by John Ruskin
LECTURE IX.
_CRYSTAL SORROWS._
_Working Lecture in Schoolroom._
L. We have been hitherto talking, children, as if crystals might live,and play, and quarrel, and behave ill or well, according to theircharacters, without interruption from anything else. But so far fromthis being so, nearly all crystals, whatever their characters, have tolive a hard life of it, and meet with many misfortunes. If we could seefar enough, we should find, indeed, that, at the root, all their viceswere misfortunes: but to-day I want you to see what sort of troubles thebest crystals have to go through, occasionally, by no fault of theirown.
This black thing, which is one of the prettiest of the very few prettyblack things in the world, is called 'Tourmaline.' It may betransparent, and green, or red, as well as black; and then no stone canbe prettier (only, all the light that gets into it, I believe, comes outa good deal the worse; and is not itself again for a long while). Butthis is the commonest state of it,--opaque, and as black as jet.
MARY. What does 'Tourmaline' mean?
L. They say it is Ceylanese, and I don't know Ceylanese; but we mayalways be thankful for a graceful word, whatever it means.
MARY. And what is it made of?
L. A little of everything; there's always flint, and clay, and magnesiain it; and the black is iron, according to its fancy; and there'sboracic acid, if you know what that is; and if you don't, I cannot tellyou to-day; and it doesn't signify; and there's potash, and soda; and,on the whole, the chemistry of it is more like a mediaeval doctor'sprescription, than the making of a respectable mineral: but it may,perhaps, be owing to the strange complexity of its make, that it has anotable habit which makes it, to me, one of the most interesting ofminerals. You see these two crystals are broken right across, in manyplaces, just as if they had been shafts of black marble fallen from aruinous temple; and here they lie, imbedded in white quartz, fragmentsucceeding fragment, keeping the line of the original crystal, while thequartz fills up the intervening spaces. Now tourmaline has a trick ofdoing this, more than any other mineral I know: here is another bitwhich I picked up on the glacier of Macugnaga; it is broken, like apillar built of very flat broad stones, into about thirty joints, andall these are heaved and warped away from each other sideways, almostinto a line of steps; and then all is filled up with quartz paste. Andhere, lastly, is a green Indian piece, in which the pillar is firstdisjointed, and then wrung round into the shape of an S.
MARY. How _can_ this have been done?
L. There are a thousand ways in which it may have been done; thedifficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing ofit in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get aquartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist atall, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its ownwill or fault; it never seems to have been passively crushed. But, forthe forces which cause this passive ruin of the tourmaline,--here is astone which will show you multitudes of them in operation at once. It isknown as 'brecciated agate,' beautiful, as you see; and highly valued asa pebble: yet, so far as I can read or hear, no one has ever looked atit with the least attention. At the first glance, you see it is made ofvery fine red striped agates, which have been broken into small pieces,and fastened together again by paste, also of agate. There would benothing wonderful in this, if this were all. It is well known that bythe movements of strata, portions of rock are often shattered topieces:--well known also that agate is a deposit of flint by water undercertain conditions of heat and pressure: there is, therefore, nothingwonderful in an agate's being broken; and nothing wonderful in itsbeing mended with the solution out of which it was itself originallycongealed. And with this explanation, most people, looking at abrecciated agate, or brecciated anything, seem to be satisfied. I was somyself, for twenty years; but, lately happening to stay for some time atthe Swiss Baden, where the beach of the Limmat is almost wholly composedof brecciated limestones, I began to examine them thoughtfully; andperceived, in the end, that they were, one and all, knots of as richmystery as any poor little human brain was ever lost in. That piece ofagate in your hand, Mary, will show you many of the common phenomena ofbreccias; but you need not knit your brows over it in that way; dependupon it, neither you nor I shall ever know anything about the way it wasmade, as long as we live.
DORA. That does not seem much to depend upon.
L. Pardon me, puss. When once we gain some real notion of the extent andthe unconquerableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad and restfulthing to depend upon: you can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on acloud, to feast with the gods. You do not thenceforward troubleyourself,--nor any one else,--with theories, or the contradiction oftheories; you neither get headache nor heartburning; and you never morewaste your poor little store of strength, or allowance of time.
However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, which I cantell you; and then you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long asyou like; pleasant wonder is no loss of time.
First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, orground, to pieces. You can only with extreme dimness conceive the forceexerted on mountains in transitional states of movement. You have allread a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk ofmountains being raised or depressed. They talk coolly of it, becausethey are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality of the factprevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the conditions of forceinvolved. You know I was living last year in Savoy; my house was on theback of a sloping mountain which rose gradually for two miles, behindit; and then fell at once in a great precipice towards Geneva, goingdown three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps. Now thatwhole group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength fromthe rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft as biscuit. Putfour or five captains' biscuits on the floor, on the top of one another;and try to break them all in half, not by bending, but by holding onehalf down, and tearing the other halves straight up;--of course you willnot be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of forceneeded. Then, fancy each captains' biscuit a bed of rock, six or sevenhundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and onehalf heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as itrose,--and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont Saleve.
MAY. But it must crush the rocks all to dust!
L. No; for there is no room for dust. The pressure is too great;probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partlyductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts ofmountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation;for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystallinepower principally exerts itself. It is essentially a styptic power, andwherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture andgrieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; foryou only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where therents and faults are deep and many.
DORA. If you please, sir,--would you tell us--what are 'faults'?
L. You never heard of such things?
DORA. Never in all our lives.
L. When a vein of rock which is going on smoothly, is interrupted byanother troublesome little vein, which stops it, and puts it out, sothat it has to begin again in another place--that is called a fault. _I_always think it ought to be called the fault of the vein that interruptsit; but the miners always call it the fault of the vein that isinterrupted.
DORA. So it is, if it does not begin again where it left off.
L. Well, that is certainly the gist of the business: but, whatevergood-natured old lecturers may do, the rocks have a bad habit, when theyare once interrupted, of never asking 'Where was I?'
DORA. When the two halves of the dining table came separate, yesterday,was that a 'fault'?
L. Yes; but not the table's. However, it is not a bad illustration,Dora. When beds of rock are only interrupted by a fissure, but remain atthe same level, like the
two halves of the table, it is not called afault, but only a fissure; but if one half of the table be either tiltedhigher than the other, or pushed to the side, so that the two parts willnot fit, it is a fault. You had better read the chapter on faults inJukes's Geology; then you will know all about it. And this rent that Iam telling you of in the Saleve, is one only of myriads, to which areowing the forms of the Alps, as, I believe, of all great mountainchains. Wherever you see a precipice on any scale of real magnificence,you will nearly always find it owing to some dislocation of this kind;but the point of chief wonder to me, is the delicacy of the touch bywhich these gigantic rents have been apparently accomplished. Note,however, that we have no clear evidence, hitherto, of the time taken toproduce any of them. We know that a change of temperature alters theposition and the angles of the atoms of crystals, and also the entirebulk of rocks. We know that in all volcanic, and the greater part of allsubterranean, action, temperatures are continually changing, andtherefore masses of rock must be expanding or contracting, with infiniteslowness, but with infinite force. This pressure must result inmechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that ofthe rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the resultof irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, withimperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet inthickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone;and we can't get them tried, because Christian creatures never willseriously and sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortestways of killing each other. But, besides this slow kind of pressure,there is evidence of more or less sudden violence, on the same terrificscale; and, through it all, the wonder, as I said, is always to me thedelicacy of touch. I cut a block of the Saleve limestone from the edgeof one of the principal faults which have formed the precipice; it is alovely compact limestone, and the fault itself is filled up with a redbreccia formed of the crushed fragments of the torn rock, cemented by arich red crystalline paste. I have had the piece I cut from it smoothed,and polished across the junction; here it is; and you may now pass yoursoft little fingers over the surface, without so much as feeling theplace where a rock which all the hills of England might have been sunkin the body of, and not a summit seen, was torn asunder through thatwhole thickness, as a thin dress is torn when you tread upon it.
(_The audience examine the stone, and touch it timidly; but the matter remains inconceivable to them._)
MARY (_struck by the beauty of the stone_). But this is almost marble?
L. It is quite marble. And another singular point in the business, to mymind, is that these stones, which men have been cutting into slabs, forthousands of years, to ornament their principal buildings with,--andwhich, under the general name of 'marble,' have been the delight of theeyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilised nations,--areprecisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth agonieshave been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flamingzone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What aboundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in thehuman mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for threethousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educatethemselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veinsby dexterous painting; and never a curious soul of them, all that while,asks, 'What painted the rocks?'
(_The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves._)
The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our lives; and itis only by pinching ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, orunderstand, anything. At least, it is not always we who pinch ourselves;sometimes other people pinch us; which I suppose is very good ofthem,--or other things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But itis a sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches.
(_Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the others require pinching, the_ LECTURER _changes the subject._)
Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble carefully, and thinkabout it. You see this is one side of the fault; the other side is downor up, nobody knows where; but, on this side, you can trace the evidenceof the dragging and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble,the ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and therehalf an inch, away from each other; and you see the exact places wherethey fitted, before they were torn separate; and you see the rents arenow all filled up with the sanguine paste, full of the broken pieces ofthe rock; the paste itself seems to have been half melted, and partly tohave also melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to havecrystallised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate I firstshowed you contains exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystallisationgoing on amidst the cemented fragments, partly altering the structure ofthose fragments themselves, and subject to continual change, either inthe intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materialssubmitted to it;--so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, anddisposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop instalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely defied, and thesubstances in solution are crystallised in bands of equal thickness onevery side of the cell. It would require a course of lectures longerthan these (I have a great mind,--you have behaved so saucily--to stayand give them) to describe to you the phenomena of this kind, in agatesand chalcedonies only;--nay, there is a single sarcophagus in theBritish Museum, covered with grand sculpture of the 18th dynasty, whichcontains in the magnificent breccia (agates and jaspers imbedded inporphyry), out of which it is hewn, material for the thought of years;and record of the earth-sorrow of ages in comparison with the durationof which, the Egyptian letters tell us but the history of the eveningand morning of a day.
Agates, I think, of all stones, confess most of their past history; butall crystallisation goes on under, and partly records, circumstances ofthis kind--circumstances of infinite variety, but always involvingdifficulty, interruption, and change of condition at different times.Observe, first, you have the whole mass of the rock in motion, eithercontracting itself, and so gradually widening the cracks; or beingcompressed, and thereby closing them, and crushing their edges;--and, ifone part of its substance be softer, at the given temperature, thananother, probably squeezing that softer substance out into the veins.Then the veins themselves, when the rock leaves them open by itscontraction, act with various power of suction upon its substance;--bycapillary attraction when they are fine,--by that of pure vacuity whenthey are larger, or by changes in the constitution and condensation ofthe mixed gases with which they have been originally filled. Those gasesthemselves may be supplied in all variation of volume and power frombelow; or, slowly, by the decomposition of the rocks themselves; and, atchanging temperatures, must exert relatively changing forces ofdecomposition and combination on the walls of the veins they fill; whilewater, at every degree of heat and pressure (from beds of everlastingice, alternate with cliffs of native rock, to volumes of red hot, orwhite hot, steam), congeals, and drips, and throbs, and thrills, fromcrag to crag; and breathes from pulse to pulse of foaming or fieryarteries, whose beating is felt through chains of the great islands ofthe Indian seas, as your own pulses lift your bracelets, and makes wholekingdoms of the world quiver in deadly earthquake, as if they were lightas aspen leaves. And, remember, the poor little crystals have to livetheir lives, and mind their own affairs, in the midst of all this, asbest they may. They are wonderfully like human creatures,--forget allthat is going on if they don't see it, however dreadful; and never thinkwhat is to happen to-morrow. They are spiteful or loving, and indolentor painstaking, and orderly or licentious, with no thought whatever ofthe lava or the flood which may break over them any day; and evaporatethem into air-bubbles, or wash them into a solution of salts. And youmay look at them, once understanding the surrounding conditions of theirfate, with an endless interest. You will see crowds of unfortunatelittle crystals, who have been forced to constitute themselves in ahurry, their dissolving element being fiercely scorched away; you will
see them doing their best, bright and numberless, but tiny. Then youwill find indulged crystals, who have had centuries to form themselvesin, and have changed their mind and ways continually; and have beentired, and taken heart again; and have been sick, and got well again;and thought they would try a different diet, and then thought better ofit; and made but a poor use of their advantages, after all. And othersyou will see, who have begun life as wicked crystals; and then have beenimpressed by alarming circumstances, and have become converted crystals,and behaved amazingly for a little while, and fallen away again, andended, but discreditably, perhaps even in decomposition; so that onedoesn't know what will become of them. And sometimes you will seedeceitful crystals, that look as soft as velvet, and are deadly to allnear them; and sometimes you will see deceitful crystals, that seemflint-edged, like our little quartz-crystal of a housekeeper here,(hush! Dora,) and are endlessly gentle and true wherever gentleness andtruth are needed. And sometimes you will see little child-crystals putto school like school-girls, and made to stand in rows; and taken thegreatest care of, and taught how to hold themselves up, and behave: andsometimes you will see unhappy little child-crystals left to lie aboutin the dirt, and pick up their living, and learn manners, where theycan. And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, likegreat capitalists and little labourers; and politico-economic crystalsteaching the stupid ones how to eat each other, and cheat each other;and foolish crystals getting in the way of wise ones; and impatientcrystals spoiling the plans of patient ones, irreparably; just as thingsgo on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystalstaking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds;and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crabcrystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living onthe means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance uponothers; and all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace,who ally themselves, resolutely to attack, or resolutely to defend. Andfor the close, you see the broad shadow and deadly force of inevitablefate, above all this: you see the multitudes of crystals whose time hascome; not a set time, as with us, but yet a time, sooner or later, whenthey all must give up their crystal ghosts:--when the strength by whichthey grew, and the breath given them to breathe, pass away from them;and they fail, and are consumed, and vanish away; and another generationis brought to life, framed out of their ashes.
MARY. It is very terrible. Is it not the complete fulfilment, down intothe very dust, of that verse: 'The whole creation groaneth andtravaileth in pain'?
L. I do not know that it is in pain, Mary: at least, the evidence tendsto show that there is much more pleasure than pain, as soon as sensationbecomes possible.
LUCILLA. But then, surely, if we are told that it is pain, it must bepain?
L. Yes; if we are told; and told in the way you mean, Lucilla; butnothing is said of the proportion to pleasure. Unmitigated pain wouldkill any of us in a few hours; pain equal to our pleasures would make usloathe life; the word itself cannot be applied to the lower conditionsof matter, in its ordinary sense. But wait till to-morrow to ask meabout this. To-morrow is to be kept for questions and difficulties; letus keep to the plain facts to-day. There is yet one group of factsconnected with this rending of the rocks, which I especially want you tonotice. You know, when you have mended a very old dress, quitemeritoriously, till it won't mend any more----
EGYPT (_interrupting_). Could not you sometimes take gentlemen's work toillustrate by?
L. Gentlemen's work is rarely so useful as yours, Egypt; and when it isuseful, girls cannot easily understand it.
DORA. I am sure we should understand it better than gentlemen understandabout sewing.
L. My dear, I hope I always speak modestly, and under correction, when Itouch upon matters of the kind too high for me; and besides, I neverintend to speak otherwise than respectfully of sewing;--though youalways seem to think I am laughing at you. In all seriousness,illustrations from sewing are those which Neith likes me best to use;and which young ladies ought to like everybody to use. What do you thinkthe beautiful word 'wife' comes from?
DORA (_tossing her head_). I don't think it is a particularly beautifulword.
L. Perhaps not. At your ages you may think 'bride' sounds better; butwife's the word for wear, depend upon it. It is the great word in whichthe English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Greek. I hopethe French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of theirdreadful 'femme.' But what do you think it comes from?
DORA. I never _did_ think about it.
L. Nor you, Sibyl?
SIBYL. No; I thought it was Saxon, and stopped there.
L. Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do meansomething. Wife means 'weaver.' You have all the right to callyourselves little 'housewives,' when you sew neatly.
DORA. But I don't think we want to call ourselves 'little housewives.'
L. You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In thedeep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them; orfeed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewingillustration, and help me out with it.
DORA. Well we'll hear it, under protest.
L. You have heard it before; but with reference to other matters. Whenit is said, 'no man putteth a piece of new cloth on an old garment, elseit taketh from the old,' does it not mean that the new piece tears theold one away at the sewn edge?
DORA. Yes; certainly.
L. And when you mend a decayed stuff with strong thread, does not thewhole edge come away sometimes, when it tears again?
DORA. Yes; and then it is of no use to mend it any more.
L. Well, the rocks don't seem to think that: but the same thing happensto them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Largemasses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; andof veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube,but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with thestrongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads;for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filledwith into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and arepartly crystalline; so that, when the crystals become distinct, thefissure has often exactly the look of a tear, brought together withstrong cross stitches. Now when this is completely done, and all hasbeen fastened and made firm, perhaps some new change of temperature mayoccur, and the rock begin to contract again. Then the old vein must openwider; or else another open elsewhere. If the old vein widen, it _may_do so at its centre; but it constantly happens, with well filled veins,that the cross stitches are too strong to break; the walls of the vein,instead, are torn away by them; and another little supplementaryvein--often three or four successively--will be thus formed at the sideof the first.
MARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the mountainsuse to sew with?
L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged to becontent with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can find somequartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate from the Buet: itlooks merely like dry dark mud;--you could not think there was anyquartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all stitched together withbeautiful white thread, which is the purest quartz, so close drawn thatyou can break it like flint, in the mass; but, where it has been exposedto the weather, the fine fibrous structure is shown: and, more thanthat, you see the threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, thisway and the other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the veinas it widened.
MARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the mountainsbeing torn and sewn together again at this moment?
L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (thoughgeologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on thescale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to be tendingtowards a condition of at least temporary rest; and that groaning andtravailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not w
holly in pain, is not,in the full sense, 'until now.'
MARY. I want so much to ask you about that!
SIBYL. Yes; and we all want to ask you about a great many other thingsbesides.
L. It seems to me that you have got quite as many new ideas as are goodfor any of you at present: and I should not like to burden you withmore; but I must see that those you have are clear, if I can make themso; so we will have one more talk, for answer of questions, mainly.Think over all the ground, and make your difficulties thoroughlypresentable. Then we'll see what we can make of them.
DORA. They shall all be dressed in their very best; and curtsey as theycome in.
L. No, no, Dora; no curtseys, if you please. I had enough of them theday you all took a fit of reverence, and curtsied me out of the room.
DORA. But, you know, we cured ourselves of the fault, at once, by thatfit. We have never been the least respectful since. And the difficultieswill only curtsey themselves out of the room, I hope;--come in at onedoor--vanish at the other.
L. What a pleasant world it would be, if all its difficulties weretaught to behave so! However, one can generally make something, or(better still) nothing, or at least less, of them, if they thoroughlyknow their own minds; and your difficulties--I must say that for you,children,--generally do know their own minds, as you do yourselves.
DORA. That is very kindly said for us. Some people would not allow somuch as that girls had any minds to know.
L. They will at least admit that you have minds to change, Dora.
MARY. You might have left us the last speech, without a retouch. Butwe'll put our little minds, such as they are, in the best trim we can,for to-morrow.