by John Ruskin
LECTURE VI.
_CRYSTAL QUARRELS._
_Full conclave, in Schoolroom. There has been a game at crystallisation in the morning, of which various account has to be rendered. In particular, everybody has to explain why they were always where they were not intended to be._
L. (_having received and considered the report_). You have got on prettywell, children: but you know these were easy figures you have beentrying. Wait till I have drawn you out the plans of some crystals ofsnow!
MARY. I don't think those will be the most difficult:--they are sobeautiful that we shall remember our places better; and then they areall regular, and in stars: it is those twisty oblique ones we are afraidof.
L. Read Carlyle's account of the battle of Leuthen, and learnFreidrich's 'oblique order.' You will 'get it done for once, I think,provided you _can_ march as a pair of compasses would.' But remember,when you can construct the most difficult single figures, you have onlylearned half the game--nothing so much as the half, indeed, as thecrystals themselves play it.
MARY. Indeed; what else is there?
L. It is seldom that any mineral crystallises alone. Usually two orthree, under quite different crystalline laws, form together. They dothis absolutely without flaw or fault, when they are in fine temper: andobserve what this signifies. It signifies that the two, or more,minerals of different natures agree, somehow, between themselves, howmuch space each will want;--agree which of them shall give away to theother at their junction; or in what measure each will accommodate itselfto the other's shape! And then each takes its permitted shape, andallotted share of space; yielding, or being yielded to, as it builds,till each crystal has fitted itself perfectly and gracefully to itsdifferently-natured neighbour. So that, in order to practise this, ineven the simplest terms, you must divide into two parties, wearingdifferent colours; each must choose a different figure to construct; andyou must form one of these figures through the other, both going on atthe same time.
MARY. I think _we_ may, perhaps, manage it; but I cannot at allunderstand how the crystals do. It seems to imply so much preconcertingof plan, and so much giving way to each other, as if they really wereliving.
L. Yes, it implies both concurrence and compromise, regulating allwilfulness of design: and, more curious still, the crystals do _not_always give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties oftemper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the requiredplace with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, butexquisitely finished groups: and sometimes they will not yield at all;but fight furiously for their places, losing all shape and honour, andeven their own likeness, in the contest.
MARY. But is not that wholly wonderful? How is it that one never sees itspoken of in books?
L. The scientific men are all busy in determining the constant lawsunder which the struggle takes place; these indefinite humours of theelements are of no interest to them. And unscientific people rarely givethemselves the trouble of thinking at all when they look at stones. Notthat it is of much use to think; the more one thinks, the more one ispuzzled.
MARY. Surely it is more wonderful than anything in botany?
L. Everything has its own wonders; but, given the nature of the plant,it is easier to understand what a flower will do, and why it does it,than, given anything we as yet know of stone-nature, to understand whata crystal will do, and why it does it. You at once admit a kind ofvolition and choice, in the flower, but we are not accustomed toattribute anything of the kind to the crystal. Yet there is, in reality,more likeness to some conditions of human feeling among stones thanamong plants. There is a far greater difference between kindly-temperedand ill-tempered crystals of the same mineral, than between any twospecimens of the same flower: and the friendships and wars of crystalsdepend more definitely and curiously on their varieties of disposition,than any associations of flowers. Here, for instance, is a good garnet,living with good mica; one rich red, and the other silver white: themica leaves exactly room enough for the garnet to crystallisecomfortably in; and the garnet lives happily in its little white house;fitted to it, like a pholas in its cell. But here are wicked garnetsliving with wicked mica. See what ruin they make of each other! Youcannot tell which is which; the garnets look like dull red stains on thecrumbling stone. By the way, I never could understand, if St. Gothard isa real saint, why he can't keep his garnets in better order. These areall under his care; but I suppose there are too many of them for him tolook after. The streets of Airolo are paved with them.
MAY. Paved with garnets?
L. With mica-slate and garnets; I broke this bit out of a paving stone.Now garnets and mica are natural friends, and generally fond of eachother; but you see how they quarrel when they are ill brought up. So itis always. Good crystals are friendly with almost all other goodcrystals, however little they chance to see of each other, or howeveropposite their habits may be; while wicked crystals quarrel with oneanother, though they may be exactly alike in habits, and see each othercontinually. And of course the wicked crystals quarrel with the goodones.
ISABEL. Then do the good ones get angry?
L. No, never: they attend to their own work and life; and live it aswell as they can, though they are always the sufferers. Here, forinstance, is a rock-crystal of the purest race and finest temper, whowas born, unhappily for him, in a bad neighbourhood, near Beaufort inSavoy; and he has had to fight with vile calcareous mud all his life.See here, when he was but a child, it came down on him, and nearlyburied him; a weaker crystal would have died in despair; but he onlygathered himself together, like Hercules against the serpents, and threwa layer of crystal over the clay; conquered it,--imprisoned it,--andlived on. Then, when he was a little older, came more clay; and poureditself upon him here, at the side; and he has laid crystal over that,and lived on, in his purity. Then the clay came on at his angles, andtried to cover them, and round them away; but upon that he threw outbuttress-crystals at his angles, all as true to his own central line aschapels round a cathedral apse; and clustered them round the clay; andconquered it again. At last the clay came on at his summit, and tried toblunt his summit; but he could not endure that for an instant; and lefthis flanks all rough, but pure; and fought the clay at his crest, andbuilt crest over crest, and peak over peak, till the clay surrendered atlast; and here is his summit, smooth and pure, terminating a pyramid ofalternate clay and crystal, half a foot high!
LILY. Oh, how nice of him! What a dear, brave crystal! But I can't bearto see his flanks all broken, and the clay within them.
L. Yes; it was an evil chance for him, the being born to suchcontention; there are some enemies so base that even to hold themcaptive is a kind of dishonour. But look, here has been quite adifferent kind of struggle: the adverse power has been more orderly, andhas fought the pure crystal in ranks as firm as its own. This is notmere rage and impediment of crowded evil: here is a disciplinedhostility; army against army.
LILY. Oh, but this is much more beautiful!
L. Yes, for both the elements have true virtue in them; it is a pitythey are at war, but they war grandly.
MARY. But is this the same clay as in the other crystal?
L. I used the word clay for shortness. In both, the enemy is reallylimestone; but in the first, disordered, and mixed with true clay;while, here, it is nearly pure, and crystallises into its own primitiveform, the oblique six-sided one, which you know: and out of these itmakes regiments; and then squares of the regiments, and so charges therock crystal literally in square against column.
ISABEL. Please, please, let me see. And what does the rock crystal do?
L. The rock crystal seems able to do nothing. The calcite cuts itthrough at every charge. Look here,--and here! The loveliest crystal inthe whole group is hewn fairly into two pieces.
ISABEL. Oh, dear; but is the calcite harder than the crystal then?
L. No, softer. Very much softer.
MARY. But then, how can it possibly cut the crystal?
L. I
t did not really cut it, though it passes through it. The two wereformed together, as I told you; but no one knows how. Still, it isstrange that this hard quartz has in all cases a good-natured way withit, of yielding to everything else. All sorts of soft things make nestsfor themselves in it; and it never makes a nest for itself in anything.It has all the rough outside work; and every sort of cowardly and weakmineral can shelter itself within it. Look; these are hexagonal platesof mica; if they were outside of this crystal they would break, likeburnt paper; but they are inside of it,--nothing can hurt them,--thecrystal has taken them into its very heart, keeping all their delicateedges as sharp as if they were under water, instead of bathed in rock.Here is a piece of branched silver: you can bend it with a touch of yourfinger, but the stamp of its every fibre is on the rock in which it lay,as if the quartz had been as soft as wool.
LILY. Oh, the good, good quartz! But does it never get inside ofanything?
L. As it is a little Irish girl who asks, I may perhaps answer, withoutbeing laughed at, that it gets inside of itself sometimes. But I don'tremember seeing quartz make a nest for itself in anything else.
ISABEL. Please, there was something I heard you talking about, lastterm, with Miss Mary. I was at my lessons, but I heard something aboutnests; and I thought it was birds' nests; and I couldn't helplistening; and then, I remember, it was about 'nests of quartz ingranite.' I remember, because I was so disappointed!
L. Yes, mousie, you remember quite rightly; but I can't tell you aboutthose nests to-day, nor perhaps to-morrow: but there's no contradictionbetween my saying then, and now; I will show you that there is not, someday. Will you trust me meanwhile?
ISABEL. Won't I!
L. Well, then, look, lastly, at this piece of courtesy in quartz; it ison a small scale, but wonderfully pretty. Here is nobly born quartzliving with a green mineral, called epidote; and they are immensefriends. Now, you see, a comparatively large and strong quartz-crystal,and a very weak and slender little one of epidote, have begun to grow,close by each other, and sloping unluckily towards each other, so thatthey at last meet. They cannot go on growing together; the quartzcrystal is five times as thick, and more than twenty times asstrong,[151] as the epidote; but he stops at once, just in the verycrowning moment of his life, when he is building his own summit! He letsthe pale little film of epidote grow right past him; stopping his ownsummit for it; and he never himself grows any more.
LILY (_after some silence of wonder_). But is the quartz _never_ wickedthen?
L. Yes, but the wickedest quartz seems good-natured, compared to otherthings. Here are two very characteristic examples; one is good quartz,living with good pearlspar, and the other, wicked quartz, living withwicked pearlspar. In both, the quartz yields to the soft carbonate ofiron: but, in the first place, the iron takes only what it needs ofroom; and is inserted into the planes of the rock crystal with suchprecision, that you must break it away before you can tell whether itreally penetrates the quartz or not; while the crystals of iron areperfectly formed, and have a lovely bloom on their surface besides. Buthere, when the two minerals quarrel, the unhappy quartz has all itssurfaces jagged and torn to pieces; and there is not a single ironcrystal whose shape you can completely trace. But the quartz has theworst of it, in both instances.
VIOLET. Might we look at that piece of broken quartz again, with theweak little film across it? it seems such a strange lovely thing, likethe self-sacrifice of a human being.
L. The self-sacrifice of a human being is not a lovely thing, Violet. Itis often a necessary and noble thing; but no form nor degree of suicidecan be ever lovely.
VIOLET. But self-sacrifice is not suicide!
L. What is it then?
VIOLET. Giving up one's self for another.
L. Well; and what do you mean by 'giving up one's self?'
VIOLET. Giving up one's tastes, one's feelings, one's time, one'shappiness, and so on, to make others happy.
L. I hope you will never marry anybody, Violet, who expects you to makehim happy in that way.
VIOLET (_hesitating_). In what way?
L. By giving up your tastes, and sacrificing your feelings, andhappiness.
VIOLET. No, no, I don't mean that; but you know, for other people, onemust.
L. For people who don't love you, and whom you know nothing about? Be itso; but how does this 'giving up' differ from suicide then?
VIOLET. Why, giving up one's pleasures is not killing one's self?
L. Giving up wrong pleasure is not; neither is it self-sacrifice, butself-culture. But giving up right pleasure is. If you surrender thepleasure of walking, your foot will wither; you may as well cut it off:if you surrender the pleasure of seeing, your eyes will soon be unableto bear the light; you may as well pluck them out. And to maim yourselfis partly to kill yourself. Do but go on maiming, and you will soonslay.
VIOLET. But why do you make me think of that verse then about the footand the eye?
L. You are indeed commanded to cut off and to pluck out, if foot or eyeoffend you; but why _should_ they offend you?
VIOLET. I don't know; I never quite understood that.
L. Yet it is a sharp order; one needing to be well understood if it isto be well obeyed! When Helen sprained her ancle the other day, you sawhow strongly it had to be bandaged: that is to say, prevented from allwork, to recover it. But the bandage was not 'lovely.'
VIOLET. No, indeed.
L. And if her foot had been crushed, or diseased, or snake-bitten,instead of sprained, it might have been needful to cut it off. But theamputation would not have been 'lovely.'
VIOLET. No.
L. Well, if eye and foot are dead already, and betray you--if the lightthat is in you be darkness, and your feet run into mischief, or aretaken in the snare,--it is indeed time to pluck out, and cut off, Ithink: but, so crippled, you can never be what you might have beenotherwise. You enter into life, at best, halt or maimed; and thesacrifice is not beautiful, though necessary.
VIOLET (_after a pause_). But when one sacrifices one's self for others?
L. Why not rather others for you?
VIOLET. Oh! but I couldn't bear that.
L. Then why should they bear it?
DORA (_bursting in, indignant_). And Thermopylae, and Protesilaus, andMarcus Curtius, and Arnold de Winkelried, and Iphigenia, and Jephthah'sdaughter?
L. (_sustaining the indignation unmoved_). And the Samaritan woman'sson?
DORA. Which Samaritan woman's?
L. Read 2 Kings vi. 29.
DORA (_obeys_). How horrid! As if we meant anything like that!
L. You don't seem to me to know in the least what you do mean, children.What practical difference is there between 'that,' and what you aretalking about? The Samaritan children had no voice of their own in thebusiness, it is true; but neither had Iphigenia: the Greek girl wascertainly neither boiled, nor eaten; but that only makes a difference inthe dramatic effect; not in the principle.
DORA (_biting her lip_). Well, then, tell us what we ought to mean. Asif you didn't teach it all to us, and mean it yourself, at this moment,more than we do, if you wouldn't be tiresome!
L. I mean, and have always meant, simply this, Dora;--that the will ofGod respecting us is that we shall live by each other's happiness, andlife; not by each other's misery, or death. I made you read that versewhich so shocked you just now, because the relations of parent and childare typical of all beautiful human help. A child may have to die for itsparents; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather live forthem;--that, not by its sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, itsforce of being, it shall be to them renewal of strength; and as thearrow in the hand of the giant. So it is in all other right relations.Men help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They are notintended to slay themselves for each other, but to strengthen themselvesfor each other. And among the many apparently beautiful things whichturn, through mistaken use, to utter evil, I am not sure but that thethoughtlessly meek and self-sacrificing spirit of
good men must be namedas one of the fatallest. They have so often been taught that there is avirtue in mere suffering, as such; and foolishly to hope that good maybe brought by Heaven out of all on which Heaven itself has set the stampof evil, that we may avoid it,--that they accept pain and defeat as ifthese were their appointed portion; never understanding that theirdefeat is not the less to be mourned because it is more fatal to theirenemies than to them. The one thing that a good man has to do, and tosee done, is justice; he is neither to slay himself nor otherscauselessly: so far from denying himself, since he is pleased by good,he is to do his utmost to get his pleasure accomplished. And I only wishthere were strength, fidelity, and sense enough, among the goodEnglishmen of this day, to render it possible for them to band togetherin a vowed brotherhood, to enforce, by strength of heart and hand, thedoing of human justice among all who came within their sphere. Andfinally, for your own teaching, observe, although there may be need formuch self-sacrifice and self-denial in the correction of faults ofcharacter, the moment the character is formed, the self-denial ceases.Nothing is really well done, which it costs you pain to do.
VIOLET. But surely, sir, you are always pleased with us when we try toplease others, and not ourselves?
L. My dear child, in the daily course and discipline of right life, wemust continually and reciprocally submit and surrender in all kind andcourteous and affectionate ways: and these submissions and ministries toeach other, of which you all know (none better) the practice and thepreciousness, are as good for the yielder as the receiver: theystrengthen and perfect as much as they soften and refine. But the realsacrifice of all our strength, or life, or happiness to others (thoughit may be needed, and though all brave creatures hold their lives intheir hand, to be given, when such need comes, as frankly as a soldiergives his life in battle), is yet always a mournful and momentarynecessity; not the fulfilment of the continuous law of being.Self-sacrifice which is sought after, and triumphed in, is usuallyfoolish; and calamitous in its issue: and by the sentimentalproclamation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made most oftheir own lives useless, but the whole framework of their religion sohollow, that at this moment, while the English nation, with its lips,pretends to teach every man to 'love his neighbour as himself,' with itshands and feet it clutches and tramples like a wild beast; andpractically lives, every soul of it that can, on other people's labour.Briefly, the constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertainhis own powers and special gifts; and to strengthen them for the help ofothers. Do you think Titian would have helped the world better bydenying himself, and not painting; or Casella by denying himself, andnot singing? The real virtue is to be ready to sing the moment peopleask us; as he was, even in purgatory. The very word 'virtue' means not'conduct' but 'strength,' vital energy in the heart. Were not youreading about that group of words beginning with V,--vital, virtuous,vigorous, and so on,--in Max Muller, the other day, Sibyl? Can't youtell the others about it?
SIBYL. No, I can't; will you tell us, please?
L. Not now, it is too late. Come to me some idle time to-morrow, andI'll tell you about it, if all's well. But the gist of it is, children,that you should at least know two Latin words; recollect that 'mors'means death and delaying; and 'vita' means life and growing: and tryalways, not to mortify yourselves, but to vivify yourselves.
VIOLET. But, then, are we not to mortify our earthly affections? andsurely we are to sacrifice ourselves, at least in God's service, if notin man's?
L. Really, Violet, we are getting too serious. I've given you enoughethics for one talk, I think! Do let us have a little play. Lily, whatwere you so busy about, at the ant-hill in the wood, this morning?
LILY. Oh, it was the ants who were busy, not I; I was only trying tohelp them a little.
L. And they wouldn't be helped, I suppose?
LILY. No, indeed. I can't think why ants are always so tiresome, whenone tries to help them! They were carrying bits of stick, as fast asthey could, through a piece of grass; and pulling and pushing, _so_hard; and tumbling over and over,--it made one quite pity them; so Itook some of the bits of stick, and carried them forward a little, whereI thought they wanted to put them; but instead of being pleased, theyleft them directly, and ran about looking quite angry and frightened;and at last ever so many of them got up my sleeves, and bit me all over,and I had to come away.
L. I couldn't think what you were about. I saw your French grammar lyingon the grass behind you, and thought perhaps you had gone to ask theants to hear you a French verb.
ISABEL. Ah! but you didn't, though!
L. Why not, Isabel? I knew, well enough, Lily couldn't learn that verbby herself.
ISABEL. No; but the ants couldn't help her.
L. Are you sure the ants could not have helped you, Lily?
LILY (_thinking_). I ought to have learned something from them, perhaps.
L. But none of them left their sticks to help you through the irregularverb?
LILY. No, indeed. (_Laughing, with some others._)
L. What are you laughing at, children? I cannot see why the ants shouldnot have left their tasks to help Lily in her's,--since here is Violetthinking she ought to leave _her_ tasks, to help God in His. Perhaps,however, she takes Lily's more modest view, and thinks only that 'Heought to learn something from her.'
(_Tears in_ VIOLET'S _eyes._)
DORA (_scarlet_). It's too bad--it's a shame:--poor Violet!
L. My dear children, there's no reason why one should be so red, and theother so pale, merely because you are made for a moment to feel theabsurdity of a phrase which you have been taught to use, in common withhalf the religious world. There is but one way in which man can everhelp God--that is, by letting God help him: and there is no way in whichhis name is more guiltily taken in vain, than by calling the abandonmentof our own work, the performance of His.
God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the places where He wishes us tobe employed; and that employment is truly 'our Father's business.' Hechooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, ifthey do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, andsense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves orpuzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure,whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are nothappy ourselves. Now, away with you, children; and be as happy as youcan. And when you cannot, at least don't plume yourselves upon pouting.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] Quartz is not much harder than epidote; the strength is onlysupposed to be in some proportion to the squares of the diameters.