for the time, fallensorrowfully short of the expectations of scientific persons from it), isan interesting case in point. It were to be wished that less wide andbitter suffering, suffering, too, of the innocent, had been needed toforce the
nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a body of men,already confessedly capable of managing matters both military anddivine, should not be permitted, or even requested, at need, to providein some wise for sustenance as well as for defence; and secure, if itmight be,--(and it might, I think, even the _rather_ be),--purity ofbodily, as well as of spiritual, aliment? Why, having made many roadsfor the passage of armies, may they not make a few for the conveyance offood; and after organizing, with applause, various schemes oftheological instruction for the Public, organize, moreover, somemethods of bodily nourishment for them? Or is the soul so much lesstrustworthy in its instincts than the stomach, that legislation isnecessary for the one, but inapplicable to the other.
APPENDIX V.--(p. 70.)
I debated with myself whether to make the note on Homer longer byexamining the typical meaning of the shipwreck of Ulysses, and hisescape from Charybdis by help of her fig-tree; but as I should have hadto go on to the lovely myth of Leucothea's veil, and did not care tospoil this by a hurried account of it, I left it for future examination;and, three days after the paper was published, observed that thereviewers, with their customary helpfulness, were endeavouring to throwthe whole subject back into confusion by dwelling on this single (asthey imagined) oversight. I omitted also a note on the sense of the word[Greek: lygron], with respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and herb-fieldsof Helen, (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii., 473, &c.), which wouldfarther have illustrated the nature of the Circean power. But, not to beled too far into the subtleties of these myths, observe respecting themall, that even in very simple parables, it is not always easy to attachindisputable meaning to every part of them. I recollect some years ago,throwing an assembly of learned persons who had met to delightthemselves with interpretations of the parable of the prodigal son,(interpretations which had up to that moment gone very smoothly,) intomute indignation, by inadvertently asking who the _un_prodigal son was,and what was to be learned by _his_ example. The leading divine of thecompany, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained to me that the unprodigal sonwas a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect, to make the storyprettier, and that no note was to be taken of him. Without, however,admitting that Homer put in the last escape of Ulysses merely to makehis story prettier, this is nevertheless true of all Greek myths, thatthey have many opposite lights and shades; they are as changeful asopal, and like opal, usually have one colour by reflected, and anotherby transmitted light. But they are true jewels for all that, and full ofnoble enchantment for those who can use them; for those who cannot, I amcontent to repeat the words I wrote four years ago, in the appendix tothe _Two Paths_--
"The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, andwe may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at hismeaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless and unredeemablemistake, is the fool's thought, that he had _no_ meaning."
APPENDIX VI.--(p. 84)
The derivation of words is like that of rivers: there is one realsource, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up among thehills; then, as the word flows on and comes into service, it takes inthe force of other words from other sources, and becomes quite anotherword--often much more than one word, after the junction--a word as itwere of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the wholeforce of our English "charity" depends on the guttural in "charis"getting confused with the c of the Latin "carus;" thenceforwardthroughout the middle ages, the two ideas ran on together, and both gotconfused with St. Paul's [Greek: agape], which expresses a differentidea in all sorts of ways; our "charity" having not only brought in theentirely foreign sense of alms-giving, but lost the essential sense ofcontentment, and lost much more in getting too far away from the"charis" of the final Gospel benedictions. For truly it is fineChristianity we have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetualgrace or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or charity enoughto hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains; andwhich, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness of its owndebts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the throat,saying,--not merely "Pay me that thou owest," but "Pay me that thouowest me _not_."
It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a difference, andcall it "Herb o' grace o' Sundays," taking consolation out of theoffertory with--"Look, what he layeth out; it shall be paid him again."Comfortable words indeed, and good to set against the old royalty ofLargesse--
Whose moste joie was, I wis, When that she gave, and said, "Have this."
[I am glad to end, for this time, with these lovely words of Chaucer. Wehave heard only too much lately of "Indiscriminate charity," withimplied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination merely, but of the Charityalso. We have partly succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor theidea that it is disgraceful to receive; and are likely, without muchdifficulty, to succeed in persuading not a few of the rich that it isdisgraceful to give. But the political economy of a great state makesboth giving and receiving graceful; and the political economy of truereligion interprets the saying that "it is more blessed to give than toreceive," not as the promise of reward in another life for mortifiedselfishness in this, but as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet andbetter nature, which does not mortify itself in giving.]
_Brantwood, Coniston,_ _5th October, 1871._
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[95] [Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next corrected mytype, the "existing" war best illustrative of the sentence would bebetween Frenchmen in the Elysian Fields of Paris.]
[96] Compare the close of the Fourth Lecture in _Aratra Pentelici_.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM
To FRANCIS HAWKSWORTH FAWKES, ESQ OF FARNLEY
THESE PAGES WHICH OWE THEIR PRESENT FORM TO ADVANTAGES GRANTED BY HIS KINDNESS ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY HIS OBLIGED FRIEND JOHN RUSKIN