Volume 2 — IV. EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

True Education. 1868. The Value of Lectures. 1874. The Cradle of Art! 1876. St. George's Museum. 1875. The Morality of Field Sports. 1870. Drunkenness and Crime. 1871. Madness and Crime. 1872. Employment for the Destitute Poor and Criminal Classes. 1868. Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute and Criminal Classes (a pamphlet). 1868. Blindness and Sight. 1879. The Eagle's Nest. 1879. Politics in Youth. 1879. "Act, Act in the Living Present." 1873. "Laborare est Orare." 1874. A Pagan Message. 1878. The Foundations of Chivalry. (Five letters: February 8, 10, 11, and 12, 1877, and July 3, 1878.)

IV.

EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1868.] TRUE EDUCATION.[113]

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: The letter you published yesterday from a parish schoolboy of "Sixty Years Since" at Weary-faulds (confirmed as it would be doubtless in all practical respects by testimony of English boys educated at Waverley Honour) has my hearty sympathy; but I am wearier than any tenant of Weary-faulds of seeing this subject of education always treated as if "education" only meant teaching children to write or to cipher or to repeat catechism. You know, Sir, as you have shown by your comments on the Bishop of Oxford's last speech on this subject, and you could not at present use your influence more beneficially than by farther showing that the real education-the education which alone should be compulsory—means nothing of the kind. It means teaching children to be clean, active, honest, and useful. All these characters can be taught, and cannot be acquired by sickly and ill-dispositioned children without being taught; but they can be untaught to any extent, by evil habit and example at home. Public schools, in which the aim was to form character faithfully, would return to them in due time to their parents, worth more than their "weight in gold." That is the real answer to the objections founded on economical difficulties. Will you not make some effort, Sir, to get your readers to feel this? I am myself quite sick of saying it over and over again in vain.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant, J. Ruskin. Denmark Hill, Jan. 31, 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Glasgow Herald," June 5, 1874. Also reprinted in "The Times" of June 6, 1874.] THE VALUE OF LECTURES.[114] Rome, 26th May, 1874.

My dear Sir: I have your obliging letter, but am compelled by increase of work to cease lecturing except at Oxford—and practically there also—for, indeed, I find the desire of audiences to be audiences only becoming an entirely pestilent character of the age. Everybody wants to hear—nobody to read—nobody to think; to be excited for an hour—and, if possible, amused; to get the knowledge it has cost a man half his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable, and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills—and to swallow it homœopathically and be wise—this is the passionate desire and hope of the multitude of the day.

It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given to a class on a book they are earnestly reading—this kind of lecture is eternally necessary and wholesome; your modern fire-working, smooth-downy-curry-and-strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch-altogether lecture is an entirely pestilent and abominable vanity; and the miserable death of poor Dickens, when he might have been writing blessed books till he was eighty, but for the pestiferous demand of the mob, is a very solemn warning to us all, if we would take it.[115]

God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. There are three volumes published of my Oxford lectures,[116] in which every sentence is set down as carefully as may be. If people want to learn from me, let them read them or my monthly letter Fors Clavigera. If they don't care for these, I don't care to talk to them.

Truly yours, J. Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[Date and place of publication unknown.] THE CRADLE OF ART![117] 18th Feb. 1876.

My dear Sir: I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won't read what I ask them to read, nor believe anything of what I tell them, and yet ask me to talk whenever they think they can take a shilling or two at the door by me. I have written fifty times, if once, that you can't have art where you have smoke; you may have it in hell, perhaps, for the Devil is too clever not to consume his own smoke, if he wants to. But you will never have it in Sheffield. You may learn something about nature, shrivelled, and stones, and iron; and what little you can see of that sort, I'm going to try and show you. But pictures, never.

Ever faithfully yours, John Ruskin.

If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day would live in Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pictures—for a million a year.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.] ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM.[118] Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

My dear Sir: I am obliged by your note, but the work of the St. George's Company is necessarily distinct from all other. My "museum" may be perhaps nothing but a two-windowed garret. But it will have in it nothing but what deserves respect in art or admiration in nature. A great museum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nature. Our own museum at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for instance, are things to make a man wish—for shame of his species—that he had been born a dog or a bee.

Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin.

P.S.—I have no doubt the geological department will be well done, and my poor little cabinets will enable your men to use it to better advantage, but would be entirely lost if united with it.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 15, 1870.] THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: As, thirty years ago,[119] I publicly expressed a strong opinion on the subject of field sports, and as with more accurate knowledge I hold the same opinion still, and more strongly—will you permit me to place the controversy between your correspondents[120] in which I have no time to take part, on somewhat clearer grounds.

Reprobation of fox-hunting on the ground of cruelty to the fox is entirely futile. More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than to all the foxes in England by the hunts of the year: and the rending of body and heart in human death, caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any one winter, could not be equalled by the death-pangs of any quantity of foxes.

The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes the time, misapplies the energy, exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity, debases the taste, and abates the honor of the upper classes of this country; and instead of keeping, as your correspondent "Forester" supposes, "thousands from the workhouse," it sends thousands of the poor, both there, and into the grave.

The athletic training given by fox-hunting is excellent; and such training is vitally necessary to the upper classes. But it ought always to be in real service to their country; in personal agricultural labor at the head of their tenantry; and in extending English life and dominion in waste regions, against the adverse powers of nature. Let them become Captains of Emigration;—hunt down the foxes that spoil the Vineyard of the World; and keep their eyes on the leading hound, in Packs of Men.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant, J. Ruskin.[121] Denmark Hill, Jan. 14.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 11, 1871.] DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am greatly surprised by the slightness of your article to-day on the statistics of drunkenness and the relative statistics of crime.[122]

The tables you have given, if given only in that form by Professor Leone Levi, are anything but "instructive." Liquor is not, for such purpose, to be measured only by the gallon, but by the gallon with accompanying statement of strength.

Crime is not for such purpose to be measured by the number of criminals, but by the number, with accompanying statement of the crime committed. Drunkenness very slightly encourages theft, very largely encourages murder, and universally encourages idleness, which is not a crime apparent in a tabular form. But, whatever results might, even by such more accurate statement, be attainable, are not material to the question at issue. Drunkenness is not the cause of crime in any case. It is itself crime in every case. A gentleman will not knock out his wife's brains when he is drunk; but it is nevertheless his duty to remain sober.

Much more is it his duty to teach his peasantry to remain sober, and to furnish them with sojourn more pleasant than the pothouse, and means of amusement less circumscribed than the pot. And the encouragement of drunkenness, for the sake of the profit on sale of drink, is certainly one of the most criminal methods of assassination for money hitherto adopted by the bravos of an age or country.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant, John Ruskin. Denmark Hill, Dec. 9.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," November 4, 1872. (Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," Letter 48, p. 286, vol. iv., 1874),] MADNESS AND CRIME.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial in your issue for October 31[123] you say that people never will be, nor ought to be, persuaded, "to treat criminals simply as vermin which they destroy, and not as men who are to be punished." Certainly not, Sir! Who ever talked, or thought, of regarding criminals "simply" as anything (or innocent people either, if there be any)? But regarding criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin; what is human in them you must punish—what is vermicular, abolish. Anything between—if you can find it—I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it to society. Insane persons, horses, dogs, or cats become vermin when they become dangerous. I am sorry for darling Fido, but there is no question about what is to be done with him.

Yet, I assure you, Sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of my best friends has just gone mad; and all the rest say I am mad myself. But if ever I murder anybody—and, indeed, there are numbers of people I should like to murder—I won't say that I ought to be hanged; for I think nobody but a bishop or a bank-director can ever be rogue enough to deserve hanging; but I particularly, and with all that is left me of what I imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be immediately shot.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant, J. Ruskin. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, November 2.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 26, 1868.] EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMINAL CLASSES

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Your admirable leader of to-day[124] will do great good; but it will do more if you complete it by pointing out the chief reason for the frequent failure of almsgiving in accomplishing any real benefit to the poor. No almsgiving of money is so helpful as almsgiving of care and thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually mischievous; but the invective of the economist against indiscriminate charity is idle, if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate charity, and, above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those services. That is the help beyond all others, find out how to make useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging it. Few are so feeble as to be incapable of all occupation, none so faultful but that occupation, well chosen, and kindly compelled, will be medicine for them in soul and body. I have lately drawn up a few notes for private circulation on possible methods of employment for the poor.[125] The reasons which weighed with me in not publishing them have now ceased to exist; and in case you should think the paper worth its room in your columns, and any portion of it deserving your ratification, I send it you herewith, and remain your faithful servant,

J. Ruskin. Denmark Hill, S.E., Dec. 24.

FOOTNOTES:

NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE AND CRIMINAL CLASSES. [For Private Circulation only. 1868. (Pp. 15, including the title-page. Printed by Strangeways & Walden, Castle Street, Leicester Square.)[126]]

The first great fact on which all wise and enduring legislation respecting labor must be founded, is, that the character of men depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or principles with which we can imbue them.

The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man—the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English Parliament[127] may have been more or less accidental: the results of the measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life. Whether as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will depend not on their facilities for knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and temperate in their estimate of the promises of life.

But especially in passing laws respecting the treatment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons it is to be remembered that as men are not to be made heroes by an act of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and that the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves, not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.

All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wandering recalled; it has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the rich to perish and the foolish to stray, while it exhausted itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead and reform the dust.

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I think, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislature for the prevention of crime.

The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward—not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no need for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes depends on the establishment of institutions for their active employment, while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice not altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should be always able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed; but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced. If the damage of the principal thoroughfares in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, do not convince them, they will not have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders has reached a point, at which it begins to bear its necessary fruit, and every day makes the harvest darker and more sure.[128]

The general principles by which employment should be regulated may be briefly stated as follows:

1. There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our disposal, namely, (a) vital muscular power; (b) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity; and (c) artificially produced mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial power. And this, because it is always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine—as a wind-mill or water-mill—than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually hear economists regret that the water-powers of the cascades or streams of a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as the south of Provence, where a strong wind[129] blows steady all day long for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a wind-mill, while men are continually employed a hundred miles to the north, in digging fuel to obtain artificial power.

But the principal point of all to be kept in view is that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused; and not only unused, but, in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, whenever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer." Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually in search of means of strength—to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry; we waste our future resources to get power, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The industrious hands must have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them: then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order that and many other things time enough before we want it. So the carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing vessels, and no healthier work nor better discipline can men be put to than such active porterage.

2. In employing all the muscular power at our disposal, we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible. For a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row or steer well, and a woman taught to cook properly and make dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be Reformatory but Formatory.

3. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the production of useful articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton, or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without giving employment of some kind, and therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative quantity of employment must some day came out of it; but the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means of life. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodgings, in making necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, and every house well built in Edinburgh makes lodgings cheaper in Glasgow and London.

4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing therefore double the quantity of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in many countries to take away laborers who supported their families from their useful work, and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display at public expense. Since this had been long endured by the most civilized nations, let it not be thought that they would not much more gladly endure a conscription which should seize only the vicious and idle already living by criminal procedures at the public expense, and which should discipline and educate them to labor, which would not only maintain themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is simply this: we must feed the drunkard, vagabond, and thief. But shall we do so by letting them rob us of their food, and do no work for it; or shall we give them their food in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will redeem their own characters, and make them happy and serviceable members of society?[130]

The different classes of work for which bodies of men could be consistently organized might ultimately become numerous; these following divisions of occupation may at once be suggested.

1. Road-making.—Good roads to be made wherever needed, and kept in constant repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, done away with.

2. Bringing in of Waste Land.—All wastelands not necessary for public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed.

3. Harbor-Making.—The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection with the pilot and lifeboat services. There is room for every order of intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers.

4. Porterage.—All heavy goods not requiring speed in transit, to be carried (under preventive duty on transit by railroad) by canal boats, employing men for draught, and the merchant shipping service extended by sea; so that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while there are idle ones in mischief on shore.

5. Repair of Buildings.—A body of men in various trades to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every large town for consistent repair of buildings, especially the houses of the poorer orders, who, if no such provision were made, could not employ workmen on their own houses, but would simply live with rent walls and roofs.

6. Dress-making.—Substantial dress, of standard material and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing.

7. Works of Art.—Schools to be established on thoroughly sound principles of manufacture and use of materials, and with simple and, for given periods, unalterable modes of work; first in pottery, and embracing gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting; the two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial establishments, being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable degree; and the production of everything by hand-work, for the special purpose of developing personal power and skill in the workman.

The two last departments, and some subordinate branches of the others, would include the service of women and children.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," conducted by the Young Men's Association, Clapham Congregational Church. September, 1879. Vol. iii., No. 12, p. 242.] BLINDNESS AND SIGHT.[132] Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 18th July, 1879.

My dear Sir: The reason I never answered was—I now find—the difficulty of explaining my fixed principle never to join in any invalid charities. All the foolish world is ready to help in them; and will spend large incomes in trying to make idiots think, and the blind read, but will leave the noblest intellects to go to the Devil, and the brightest eyes to remain spiritually blind forever! All my work is to help those who have eyes and see not.

Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin. Thos. Pocock, Esq.

I must add that, to my mind, the prefix of "Protestant" to your society's name indicates far stonier blindness than any it will relieve.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," October, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 1, p. 12.] THE EAGLE'S NEST.[133]

To the Editor of "The Y. M. A. Magazine."

My dear Sir: There is a mass of letters on my table this morning, and I am not quite sure if the "Y. M. A. Magazine," among them, is the magazine which yours of the 15th speaks of as "enclosed;" but you are entirely welcome to print my letter about Blind Asylums anywhere, and if in the "Y. M. A." I should be glad to convey to its editor, at the same time, my thanks for the article on "Growing Old," which has not a little comforted me this morning—and my modest recommendation that, by way of antidote to the No. III. paper on the Sun, he should reproduce the 104th, 115th, and 116th paragraphs of my "Eagle's Nest," closing them with this following sentence from the 12th Book of the Laws of Plato, dictating the due time for the sittings of a Parliament seeking righteous policy (and composed, they may note farther, for such search, of Young Men and Old):

ἑκαστης μὲν ἡμερας συλλεγομενος ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀπ' ὄρθρου μέχρι περ ἂν ἥλιος ἀνίσχῃ.

Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin. Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, August 17th, 1879.

FOOTNOTES:

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," November, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 2, p. 36.] POLITICS IN YOUTH.

To the Editor of "The Y. M. A. Magazine."

My dear Sir: I am heartily obliged by your publication of those pieces of "Eagle's Nest," and generally interested in your Magazine, papers on politics excepted. Young men have no business with politics at all; and when the time is come for them to have opinions, they will find all political parties resolve themselves at last into two—that which holds with Solomon, that a rod is for the fool's back,[134] and that which holds with the fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a vote for his mouth, and all the universe for his belly.

Ever faithfully yours, (Signed) J. Ruskin.

The song on "Life's Mid-day" is very beautiful, except the third stanza. The river of God will one day sweep down the great city, not feed it.[135]

Sheffield, October 19th, 1879.

FOOTNOTES: