success.1 I suppose those who have conceived and wrought the loveliest things, have done so by no theorizing, but in simple labour of love, and could not, if put to a bar of rationalism, defend all points of what they had done; but painted it in their own delight, and to the delight of all besides, only always with that respect of conscience, and “fear of swerving from that which is right, which maketh diligent observers of circumstances, the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly; no less than Solomon's attention thereunto was, of natural furtherances, the most effectual to make him eminent above others, for he gave good heed, and pierced everything to the very ground.” * With which good heed, and watching of the instants when men feel warmly and rightly, as the Indians do for the diamond in their washing of sand, and that with the desire and hope of finding true good in men, and not with the ready vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries its potter's wheel about with it always (off which there will come only clay vessels of regular shape after all), instead of the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body-standing as signal to the heavenly land: † with this heed and this charity, there are none of us that * Hooker, book v. chap. i. § 2. "A man all light, a seraph man, This seraph band each waved his hand, It was a heavenly sight; They stood as signals to the land, Each one a lovely light." -Ancient Mariner.2 1 [Essays, xliii. "Of Beauty": "Not but I thinke a Painter may make a better Face, than ever was; But he must doe it, by a Kinde of Felicity (as a Musician that maketh an excellent Ayre in Musicke, And not by Rule."] 2 [Ed. 1 quotes two more lines at the beginning : "Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, And by the holy rood, A man ."] may not bring down that lamp upon his path of which Spenser sang: "That Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, 1 [An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. Ruskin first quotes the last two lines of st. 13, and then omitting st. 14, the whole of st. 15. See above, p. 131, where the Hymn is also quoted, and Ruskin's note thereon.] CHAPTER XV1 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS RESPECTING THE § 1. There are no sources of the emotion of Beauty more than those visible. 2 THEORETIC FACULTY Of the sources of beauty open to us in the visible world, we have now obtained a view which, however scanty in its detail, is yet general in its range. Of no other sources than these visible ones, can we, by any effort in our present condition of found in things existence, conceive. For what revelations have been made to humanity inspired, or caught up to heaven, of things to the heavenly region belonging, have been either by unspeakable words, or else by their very nature incommunicable, except in types and shadows; and ineffable by words belonging to earth, for, of things different from the visible, words appropriated to the visible can convey no image. How different from earthly gold the clear pavement of the city might have seemed to the eyes of St. John, we of unreceived sight cannot know; neither of that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive the likeness which He assumed that sat on the throne above the crystal sea; neither what seeming that was of slaying that the Root of David bore in the midst of the elders; neither what change it was upon the form of the fourth of them that walked in the furnace of Dura, that even the wrath of Idolatry knew for the likeness of the Son of God. The knowing that is here permitted to us is either of things outward only, as in those it is whose eyes Faith never opened, or else of that dark 1 [Ch. iv. of sec. iii. in the Re-arranged Edition of 1883.] 2 [Ed. 1 reads " which though most feeble in its grasp and scanty . . ."] 3 [Ed. 1 adds, "which it is not lawful for man to utter, In marking the revisions made after the first edition, the reader will already have observed how often Ruskin curtailed his words.] removable. part that her glass shows feebly, of things supernatural, that gleaming of the Divine form among the mortal crowd, which all may catch if they will climb the sycamore and wait: nor how much of God's abiding at the house may be granted to those that so seek, and how much more may be opened to them in the breaking of bread, cannot be said; but of that only we can reason which is in a measure revealed to all, of that which is by constancy and purity of affection to be found in the things and the beings around us § 2. What upon earth. Now among all those things whose imperfection beauty we have hitherto examined, there has been exists in visible things. How a measure of imperfection. Either inferiority of in a sort by kind, as the beauty of the lower animals, or imagination resulting from degradation, as in man himself; and although in considering the beauty of human form, we arrived at some conception of restoration, yet we found that even the restoration must be, in some respect, imperfect, as incapable of embracing all qualities, moral and intellectual, at once, neither to be freed from all signs of former evil done or suffered. Consummate beauty, therefore, is not to be found on earth, neither is it to be respecting humanity legitimately conceived. But by certain operations of the imagination upon ideas of beauty received from things around us, it is possible to conceive respecting superhuman creatures (of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived) a beauty in some sort greater than we see. § 3. Which, Of this beauty, however, it is impossible to deter- however, affects mine anything until we have traced the imagi- not our present native operations to which it owes its being, of which operations this much may be prematurely said, that they are not creative, that no new ideas are elicited by them, and that their whole function is only a certain dealing with, concentrating, or mode of regarding the impressions received from external things: that therefore, in the beauty to which they will conduct us, there will be found no new element, conclusions. [The Bible references in § 1 are Revelations xxi. 18; iv. 3, 6; Daniel iii. 25; Luke xix. 4; Acts ii. 42.] but only a peculiar combination or phase of those elements that we now know; and that therefore we may at present draw all the conclusions with respect to the rank of the Theoretic faculty, which the knowledge of its subject matter can warrant. § 4. The four sources from which the sense of Beauty is We have seen that this subject matter is referable to four general heads. It is either the record of conscience, written in things external, or it is a symbolizing of Divine attributes in matter, or it derived are all is the felicity of living things, or the perfect fulfilment of their duties and functions. In all cases it is something Divine; either the approving voice of God, the glorious symbol of Him, the evidence of His kind presence, or the obedience to His will by Him induced and supported. Divine. All these subjects of contemplation are such as we may suppose will remain sources of pleasure to the perfected spirit throughout eternity. Divine in their nature, they are addressed to the immortal part of men. § 5. What ob made to this There remain, however, two points to be noticed before I can hope that this conclusion will be frankly jections may be accepted by the reader. If it be the moral part of us to which Beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it? conclusion. On the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty: and insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture? These two objections I shall endeavour briefly to answer; not that they can be satisfactorily treated without that examination of the connection between all kinds of greatness in art,' on which I purpose to enter in the following volume. For 2 1 [Ed. 1 reads, "without that detailed examination of the whole body of great works of art, on which . . .”] 2 [See in Modern Painters, ch. iii., "Of the Real Nature of Greatness of Style,” and the succeeding chapters on the False and True Ideals.] |