The Crown of Wild Olive

by John Ruskin

  LECTURE III.

  _THE CRYSTAL LIFE._

  _A very dull Lecture, wilfully brought upon themselves by the elder children. Some of the young ones have, however, managed to get in by mistake._ SCENE, _the Schoolroom._

  L. So I am to stand up here merely to be asked questions, to-day, MissMary, am I?

  MARY. Yes; and you must answer them plainly; without telling us any morestories. You are quite spoiling the children: the poor little things'heads are turning round like kaleidoscopes; and they don't know in theleast what you mean. Nor do we old ones, either, for that matter: to-dayyou must really tell us nothing but facts.

  L. I am sworn; but you won't like it, a bit.

  MARY. Now, first of all, what do you mean by 'bricks?'--Are the smallestparticles of minerals all of some accurate shape, like bricks?

  L. I do not know, Miss Mary; I do not even know if anybody knows. Thesmallest atoms which are visibly and practically put together to makelarge crystals, may better be described as 'limited in fixed directions'than as 'of fixed forms.' But I can tell you nothing clear aboutultimate atoms: you will find the idea of little bricks, or, perhaps, oflittle spheres, available for all the uses you will have to put it to.

  MARY. Well, it's very provoking; one seems always to be stopped justwhen one is coming to the very thing one wants to know.

  L. No, Mary, for we should not wish to know anything but what is easilyand assuredly knowable. There's no end to it If I could show you, ormyself, a group of ultimate atoms, quite clearly, in this magnifyingglass, we should both be presently vexed because we could not break themin two pieces, and see their insides.

  MARY. Well then, next, what do you mean by the flying of the bricks?What is it the atoms do, that is like flying?

  L. When they are dissolved, or uncrystallised, they are really separatedfrom each other, like a swarm of gnats in the air, or like a shoal offish in the sea;--generally at about equal distances. In currents ofsolutions, or at different depths of them, one part may be more full ofthe dissolved atoms than another; but on the whole, you may think ofthem as equidistant, like the spots in the print of your gown. If theyare separated by force of heat only, the substance is said to be melted;if they are separated by any other substance, as particles of sugar bywater, they are said to be 'dissolved.' Note this distinction carefully,all of you.

  DORA. I will be very particular. When next you tell me there isn't sugarenough in your tea, I will say, 'It is not yet dissolved, sir.'

  L. I tell you what shall be dissolved, Miss Dora; and that's the presentparliament, if the members get too saucy.

  (DORA _folds her hands and casts down her eyes._)

  L. (_proceeds in state_). Now, Miss Mary, you know already, I believe,that nearly everything will melt, under a sufficient heat, like wax.Limestone melts (under pressure); sand melts; granite melts; the lava ofa volcano is a mixed mass of many kinds of rocks, melted: and any meltedsubstance nearly always, if not always, crystallises as it cools; themore slowly the more perfectly. Water melts at what we call thefreezing, but might just as wisely, though not as conveniently, call themelting, point; and radiates as it cools into the most beautiful of allknown crystals. Glass melts at a greater heat, and will crystallise, ifyou let it cool slowly enough, in stars, much like snow. Gold needs moreheat to melt it, but crystallises also exquisitely, as I will presentlyshow you. Arsenic and sulphur crystallise from their vapours. Now in anyof these cases, either of melted, dissolved, or vaporous bodies, theparticles are usually separated from each other, either by heat, or byan intermediate substance; and in crystallising they are both broughtnearer to each other, and packed, so as to fit as closely as possible:the essential part of the business being not the bringing together, butthe packing. Who packed your trunk for you, last holidays, Isabel?

  ISABEL. Lily does, always.

  L. And how much can you allow for Lily's good packing, in guessing whatwill go into the trunk?

  ISABEL. Oh! I bring twice as much as the trunk holds. Lily always getseverything in.

  LILY. Ah! but, Isey, if you only knew what a time it takes! and sinceyou've had those great hard buttons on your frocks, I can't do anythingwith them. Buttons won't go anywhere, you know.

  L. Yes, Lily, it would be well if she only knew what a time it takes;and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisation takes, for that isconsummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down,just as Isabel brings her things--in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, notof the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such atime!

  However, the best--out and out the best--way of understanding the thing,is to crystallise yourselves.

  THE AUDIENCE. Ourselves!

  L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, on theschoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. Youcan play at crystallisation there as much as you please.

  KATHLEEN _and_ JESSIE. Oh! how?--how?

  L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in themiddle of the grass, and form, for first practice any figure you like.

  JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?

  L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like,standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf,with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then getinto it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quitein it, and no empty space left.

  DORA. Crinoline and all?

  L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface,unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal ofyourselves.

  LILY. Oh, we'll pin it in--we'll pin it in!

  L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place,and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how manyplaces they stand from the corners.

  KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,--and then?

  L. Then you must scatter all over the playground--right over it fromside to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distancesfrom each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately,but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yardsapart from each other, on every side.

  JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. Andthen?

  L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate,towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as youwalk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it,let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in besidethe first ones, till you are all in the figure again.

  KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be!

  L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. Theatoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know yourplaces, and find your way to them without jostling.

  LILY. But how ever shall we do that?

  ISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outsideones farther off--when we go away to scatter, I mean?

  L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon findout how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except thateach must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the otherscome round her; and you will have much more complicated figures,afterwards, to form, than squares.

  ISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.

  L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, withyour name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know yourplaces, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you arelooking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes,and a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, assuch things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone atit, after examining it well,--how do you think each atom knows itsplace, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?

  ISABEL. But does every atom know its place?

  L. How else could it g
et there?

  MARY. Are they not attracted to their places?

  L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and thenimagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, toexist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, youcan attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle ofthe paper.

  MARY (_having tried it_). Yes; I see that I cannot:--one would need allkinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you donot mean that the atoms are alive?

  L. What is it to be alive?

  DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.

  L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to bealive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?

  (ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)

  L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that beingalive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' Itrequires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; andexactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That's all.

  ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.

  L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, youmight have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried roundthe room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.

  ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.

  L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makesa thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off fromthe rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.

  VIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not allthe life of the soul in communion, not separation?

  L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shallbe in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; andbesides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The youngerchildren are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing byexperience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs,are unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answerabout the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of anyenergy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or ayoung animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the forcebelonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and noother. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chieflyexternal, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individualform, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limitinglaws must be observed.

  MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal anda tree.

  L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies acontinual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you maydefine life by its attached negative, death; and still more by itsattached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this,just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.Rocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.

  MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.

  L. Only one?

  MARY. Only one.

  L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?

  MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.

  L. Let me hear it.

  MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the wholeplayground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are theyscattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystalsgenerally made?

  L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it isonly one, it is a wide one.

  MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.

  L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks eitherdry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarilyalter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in alldirections. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or therock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water,sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallisable matteris brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, soas to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quantityof hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes areleft in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities aregenerally filled with various crystals.

  MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?

  L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above,through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may befilled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or withmineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty atanother. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy,for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves inDerbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certainelements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise onthe cave walls.

  SIBYL. There now;--Mary has had all her questions answered: it's my turnto have mine.

  L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed asmuch.

  DORA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart,when you dislike so to be asked them yourself?

  L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matterhow many they are asked, because they've no trouble with them. Now, whenI ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me,you always do; and it's not fair.

  DORA. Very well, we shall understand, next time.

  SIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quitedreadfully.

  L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully; but you'll haveyour own way, of course.

  SIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merelyyesterday; but in all we have read about him in Wilkinson, or in anybook, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into thatugly little deformed shape for.

  L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; because I can answeranything I like, to that.

  EGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleasedwith the answer, if you are.

  L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin bythe statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, inthose days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day.

  EGYPT. Now, it's too bad! and just when I was trying to say thecivillest thing I could!

  L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?

  EGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I alwaysget cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.

  L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every body got cramp intheir neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people'sfingers. At all events, every kind of manual labour was despised both bythem, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit ofit, they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also,knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the specialpractice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthenedthe body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of therest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had tobe done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, asthe basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence andscorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.

  SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say 'everything great I canmake small, and everything small great?'

  L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern timesthe power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greeknor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure andeyeless manual labour to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, inreality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected; aggrandisingitself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. Iheard an orator, and a g
ood one too, at the Working Men's College, theother day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying,with grandly conducted emphasis, 'They have made man greater, and theworld less.' His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought itso very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest ofthe world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would havebeen a pity--they were so pleased), how much less they would like tohave the world made;--and whether, at present, those of them really feltthe biggest men, who lived in the least houses.

  SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weakthings strong, and small things great?

  L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is sofar true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighbourhood--avery fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you lookat the engraving of Turner's 'St. Catherine's Hill,' you will see whatit was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; andpeep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and muchbarley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of thisfair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion,very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; hemade the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his owncrooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look whereyou are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and putit up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into onegreat booth; and people said it was very fine, and a new style ofarchitecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it inFairyland, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work toput fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, withthe blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and hegot the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like hisgingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could thinkof, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and herchildren; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders;and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin;and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and allthe little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!

  SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palaceconcerts? They're as good as good can be.

  L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices inthem. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram andCounsellor Pleydell to sing 'We be three poor Mariners' to me; then I'veno headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when Ican; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get areserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can seethe kettle-drummer drum.

  SIBYL. Now _do_ be serious, for one minute.

  L. I am serious--never was more so. You know one can't see themodulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of thedrummer's hand; and it's lovely.

  SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!

  L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to gothere to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very welldone, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of thebusiness. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat,supercilious people, who care so little for their half-crown's worth, tobe set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.

  MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to thepeople of London?

  L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they arespoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as theycall it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and itis always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up atproper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, ifyou know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach themnothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work--nothing but hammer andtongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only theother day. Some unhappy metal-worker--I am not sure if it was not ametal-working firm--had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.

  SIBYL. Of real gold?

  L. No; of bronze, or copper, or some of their foul patent metal--it isno matter what. I meant a model of our chief British eagle. Everyfeather was made separately; and every filament of every featherseparately, and so joined on; and all the quills modelled of the rightlength and right section, and at last the whole cluster of them fastenedtogether. You know, children, I don't think much of my own drawing; buttake my proud word for once, that when I go to the Zoological Gardens,and happen to have a bit of chalk in my pocket, and the Gray Harpy willsit, without screwing his head round, for thirty seconds,--I can do abetter thing of him in that time than the three years' work of thisindustrious firm. For, during the thirty seconds, the eagle is myobject,--not myself; and during the three years, the firm's object, inevery fibre of bronze it made, was itself, and not the eagle. That isthe true meaning of the little Pthah's having no eyes--he can see onlyhimself. The Egyptian beetle was not quite the full type of him; ournorthern ground beetle is a truer one. It is beautiful to see it atwork, gathering its treasures (such as they are) into little roundballs; and pushing them home with the strong wrong end of it,--headdownmost all the way,--like a modern political economist with his ballof capital, declaring that a nation can stand on its vices better thanon its virtues. But away with you, children, now, for I'm getting cross.

  DORA. I'm going down-stairs; I shall take care, at any rate, that thereare no little Pthahs in the kitchen cupboards.