by John Ruskin
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
I have seldom been more disappointed by the result of my best painsgiven to any of my books, than by the earnest request of my publisher,after the opinion of the public had been taken on the 'Ethics of theDust,' that I would "write no more in dialogue!" However, I bowed topublic judgment in this matter at once, (knowing also my inventivepowers to be of the feeblest,); but in reprinting the book, (at theprevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett,) I would praythe readers whom it may at first offend by its disconnected method, toexamine, nevertheless, with care, the passages in which the principalspeaker sums the conclusions of any dialogue: for these summaries werewritten as introductions, for young people, to all that I have said onthe same matters in my larger books; and, on re-reading them, theysatisfy me better, and seem to me calculated to be more generallyuseful, than anything else I have done of the kind.
The summary of the contents of the whole book, beginning, "You may atleast earnestly believe," at p. 130, is thus the clearest exposition Ihave ever yet given of the general conditions under which the PersonalCreative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter; and the analysisof heathen conceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 131, and closing at p.138, not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in morelengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in 'AratraPentelici,' and the 'Queen of the Air.'
And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of suggesting newoccupations or interests to its younger readers, I think it worthreprinting, in the way I have also reprinted 'Unto this Last,'--page forpage; that the students of my more advanced works may be able to referto these as the original documents of them; of which the most essentialin this book are these following.
I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of theLower Pthah, p. 39, with his beetle-gospel, p. 41, "that a nation canstand on its vices better than on its virtues," explains the main motiveof all my books on Political Economy.
II. The examination of the connexion between stupidity and crime, pp.57-62, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors Clavigera againstthe commonly alleged excuse for public wickedness,--"They don't meanit--they don't know any better."
III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 90-92, is asummary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my inaugurallecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals; compare in thatlecture, Secs. 83-85, with the sentence in p. 91 of this book, "Nothingis ever done so as really to please our Father, unless we would also havedone it, though we had had no Father to know of it."
This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the generalconditions of action in the children of God, in consequence of which itis foretold of them by Christ that they will say at the Judgment, "Whensaw we thee?" It does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtueconsists in faith given to command, appearing to foolish human judgmentinconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac; nor tothose in which any directly-given command requires nothing more ofvirtue than obedience.
IV. The subsequent pages, 92-97, were written especially to check thedangerous impulses natural to the minds of many amiable young women, inthe direction of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and theycontain, therefore, nearly everything which I believe it necessary thatyoung people should be made to observe, respecting the errors ofmonastic life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favourableside: of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able tospeak with any decisiveness; the evidence on that side, as stated in thetext, having "never yet been dispassionately examined."
V. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 63, is, to my own fancy,the best bit of conversation in the book, and the issue of it, at p. 67,the most practically and immediately useful. For on the idea of theinevitable weakness and corruption of human nature, has logicallyfollowed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern "Socialscience," that all social action must be scientifically founded onvicious impulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing ourpowers and talents that we may kindly use them, will be founded a trueSocial science, developing, by the employment of them, all the realpowers and honourable feelings of the race.
VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lectures, of thereal nature and marvellousness of the laws of crystallization, isnecessary to the understanding of what farther teaching of the beauty ofinorganic form I may be able to give, either in 'Deucalion,' or in my'Elements of Drawing.' I wish however that the second lecture had beenmade the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the firstaltogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meantfor a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in thekingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood,its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous whengathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen wallsof cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffectivethroughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am resolved toleave no room for any one to say that I have withdrawn, as erroneous inprinciple, so much as a single sentence of any of my books written since1860.
One license taken in this book, however, though often permitted toessay-writers for the relief of their dulness, I never mean to takemore,--the relation of composed metaphor as of actual dream, pp. 23 and104. I assumed, it is true, that in these places the supposed dreamwould be easily seen to be an invention; but must not any more, evenunder so transparent disguise, pretend to any share in the real powersof Vision possessed by great poets and true painters.
BRANTWOOD:
_10th October, 1877._