by John Ruskin
LECTURE III.
IMAGINATION.
_November, 1870._
66. The principal object of the preceding lecture (and I choose ratherto incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity indefining it), was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble andfalse phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of aspiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seekingphase of it, to which I shall in these lectures[118] give the generalterm of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbolswhich may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implyingthe actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,in reality, of the forms we attribute to them.
FIG. 2.]
67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, onvases of the Phidian time (sufficiently represented in the oppositewoodcut), no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this waspainted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as theArabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he thinkthat this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urgedhis hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the Goddessherself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever sobeautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under theform of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow,when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but itdid not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any ofthese forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her ownaid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, atall events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heartthe facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom,perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physicaldominion over the air which is the life and breadth of all creatures,and clothed, to human eyes, with aegis of fiery cloud, and raiment offalling dew.
68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of agriculture, inwhich the wings of the chariot represent the winds of spring, and itscrested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twistedroot piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it; we arein still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of anactual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to observe thatin all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinctionfrom idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence ofthe Spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity toconceive the one, or compel the other.
FIG. 3.]
69. Farther--and for this statement I claim your attention still moreearnestly. As no nation has ever attained real greatness during periodsin which it was subject to any condition of Idolatry, so no nation hasever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching andmaintaining a passionate Imagination of a spiritual estate higher thanthat of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quitereal and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us.
And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under thename of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of justpolicy have vanished from us,--and that totally,--for this doublereason; that we are on one side, given up to idolatries of the mostservile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last lecture,--while,on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise offaithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth whichremain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover theorigin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source ofthe order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms.
70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture hasperished more totally than any other, because the object of that art isexclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. It isessentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent ofthe highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as theyexhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation tohumanity. It deals with the "particula undique desecta" of the animalnature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples'contemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [Greek:pelos], or lower still, the [Greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, byAthena's help, into forms of power;--([Greek: to men holon architektonautos en. syneirgazeto de toi kai e 'Athena empneousa ton pelon kaiempsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata];)[119]--but it has nothing whateverto do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful,(as of clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill,except in expressing the noblest conditions of life.
These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of ourday, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do I wish you todo so. By placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, I do notdoubt but that I shall gradually prove to you the nature of allexcelling and enduring qualities; but to-day I will only confirm myassertions by laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselveson the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredlyauthoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come.
71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of themyth of Athena in my _Queen of the Air_, you cannot but have beensurprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I didnot, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths;and is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but asthe goddess of Art-Wisdom.
You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinkingof it, as revolting. It is indeed, one of the most painful and childishof sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us,this story satisfied the fancy of the Athenian people in their higheststate; and if it did not satisfy--yet it was accepted by, all latermythologists: you may also remember I told you to be prepared to findthat, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder thesymbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend of the birth ofAthena is the central myth of all that the Greeks have left usrespecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as itseemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us onthese matters. We may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, ifanywhere.
72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that Icannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but I will takemain points. Athena is born in the island of Rhodes; and that island israised out of the sea by Apollo, after he had been left withoutinheritance among the gods. Zeus[120] would have cast the lot again, butApollo orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; andnot now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises outof the sea.
Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos,especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the firstprocess in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated tothe Nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek:sophotata noemata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organismexisting in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of lighton the earth, giving lovely form and colour at once; (compare the use ofit by Dante as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven) andremember that, therefore, the rose is in the Greek mind, essentially aDoric flower, expressing the worship of Light, as the Iris or Ion is anIonic one, expressing the worship of the Winds and Dew.
73. To understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of Athena, wemust again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by thehand. Before you can cultivate land you must clear it; and thecharacteristic weapon of Hephaestus,--which is as much his attribute asthe trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as youwould have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-axe--the doubled-edged[Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cutdown the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval andagricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by th
is weapon,with which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mindthis agriculturally laborious character of Hephaestus, even when he ismost distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfectepithet for him "avidus" expresses at once the devouring eagerness offire, and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to himwhen he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of hiscleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving birth to Athenasignifies, indeed, physically the thrilling power of heat in theheavens, rending the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but farmore deeply it signifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labour;until, out of the chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude,springs the Spirit of Wisdom.
74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shall haveto refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the Greekmind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is ofpeculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, isindicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while theantagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, isshown by his striking at Hephaestus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV.gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to bedeciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceivedin later art.
FIG. 4.]
75. I told you in a former lecture of this course that the entire Greekintellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times.Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universalinferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood,and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advancedlife; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other theadult phase of existence.
76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that wereborn into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and allaround them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-encumbered,inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. Butthe power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones werefilled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came thegreat spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithae; and the livingcreatures became "Children of Men." Taught, yet, by the Centaur--sown,as they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from theleprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of alittle child, and they were clean.
Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the Greekrace--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of thepast, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children'seyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world.
77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you,either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you haveobserved in other children, of the action of thought and fancy. Childrenare continually represented as living in an ideal world of their own. Sofar as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child isto live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure inmemory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by anticipation: weakalike in reflection and forethought, but having an intense possession ofthe actual present, down to the shortest moments and least objects ofit; possessing it, indeed, so intensely that the sweet childish days areas long as twenty days will be; and setting all the faculties of heartand imagination on little things, so as to be able to make anything outof them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not imaginehimself somewhere else, but makes a great garden out of that; possessedof an acorn-cup, he will not despise it and throw it away, and covet agolden one in its stead: it is the adult who does so. The child keepshis acorn-cup as a treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in hismind; so that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him isalways tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "What would youhave more than these?" but "What possibly can you see _in_ these?" for,to the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensibleinconsistency between the child's words and the reality. The littlething tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that "this is aqueen's crown, or a fairy's boat," and, with beautiful effrontery,expects him to believe the same. But observe--the acorn-cup must be_there_, and in his own hand. "Give it me;" then I will make more of itfor myself. That is the child's one word, always.
FIG. 5.]
78. It is also the one word of the Greek--"Give it me." Give me _any_thing definite here in my sight, then I will make more of it.
PLATE V.--TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO.]
I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me that I amobliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an apologist for Greekart; that I find, in spite of all the devotion of the admirable scholarswho have so long maintained in our public schools the authority of Greekliterature, our younger students take no interest in the manual work ofthe people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellectual lifehas exclusively depended. But I am not surprised that the interest, ifawakened, should not at first take the form of admiration. Theinconsistency between an Homeric description of a piece of furniture orarmour, and the actual rudeness of any piece of art approximating withineven three or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, thatwe at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any wayrelated to, the poetic language.
79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of discrepancy betweenearly sculpture, and the languages of deed and thought, in the secondbirth, and childhood, of the world, under Christianity. The same fairthoughts and bright imaginations arise again; and similarly, the fancyis content with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized tothe eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) with chequersor spots on its breast, and sharp lines of drapery to its feet, couldrepresent, to the Greek, the healing majesty of heaven: but can you anybetter understand how a symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) couldrepresent to the noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power andministration of angels? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the rudeundulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughtsintended to be conveyed by the spotted aegis and falling chiton ofAthena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, intheir noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind andcongealed hail in heaven--saw with the same thankfulness the dew shedsoftly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, rulingthese, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, whichleads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, and all art.
80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate V.), at theextremity of which this angel is sculptured. It stands in an open recessin the rude brick wall of the west front of the church of St. John andPaul at Venice, being the tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopoand Lorenzo Tiepolo. This is the inscription:--
"Quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti Hac sub rupe Duces. Venetum charissima proles Theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triumphis. Omnia presentis donavit predia templi Dux Jacobus: valido fixit moderamine leges Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram Dalmatiosque dedit patrie, post, Marte subactas Graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes. Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros, Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, Bononie populos. Hinc subdita Cervia cessit. Fundavere vias pacis; fortique relicta Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo.
"Dominus Jachobus hobiit[121] M.CCLI. Dominus Laurentius hobiit M.CCLXXVIII."
You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of thirteenthcentury sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI., you have an example of the(coin) sculpture of the date accurately corresponding in Greece to thethirteenth century in Venice, when the meaning of symbols was everythingand the workmanship comparatively nothing. The upper head is an Athena,of Athenian work in the seventh or sixth century--(the coin itself mayhave been struck later, but the archaic type was retained). The twosmaller impressions below are the front an
d obverse of a coin of thesame age from Corinth, the head of Athena on one side, and Pegasus, withthe archaic Koppa, on the other. The smaller head is bare, the hairbeing looped up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. Youare to note this general outline of the head, already given in a morefinished type in Plate II., as a most important elementary form in thefinest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of all Christendom. In theupper head the hair is restrained still more closely by a round helmet,for the most part smooth, but embossed with a single flower tendril,having one bud, one flower, and above it, two olive leaves. You havethus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought ofthe power of Athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. An oliveleaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a tree, but the twocan, when set in position of growth.
PLATE VI.--ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH.]
I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same plate, becauseyou would have looked at it only, laughed at it, and not examined therest; but here it is, wonderfully engraved for you (Fig. 6): of it weshall have more to say afterwards.
FIG. 6.]
81. And now as you look at these rude vestiges of the religion ofGreece, and at the vestiges, still ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of thereligion of Christendom, take warning against two opposite errors.
There is a school of teachers who will tell you that nothing but Greekart is deserving of study, and that all our work at this day should bean imitation of it.
Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these portraits ofAthena and her owl, and be assured that Greek art is not in all respectsperfect, nor exclusively deserving of imitation.
There is another school of teachers who will tell you that Greek art isgood for nothing; that the soul of the Greek was outcast, and thatChristianity entirely superseded its faith, and excelled its works.
Whenever you feel tempted to believe _them_, think of this angel on thetomb of Jacopo Tiepolo; and remember, that Christianity, after it hadbeen twelve hundred years existent as an imaginative power on the earth,could do no better work than this, though with all the former power ofGreece to help it; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stainedits fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, butbetween barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people hadinvented.
82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson; In bothexamples, childish though it be, this Heathen and Christian art is alikesincere, and alike vividly imaginative: the actual work is that ofinfancy; the thoughts, in their visionary simplicity, are also thethoughts of infancy, but in their solemn virtue, they are the thoughtsof men.
We, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely withoutsincerity;--absolutely, therefore, without imagination, and withoutvirtue. Our hands are dexterous with the vile and deadly dexterity ofmachines; our minds filled with incoherent fragments of faith, which wecling to in cowardice, without believing, and make pictures of invanity, without loving. False and base alike, whether we admire orimitate, we cannot learn from the Heathen's art, but only pilfer it; wecannot revive the Christian's art, but only galvanize it; we are, in thesum of us, not human artists at all, but mechanisms of conceited clay,masked in the furs and feathers of living creatures, and convulsed withvoltaic spasms, in mockery of animation.
83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable in violence.They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, theywere violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate andaccurate,--except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotentto restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of theimpotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the fullmeaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, inthe capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, theimagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty ofnature most useful. Of all architectural features of the metropolis,that embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous; and in itsposition and purpose it was the most capable of noble adornment.
For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our modern poeticalimagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. It has,indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate togas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes'tails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or asprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble,which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in everycapital of Europe for the last fifty years. We cast _that_ badly, andgive lustre to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of bronze. Onthe base of their pedestals, towards the road, we put foradvertisement's sake, the initials of the casting firm; and, for fartheroriginality and Christianity's sake, the caduceus of Mercury; and toadorn the front of the pedestals towards the river, being now wholly atour wit's end, we can think of nothing better than to borrow thedoor-knocker which--again for the last fifty years--has disturbed anddecorated two or three millions of London street-doors; and magnifyingthe marvellous device of it, a lion's head with a ring in its mouth(still borrowed from the Greek), we complete the embankment with a rowof heads and rings, on a scale which enables them to produce, at thedistance at which only they can be seen, the exact effect of a row ofsentry boxes.
84. Farther. In the very centre of the city, and at the point where theEmbankment commands a view of Westminster Abbey on one side and of St.Paul's on the other--that is to say, at precisely the most important andstately moment of its whole course--it has to pass under one of thearches of Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is asvast--it alone--as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly inproportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and debased Venetianwork, there still reigns some power of human imagination: on the twoflanks of it are carved the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation; onthe keystone the descending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault of livingdesigners that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy andhollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just beyond the dampshadow of it, the new Embankment is reached by a flight of stairs, whichare, in point of fact, the principal approach to it, a-foot, fromcentral London; the descent from the very midst of the metropolis ofEngland to the banks of the chief river of England; and for thisapproach, living designers _are_ answerable.
85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas-lamp, but ashattered one, with a brass crown on the top of it or, rather,half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the back of it to the riverand causeway, its flame supplied by a visible pipe far wandering alongthe wall; the whole apparatus being supported by a rough cross-beam.Fastened to the centre of the arch above is a large placard, statingthat the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, andthat their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side of the archare temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across twoangles capable of unseemly use by the British public. Above one of theseis another placard, stating that this is the Victoria Embankment. Thesteps themselves--some forty of them--descend under a tunnel, which theshattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. They are coveredwith filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude of filthy feet; mixed upwith shreds of paper, orange-peel, foul straw, rags, and cigar ends, andashes; the whole agglutinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slipperyblotches and patches; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by thesooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend anddescend. The place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to findelsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality ofbuilding, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so farseparated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accuratelyindicative of the methods of our national resistance to the Grace,Mercy, and Peace of Heaven.
86. I am obliged always to use the English word "Grace" in two senses,but remember that the Greek [Greek: charis] includes them both (thebestowing, that is to say of Beauty and Mercy); and especially itincludes these in the passage of Pindar'
s first ode, which gives us thekey to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. Youremember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (Sec. 151), thatthe mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of thefamily of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of themall, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindarpauses--not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibilityin the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger ofDemeter--and gives his own reading of the event, instead of the ancientone. He justifies this to himself, and to his hearers, by the plea thatmyths have, in some sort, or degree, ([Greek: pou ti]), led the mind ofmortals beyond the truth: and then he goes on:--
"Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and soothing formortals, adding honour, has often made things at first untrustworthy,become trustworthy through Love."
87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you the completeforce of the passage; especially of the [Greek: apiston emesatopioton]--"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should beso"--which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at thepresent day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms offaith which either have long been precious to themselves, or which theyfeel to have been without question instrumental in advancing the dignityof mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity--a partwhich, above others, you are in danger of unwisely contemning under theexisting conditions of our knowledge, that the things thus sought forbelief with eager passion, do, indeed, become trustworthy to us; that,to each of us, they verily become what we would have them; the force ofthe [Greek: menis] and [Greek: mneme] with which we seek after them,does, indeed, make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and itis thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things thatexalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, things that exaltor degrade our souls; giving true substance to all that we hoped for;evidence to things that we have not seen, but have desired to see; andcalling, in the sense of creating, things that are not, as though theywere.
88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from Idolatry, Ireferred you to the forms of passionate affection with which a noblepeople commonly regards the rivers and springs of its native land. Someconception of personality or of spiritual power in the stream, is almostnecessarily involved in such emotion; and prolonged [Greek: charis] inthe form of gratitude, the return of Love for benefits continuallybestowed, at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, whenthey are honourable and pure, makes this untrue thing trustworthy;[Greek: apiston emesato piston], until it becomes to them the safe basisof some of the happiest impulses of their moral nature. Next to themarbles of Verona, given you as a primal type of the sculpture ofChristianity, moved to its best energy in adorning the entrance of itstemples, I have not unwillingly placed, as your introduction to the bestsculpture of the religion of Greece, the forms under which itrepresented the personality of the fountain Arethusa. But, withoutrestriction to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point outto you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimate andheavenly authority even over the minds of men of the most practicalsense, the most shrewd wit, and the most severe precision of moraltemper. The fair vision of Sabrina in _Comus_, the endearing and tenderpromise, "Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium," and the joyful and proudaffection of the great Lombard's address to the lakes of his enchantedland,--
Te, Lari maxume, teque Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino,
may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when you stand bythe blank stones which at once restrain and disgrace your native river,as the final worship rendered to it by modern philosophy. But a littleincident which I saw last summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may putthe contrast of ancient and modern feeling before you still moreforcibly.
89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of us can read withtoo much attention), Moliere's most perfect work, the _Misanthrope_,must remember Celimene's description of her lovers, and her excellentreason for being unable to regard with any favour, "notre grand flandrinde vicomte,--depuis que je l'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracherdans un puits pour faire des ronds." That sentence is worth noting, bothin contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells and springs,and as one of the most interesting traces of the extension of theloathsome habit among the upper classes of Europe and America, which nowrenders all external grace, dignity, and decency, impossible in thethoroughfares of their principal cities. In connection with thatsentence of Moliere's you may advisably also remember this fact, which Ichanced to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was walking from endto end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last May, tryingto conjecture what had made this especial bend and ford of the Thames soimportant in all the Anglo-Saxon wars. It was one of the few sunnyafternoons of the bitter spring, and I was very thankful for its light,and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of theclassical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just outof some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching,as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. I went upto him to see what he was looking at; but just as I got close to him, hestarted over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into thesame position, his object being, as I then perceived, to spit from bothsides upon the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boatbelow.
90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed in thisplace. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. It meant, in thedepth of it, such absence of all true [Greek: charis], reverence, andintellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the mind of any humancreature, much more in that of a child educated with apparently everyadvantage of circumstance in a beautiful English country town, withinten miles of our University. Most of all, is it terrific when we regardit as the exponent (and this, in truth, it is), of the temper which, asdistinguished from former methods, either of discipline or recreation,the present tenor of our general teaching fosters in the mind ofyouth;--teaching which asserts liberty to be a right, and obedience adegradation; and which, regardless alike of the fairness of nature andthe grace of behaviour, leaves the insolent spirit and degraded sensesto find their only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction inshame.
91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any more, totrace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the feeling of whatwas at least a better childishness than this of ours; and the efforts toexpress, though with hands yet failing, and minds oppressed by ignorantphantasy, the first truth by which they knew that they lived; the birthof wisdom and of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of hisresolute labour.
92. "[Greek: Aphaistou technaisi]." Note that word of Pindar in theSeventh Olympic. This axe-blow of Vulcan's was to the Greek mind trulywhat Clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to have been "[Greek: tes dedexias cheros ergon dikaias tektonos]"; physically, it meant the openingof the blue through the rent clouds of heaven, by the action of localterrestrial heat of Hephaestus as opposed to Apollo, who shines on thesurface of the upper clouds, but cannot pierce them; and, spiritually,it meant the first birth of prudent thought out of rude labour, theclearing-axe in the hand of the woodman being the practical elementarysign of his difference from the wild animals of the wood. Then he goeson, "From the high head of her Father, Athenaia rushing forth, criedwith her great and exceeding cry; and the Heaven trembled at her, andthe Earth Mother." The cry of Athena, I have before pointed out,physically distinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silentelemental powers; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again themythic cry of which he thinks; that is to say, the giving articulatewords, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. "Wisdom crieth aloud,she uttereth her voice in the streets," and Heaven and Earth tremble ather reproof.
93. Uttereth her voice in "the streets." For all men, that is to say;but to what work did the Greeks think that her voice was to call them?What was to be the impulse communicate
d by her prevailing presence; whatthe sign of the people's obedience to her?
This was to be the sign--"But she, the goddess herself, gave to them toprevail over the dwellers upon earth, _with best-labouring hands inevery art. And by their paths there were the likenesses of living and ofcreeping things_; and the glory was deep. For to the cunning workman,greater knowledge comes, undeceitful."
94. An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are tonote mainly these three things: First, that Athena is the goddess ofDoing, not at all of sentimental inaction. She is begotten, as it were,of the woodman's axe; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a wordand a blow. She guides the hands that labour best, in every art.
95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to the hands thatlabour best, is that the streets and ways, [Greek: keleuthoi], shall befilled by likenesses of living and creeping things?
Things living, and creeping! Are the Reptile things not alive then? Youthink Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, if he had only known alittle modern anatomy, instead of "reptile" things, he would have said"monochondylous" things? Be patient, and let us attend to the mainpoints first.
Sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that the Greekscare to speak of; they think it involves and crowns every other.Image-making art; _this_ is Athena's, as queenliest of the arts.Literature, the order and the strength of word, of course belongs toApollo and the Muses; under Athena are the Substances and the Forms ofthings.
96, Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be gained a"deep"--that is to say--a weighty, and prevailing, glory; not a floatingnor fugitive one. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes,"undeceitful."
"[Greek: Daenti]" I am forced to use two English words to translate thatsingle Greek one. The "cunning" workman, thoughtful in experience,touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and ofnecessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitualskill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect,in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses aboutgetting the lines of ship-timber true, (_Il._ xv. 410)
[Greek: "All' oste stathme dory neion exithynei tektonos en palamesi daemonos, hos ra te pases ed eide sophies, upothemosynesin Athenes,"]
and the beautiful epithet of Persephone, "[Greek: daeira]," as the Tryerand Knower of good work; and remembering these, trust Pindar for thetruth of his saying, that to the cunning workman--(and let me solemnlyenforce the words by adding--that to him _only_,) knowledge comesundeceitful.
97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as one of theparadoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly stating, what I toldyou in the close of my Third Introductory Lecture, that "so far fromart's being immoral, little else except art is moral." I have nowfarther to tell you, that little else, except art, is wise; that allknowledge, unaccompanied by a habit of useful action, is too likely tobecome deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolveitself into some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, inall sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be the aim,predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thingat least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with yourhands, something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well withyour hands, useful or not;--to be, even in trifling, [Greek: palamesidaemon] is already much;--when we come to examine the art of the middleages I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences ofright then brought to bear upon character was the necessity forexquisite manual dexterity in the management of the spear and bridle;and in your own experience most of you will be able to recognize thewholesome effect, alike on body and mind, of striving, within properlimits of time, to become either good batsmen, or good oarsmen. But thebat and the racer's oar are children's toys. Resolve that you will bemen in usefulness, as well as in strength; and you will find that thenalso, but not till then, you can become men in understanding; and thatevery fine vision and subtle theorem will present itself to youthenceforward undeceitfully, [Greek: hypothemosynesin Athenes].
98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of Pindar. He isthinking, in his brief, intense way, at once of Athena's work on thesoul, and of her literal power on the dust of the Earth. His "[Greek:keleuthoi]" is a wide word meaning all the paths of sea and land.Consider, therefore, what Athena's own work _actually is_--in theliteral fact of it. The blue, clear air _is_ the sculpturing power uponthe earth and sea. Where the surface of the earth is reached by that,and its matter and substance inspired with, and filled by that, organicform becomes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and moisture;the kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea: but the sculpturing ofliving things, shape by shape, is Athena's, so that under the broodingspirit of the air, what was without form, and void brings forth themoving creature that hath life.
99. That is her work then--the giving of Form; then the separatelyApolline work is the giving of Light; or, more strictly, Sight: givingthat faculty to the retina to which we owe not merely the idea of light,but the existence of it; for light is to be defined only as thesensation produced in the eye of an animal, under given conditions;those same conditions being, to a stone, only warmth or chemicalinfluence, but not light. And that power of seeing, and the othervarious personalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasureand pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but inany wise touched or approached by scientific discovery. Some of theconditions of mere external animal form and of muscular vitality havebeen shown; but for the most part that is true, even of external form,which I wrote six years ago. "You may always stand by Form againstForce. To a painter, the essential character of anything is the form ofit, and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, forinstance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (orwhatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as in agier-eagle. Very good: that is so; and it is very interesting. Itrequires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take thegier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to bring him down again on ahare or a partridge. But we painters, acknowledging the equality andsimilarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects,attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in theirforms. For us, the primarily cognisable facts, in the two things, are,that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on itsback, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the distinction also ofvolition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or modeof force--but, then to an artist, the form or mode is the gist of thebusiness."
100. As you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but to all ofus. The laws under which matter is collected and constructed are thesame throughout the universe: the substance so collected, whether forthe making of the eagle, or the worm, may be analyzed into gaseousidentity; a diffusive vital force, apparently so closely related tomechanically measurable heat as to admit the conception of its beingitself mechanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbsand flows alike through the limbs of men, and the fibres of insects.But, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or degraded accident ofthis, are two laws of beauty in form, and of nobility in character,which stand in the chaos of creation between the Living and the Dead, toseparate the things that have in them a sacred and helpful, from thosethat have in them an accursed and destroying, nature; and the power ofAthena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these [Greek:zoa and erpeta], these living and reptile things, is put forth, finally,in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from the other; to knowthe unquenchable fires of the Spirit from the unquenchable fires ofDeath; and to choose, not unaided, between submission to the Love thatcannot end, or to the Worm that cannot die.
101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most notablecharacteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulityor fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather havebeen the strength) of early imagination, indicates so
strange adepression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure ofthe sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct,which have become the curses of recent science,[122] art, and policy.
102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited in the meanconsternation confessedly felt on one side, and the mean triumphapparently felt on the other, during the course of the dispute nowpending as to the origin of man. Dispute for the present, not to bedecided, and of which the decision is to persons in the modern temper ofmind, wholly without significance: and I earnestly desire that you, mypupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies frominvestigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense enough toperceive that it does not matter how you have been made, so long as youare satisfied with being what you are. If you are dissatisfied withyourselves, it ought not to console, but humiliate you, to imagine thatyou were once seraphs; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is notany ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of your own, youhave passed through the elementary condition of apes.
103. Remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest importance thatyou should know what you _are_, and determine to be the best that youmay be; but it is of no importance whatever, except as it may contributeto that end, to know what you have been. Whether your Creator shaped youwith fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or graduallyraised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, is only ofmoment to you in this respect--that in the one case you cannot expectyour children to be nobler creatures than you are yourselves--in theother, every act and thought of your present life may be hastening theadvent of a race which will look back to you, their fathers (and youought at least to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may beso), with incredulous disdain.
104. But that you _are_ yourselves capable of that disdain and dismay;that you are ashamed of having been apes, if you ever were so; that youacknowledge instinctively, a relation of better and worse, and a lawrespecting what is noble and base, which makes it no question to youthat the man is worthier than the baboon--_this_ is a fact of infinitesignificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true essenceof your being, and the consciousness of that law is a more positiveexistence than any dependent on the coherence or forms of matter.
105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have done. Rememberthat Athena holds the weaver's shuttle, not merely as an instrument of_texture_, but as an instrument of _picture_; the ideas of clothing, andof the warmth of life, being thus inseparably connected with those ofgraphic beauty and the brightness of life. I have told you that no artcould be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor withoutthe elementary graphic art of women, in divers colours of needlework.There has been no nation of any art-energy, but has strenuously occupiedand interested itself in this household picturing, from the web ofPenelope to the tapestry of Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras andGobelins.
106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery Athena put onher own robe; "[Greek: peplon heanon, poikilon hou r aute poiesato kaikame chersin]."
The subject of that [Greek: poikilia] of hers, as you know, was the warof the giants and gods. Now the real name of these giants, remember, isthat used by Hesiod, "[Greek: pelochonoi]," "mud-begotten," and themeaning of the contest between these and Zeus, [Greek: pelogononelater], is, again, the inspiration of life into the clay, by thegoddess of breath; and the actual confusion going on visibly before you,daily, of the earth, heaping itself into cumbrous war with the powersabove it.
107. Thus briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's hand, isthe contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you theearly thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be thetracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when,not in tapestry only--but in sculpture--and on the portal of the Templeof Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisigiganton]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delightfrom the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek:leusso Pallad' eman theon]," my own goddess. All our work, I repeat,will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this thesubject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato about thatembroidery--"And think you that there is verily war with each otheramong the Gods? and dreadful enmities and battle, such as the poets havetold, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, to adornall our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the great Panathenaeathemselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried up intothe Acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthuphron,right-minded friend?"
108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and true forever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against theearth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelierimagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force,can explain, the adoption and completing of individual form byindividual animation, breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits.And to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by whichit lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and showit forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry.
"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them."
"Assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride; and through porch andaisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers.
Who would have thought the day so near when we should bow down toworship, not the creatures, but their atoms,--not the forces that form,but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which isstringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less againstadoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to bereformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceasedfrom the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it iswell,--if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts.We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair phantasms, to which weonce sought for succour;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also theadorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity ofgains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine sealof strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honour in thefervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may yet be manifested tous the holy presence, and the approving love, of the Loving God, whovisits the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children, unto the thirdand fourth generation of them that hate Him, and shows mercy untothousands in them that love Him, and keep His Commandments.
FOOTNOTES:
[118] I shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my otherwritings, to use the terms, Idolatry and Imagination in a morecomprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience sake,limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms, noble andignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception.
[119] "And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, andAthena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused themoulded things to have soul (psyche) in them."--LUCIAN, PROMETHEUS.
[120] His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne,belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower andnearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, longwithdraws and disguises herself.
[121] The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain proseretains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates.
[122] The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect facultyof representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability ofrepresenting either a man, a horse, or a lion.