Volume 2 — [From the "New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." Aberdeen, 1873.] "ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT."[136] Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Christmas Eve, '72.

[From the "New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." Aberdeen, 1873.] "ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT."[136] Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Christmas Eve, '72.

My dear Sir: I am always much interested in any effort such as you are making on the part of the laity.

If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the judgment throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones.[137] People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long, and the degree does not matter. The Commandments are necessarily negative, because a new set of positive ones would be needed for every person: while the negatives are constant.

But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and the first position for young people is active and attentive kindness to animals, supposing themselves set by God to feed His real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated in a wild state.

Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life.—Heaven will take care of them for the other.

Truly yours, John Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." Aberdeen, 1874.] "LABORARE EST ORARE." Corpus Christi College, Oxford, December, 1873.

My dear Sir: I should much like to send your class some message, but have no time for anything I like.

My own constant cry to all Bible readers is a very simple one—Don't think that nature (human or other) is corrupt; don't think that you yourself are elect out of it; and don't think to serve God by praying instead of obeying.

Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, John Ruskin.

[From "New Year's Address," etc. (as above), 1878.] A PAGAN MESSAGE. Herne Hill, London, S.E. 19 Dec. 1877.

My dear Sir: I am sure you know as well as I that the best message for any of your young men who really are trying to read their Bibles is whatever they first chance to read on whatever morning.

But here's a Pagan message for them, which will be a grandly harmonized bass for whatever words they get on the New Year.

("Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believe every day that has dawned on thee to be thy last.")

Ever faithfully yours, John Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Science of Life."] THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHIVALRY.[139] Venice, February 8th, 1877.

My dear——: This is a nobly done piece of work of yours—a fireman's duty in fire of hell; and I would fain help you in all I could, but my way of going at the thing would be from the top down—putting the fire out with the sun, not with vain sprinklings. People would say I wasn't practical, as usual of course; but it seems to me the last thing one should do in the business is to play Lord Angelo, and set bar and door to deluge. Not but I should sift the windows of our Oxford printsellers, if I had my full way in my Art Professorship; but I can't say the tenth part of what I would. I'm in the very gist and main effort of quite other work, and can't get my mind turned to this rightly, for this, in the heart of it, involves—well, to say the whole range of moral philosophy, is nothing; this, in the heart of it, one can't touch unless one knew the moral philosophy of angels also, and what that means, "but are as the angels in heaven." For indeed there is no true conqueror of Lust but Love; and in this beautifully scientific day of the British nation, in which you have no God to love any more, but only an omnipotent coagulation of copulation: in which you have no Law nor King to love any more, but only a competition and a constitution, and the oil of anointing for king and priest used to grease your iron wheels down hill: when you have no country to love any more, but "patriotism is nationally what selfishness is individually,"[140] such the eternally-damned modern view of the matter—the moral syphilis of the entire national blood: and, finally, when you have no true bride and groom to love each other any more, but a girl looking out for a carriage and a man for a position, what have you left on earth to take pleasure in, except theft and adultery?

The two great vices play into each other's hands. Ill-got money is always finally spent on the harlot. Look at Hogarth's two 'prentices; the sum of social wisdom is in that bit of rude art-work, if one reads it solemnly.

FOOTNOTES:

Venice, February 10th.

Hence, if from any place in earth, I ought to be able to send you some words of warning to English youths, for the ruin of this mighty city was all in one word—fornication. Fools who think they can write history will tell you it was "the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope," and the like! Alas it was indeed the covering of every hope she had, in God and his Law.

For indeed, my dear friend, I doubt if you can fight this evil by mere heroism and common-sense. Not many men are heroes; not many are rich in common-sense. They will train for a boat-race; will they for the race of life? For the applause of the pretty girls in blue on the banks; yes. But to win the soul and body of a noble woman for their own forever, will they? Not as things are going, I think, though how or where they are to go or end is to me at present inconceivable.

You think, perhaps, I could help you therefore with a lecture on good taste and Titian? No, not at all; I might with one on politics, but that everybody would say was none of my business. Yet to understand the real meaning of the word "Sire," with respect to the rider as well as the horse, is indeed the basis of all knowledge, in policy, chivalry, and social order.

All that you have advised and exposed is wisely said and bravely told; but no advice, no exposure, will be of use, until the right relation exists again between the father and the mother and their son. To deserve his confidence, to keep it as the chief treasure committed in trust to them by God: to be the father his strength, the mother his sanctification, and both his chosen refuge, through all weakness, evil, danger, and amazement of his young life. My friend, while you still teach in Oxford the "philosophy," forsooth, of that poor cretinous wretch, Stuart Mill, and are endeavoring to open other "careers" to English women than that of the Wife and the Mother, you won't make your men chaste by recommending them to leave off tea.[141]

FOOTNOTES:

Venice, 11th February.

My dear——: I would say much more, if I thought any one would believe me, of the especial calamity of this time, with respect to the discipline of youth—in having no food any more to offer to their imagination. Military distinction is no more possible by prowess, and the young soldier thinks of the hurdle-race as one of the lists and the field—but the noble temper will not train for that trial with equal joy. Clerical eminence—the bishopric or popular pastorship—may be tempting to men of genial pride or sensitive conceit: but the fierce blood that would have burned into a patriarch, or lashed itself into a saint—what "career" has your modern philosophy to offer to it?

The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exercised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic and casino Paradise.

All these disadvantages, you will say, are inevitable, and need not be dwelt upon. In my own school of St. George I mean to avoid them by simply making the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual work; my boys shall at least know what their fathers believed, before they make up their own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and very modest ones, at fifteen. But I shall at least ask of modern science so much help as shall enable me to begin to teach them at that age the physical laws relating to their own bodies, openly, thoroughly, and with awe; and of modern civilization, I shall ask so much help as may enable me to teach them what is indeed right, and what wrong, for the citizen of a state of noble humanity to do, and permit to be done, by others, unaccused.

And if you can found two such chairs in Oxford—one, of the Science of Physical Health; the other, of the Law of Human Honor—you need not trim your Horace, nor forbid us our chatty afternoon tea.

I could say ever so much more, of course, if there were only time, or if it would be of any use—about the mis-appliance of the imagination. But really, the essential thing is the founding of real schools of instruction for both boys and girls—first, in domestic medicine and all that it means; and secondly, in the plain moral law of all humanity: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," with all that it means.

Ever most truly yours, J. Ruskin.

Venice, 12th February, '77.

My dear——: Two words more, and an end. I have just re-read the paper throughout. There are two omissions which seem to me to need serious notice.

The first, that the entire code of counsel which you have drawn up, as that which a father should give his son, must be founded on the assumption that, at the proper time of life, the youth will be able, no less than eager, to marry. You ought certainly to point out, incidentally, what in my St. George's work I am teaching primarily, that unless this first economical condition of human society be secured, all props and plasters of its morality will be in vain.

And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust; that is the relation in which "male and female created He them;" putting into them, indeed, to be distinctly restrained to the office of fruitfulness, the brutal passion of Lust: but giving them the spiritual power of Love, that each spirit might be greater and purer by its bond to another associate spirit, in this world, and that which is to come; help-mates, and sharers of each other's joy forever.

Ever most truly yours, J. Ruskin.

Malham, July 3d, 1878.

Dear——: I wish I were able to add a few more words, with energy and clearness, to my former letters, respecting a subject of which my best strength—though in great part lately given to it, has not yet enforced the moment—the function, namely, of the arts of music and dancing as leaders and governors of the bodily, and instinctive mental, passions. No nation will ever bring up its youth to be at once refined and pure, till its masters have learned the use of all the arts, and primarily of these; till they again recognize the gulf that separates the Doric and Lydian modes, and perceive the great ordinance of Nature, that the pleasures which, rightly ordered, exalt, discipline, and guide the hearts of men, if abandoned to a reckless and popular Dis-order, as surely degrade, scatter, and deceive alike the passions and intellect.

I observe in the journals of yesterday, announcement that the masters of many of our chief schools are at last desirous of making the elements of Greek art one of the branches of their code of instruction: but that they imagine such elements may be learned from plaster casts of elegant limbs and delicate noses.

They will find that Greek art can only be learned from Greek law, and from the religion which gives law of life to all the nations of the earth. Let our youth once more learn the meaning of the words "music," "chorus," and "hymn" practically; and with the understanding that all such practice, from lowest to highest, is, if rightly done, always in the presence and to the praise of God; and we shall have gone far to shield them in a noble peace and glorious safety from the darkest questions and the foulest sins that have perplexed and consumed the youth of past generations for the last four hundred years.

Have you ever heard the charity children sing in St. Paul's? Suppose we sometimes allowed God the honor of seeing our noble children collected in like manner to sing to Him, what think you might be the effect of such a festival—even if only held once a year—on the national manners and hearts?

Ever faithfully and affectionately yours, J. Ruskin.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.