SECTION I OF THE THEORETIC FACULTY CHAPTER I OF THE RANK AND RELATIONS OF THE THEORETIC FACULTY in a § 1. With what care the subject is to be approached. ALTHOUGH the hasty execution and controversial tone of the former portions of this essay have been subjects of frequent regret to the writer, yet the one was some measure excusable in a work referred to temporary end, and the other unavoidable in one directed against particular opinions. Nor is either of any necessary detriment to its availableness as a foundation for more careful and extended survey, in so far as its province was confined to the assertion of obvious and visible facts, the verification of which could in no degree be dependent either on the care with which they might be classed, or the temper in which they were regarded. Not so with respect to the investigation now before us, which, being not of things outward, and sensibly demonstrable, but of the value and meaning of mental impressions, must be entered upon with a modesty and cautiousness proportioned to the difficulty of determining the likeness, or community, of such impressions, as they are received by different men; and with seriousness proportioned * This sounds very like the "peerage and baronetage" of the Theoretic Faculty; but must stand as it stood, meaning, of course, the place of said faculty with respect to others. [1883.] 1 to the importance of rightly regarding those faculties over which we have moral power, and therefore in relation to which we assuredly incur a moral responsibility. There is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not to do, but there is some sort or degree of duty involved in his determination; and by how much the more, therefore, our subject becomes embarrassed by the cross influences of variously admitted passion, administered discipline, or encouraged affection, upon the minds of men, by so much the more it becomes matter of weight and import to observe by what laws we should be guided, and of what responsibilities regardful, in all that we admit, administer, or encourage. § 2. And of what import Nor indeed have I ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. I have never treated the subject as other ance considered. than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify, as they reward, our utmost ardour and earnestness of pursuit. That it justifies them must be my present task to prove; that it demands them has never been doubted. Art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. It is no handiwork for drawing-room tables, no relief of the ennui of boudoirs; it must be understood and undertaken seriously, or not at all.* To advance it men's lives must be given, and to receive it, their hearts. "Le peintre Rubens s'amuse à être ambassadeur," said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labour of his art in its felicity. "E faticoso lo studio 1 * I wish the "must" were indeed imperative. The violently increasing number of extremely foolish persons, who now concern themselves about pictures, may be counted among the meanest calamities of modern society. [1883.] 1 [In 1628 Rubens made a journey to Madrid, at the invitation of the King of Spain. It was on this occasion that he was discovered by a courtier busily painting. "Ho!" cried the latter, "does his most Catholic Majesty's representative amuse himself with painting?' "No," was the reply, "the painter Rubens amuses himself with diplomacy."] della pittura, e sempre si fa il mare maggiore," said he, who of all men was least likely to have left us discouraging report of anything that majesty of intellect could grasp, or continuity of labour overcome.* But that this labour, the necessity of which, in all ages, has been most frankly admitted by the greatest men, is justifiable from a moral point of view, that it is not a vain devotion of the lives of men, that it has functions of usefulness addressed to the weightiest of human interests, and that the objects of it have calls upon us which it is inconsistent alike with our human dignity and our heavenward duty to disobey, has never been boldly asserted nor fairly admitted;" least of all is it likely to be so in these days of despatch and display, where vanity, on the one side, supplies the place of that love of art which is the only effective patronage, and, on the other, that of the incorruptible and earnest pride which no applause, no reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings, or beguile of its hope.† 3 And yet it is in the expectation of obtaining at least a partial acknowledgment of this, as a truth decisive both of aim and conduct, that I enter upon the second division of my subject. The time I have already devoted to the task I should have considered too great, and that which I fear may be yet required for its completion would have been cause to me of utter discouragement, but that the object I propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. It is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases; it is not now to * Tintoret. (Ridolfi, Vita.) 4 † One of the best short statements of a true artist's mind which I have ever given. [1883. The passage was first italicised in that edition.] 1 [Ruskin himself had been drawn into this greater sea. "Tintoret swept me away at once," he says, in recalling his impressions at Venice in 1845, "into the 'mare maggiore' of the schools of painting which crowned the power and perished in the fall of Venice" (Præterita, ii. ch. vii. § 140). See also the closing passage of the lecture on "The Unity of Art" in The Two Paths, where "those great words of the aged Tintoret" are again quoted.] 2 [See again the Letters to Gordon and Liddell, in Vol. III. pp. 665, 670.] 3 [Ed. 1 reads "influential" instead of "decisive."] [See once more the Letters to Gordon and Liddell, in Vol. III., as cited above.] expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person; it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigour, now leading them with Tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings. Because that with many of us the recommendation of our § 3. The doubt- own favourite pursuits is, I fear, rooted more in ful force of the conceit of ourselves, than in affection towards term "utility." others, so that sometimes in our very pointing of the way we had rather that the intricacy of it should be admired than unfolded, whence a natural distrust of such recommendation may well have place in the minds of those who have not yet perceived any value in the thing praised; and because, also, men in the present century understand the word Useful in a strange way, or at least (for the word has been often so accepted from the beginning of time) since in these days they act its more limited meaning farther out, and give to it more practical weight and authority; it will be well in the outset that I define exactly what kind of Utility I mean to attribute to art, and especially to that branch of it which is concerned with those impressions of external Beauty, whose nature it is our present object to discover. sense. That is, to everything created pre-eminently useful, which § 4. Its proper enables it rightly and fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its Creator. Therefore, that we may determine what is chiefly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the use of Man himself. Man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me this follow me no farther,* for this I purpose always to assume) are, to be the witness of the glory of God, and to * Many readers in old times, did follow me no farther; the passage being indeed offensively aggressive in its pietism, and rude in its brevity. For its better explanation see the preface to this edition (p. 7). [1883.] |