Well, but you will say, there is one advantage in high prices, which more than counterbalances all this mischief, namely, that by great reward we both urge and enable a painter to produce rather one perfect picture than many inferior ones: and one perfect picture (so you tell us, and we believe it) is worth a great number of inferior ones.
It is so; but you cannot get it by paying for it. A great work is only done when the painter gets into the humour for it, likes his subject, and determines to paint it as well as he can, whether he is paid for it or not; but bad work, and generally the worst sort of bad work, is done when he is trying to produce a showy picture, or one that shall appear to have as much labour in it as shall be worth a high price.[14]
There is however, another point, and a still more important one, bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping down of prices to a rational standard. And that is, that you pay your prices into the hands of living men, and do not pour them into coffins.
For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at present, no artist's work is worth half its proper value while he is alive. The moment he dies, his pictures, if they are good, reach double their former value; but, that rise of price represents simply a profit made by the intelligent dealer or purchaser on his past purchases. So that the real facts of the matter are, that the British public, spending a certain sum annually in art,determines that, of every thousand it pays, only five hundred shall go to the painter, or shall be at all concerned in the production of art; and that the other five hundred shall be paid merely as a testimonial to the intelligent dealer, who knew what to buy. Now, testimonials are very pretty and proper things, within due limits; but testimonial to the amount of a hundred per cent. on the total expenditure is not good political economy. Do not therefore, in general, unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy the picture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed to contempt or neglect, buy it; its price will then, probably, not be high: if you want to put it into a public gallery, buy it; you are sure, then, that you do not spend your money selfishly: or, if you loved the man's work while he was alive, and bought it then, buy it also now, if you can see no living work equal to it. But if you did not buy it while the man was living, never buy it after he is dead: you are then doing no good to him, and you are doing some shame to yourself. Look around you for pictures that you really like, and in buying which you can help some genius yet unperished—that is the best atonement you can make to the one you have neglected—and give to the living and struggling painter at once wages, and testimonial.
So far, then, of the motives which should induce us to keep down the prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private possession, attainable by greater numbers of people than at present. But we should strive to render it accessible to them in other ways also—chiefly by the permanent decoration of public buildings; and it is in this field that I think we may look for the profitable means of providing that constant employment for young painters of which we were speaking last evening.
The first and most important kind of public buildings which we are always sure to want, are schools: and I would ask you to consider very carefully, whether we may not wisely introduce some great changes in the way of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as I know, it has either been so difficult to give all the education we wanted to our lads, that we have been obliged to do it, if at all, with cheap furniture in bare walls; or else we have considered that cheap furniture and bare walls area proper part of the means of education; and supposed that boys learned best when they sat on hard forms, and had nothing but blank plaster about and above them whereupon to employ their spare attention; also, that it was as well they should be accustomed to rough and ugly conditions of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships of life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage done to floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the master's absence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is so far well and necessary, as it relates to the training of country lads, and the first training of boys in general. But there certainly comes a period in the life of a well educated youth, in which one of the principal elements of his education is, or ought to be, to give him refinement of habits; and not only to teach him the strong exercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his bodily sensibility and refinement, and show him such small matters as the way of handling things properly, and treating them considerately. Not only so, but I believe the notion of fixing the attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one: I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of its associations; and many a study appears dull or painful to a boy when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would have been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's library, or at the lattice window of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is, that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the schoolrooms in Christendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but be that as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought to come in the life of a well trained youth, when he can sit at a writing table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbour; and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. Whenthat time comes, he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this advance ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of his life.
I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness to our youth of refined architectural decoration, as such; for I want you to consider the probable influence of the particular kind of decoration which I wish you to get for them, namely, historical painting. You know we have hitherto been in the habit of conveying all our historical knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, never by the eye; all our notions of things being ostensibly derived from verbal description, not from sight. Now, I have no doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser—and we are doing so every day—we shall discover at last that the eye is a nobler organ than the ear; and that through the eye we must, in reality, obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are to have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will find that the knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from verbal description is only available to him so far as in any underhand way he gets a sight of the thing you are talking about. I remember well that, for many years of my life, the only notion I had of the look of a Greek knight was complicated between recollection of a small engraving in my pocket Pope's Homer, and reverent study of the Horse Guards. And though I believe that most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources, and arrange them more carefully than I did; still, whatever sources they seek must always be ocular: if they are clever boys, they will go and look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British Museum, and at the weapons in our armouries—they will see what real armour is like in lustre, and what Greek armour was like in form, and so put a fairly true image together, but still not, in ordinary cases, a very living or interesting one. Now, the use of your decorative painting would be, in myriads of ways, to animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect of past things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention can; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to point to the schoolroom walls, and for ever afterwards the meaning of any word would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible way. Is it a question of classical dress—what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or a peplus? At this day, you have to point to some vile woodcut, in the middle of a dictionary page, representing the thing hung upon a stick, but then, you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in its fiery colours, in all actions of various stateliness or strength; you would understand at once how it fell round the people's limbs as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads in the day of battle.Now, if you want to see what a weapon is like, you refer, in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there are spear-heads in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups; and gradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one scymitar is hooked to the right and another to the left, and one javelin has a knob to it and another none: while one glance at your good picture would show him,—and the first rainy afternoon in the schoolroom would for ever fix in his mind,—the look of the sword and spear as they fell or flew; and how they pierced, or bent, or shattered—how men wielded them, and how men died by them. But far more than all this, is it a question not of clothes or weapons, but of men? how can we sufficiently estimate the effect on the mind of a noble youth, at the time when the world opens to him, of having faithful and touching representations put before him of the acts and presences of great men—how many a resolution, which would alter and exalt the whole course of his after-life, might be formed, when in some dreamy twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his soul; or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or soundless exhortation. And if but for one out of many this were true—if yet, in a few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed changed their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and reckless youth, who would have cast away his energies on the race-horse or the gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy life-hazard, which should win all glory to himself and all good to his country—would not that, to some purpose, be "political economy of art?"
And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in the scenes required to be thus pourtrayed. Even ifthere were, and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; one battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need not therefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But we ought not to admit a cycle at all. For though we had as many great schools as we have great cities (one day I hope weshallhave), centuries of painting would not exhaust, in all the number of them, the noble and pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history of even one noble nation. But, besides this, you will not, in a little while, limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now. There will come a time—I am sure of it—when it will be found that the same practical results, both in mental discipline, and in political philosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of mediæval and modern as of ancient history; and that the facts of mediæval and modern history are, on the whole, the most important to us. And among these noble groups of constellated schools which I foresee arising in our England, I foresee also that there will be divided fields of thought; and that while each will give its scholars a great general idea of the world's history, such as all men should possess—each will also take upon itself, as its own special duty, the closer study of the course of events in some given place or time. It will review the rest of history, but it will exhaust its own special field of it; and found its moral and political teaching on the most perfect possible analysis of the results of human conduct in one place, and at one epoch. And then, the galleries of that school will be painted with the historical scenes belonging to the age which it has chosen for its special study.
So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great series of public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The next large class of public buildings in which we should introduce it, is one which I think a few years more of national progress will render more serviceable to us than they have been lately. I mean, buildings for the meetings of guilds of trades.
And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course of our chief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of political economy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable;but which, nevertheless, we continually get into commercial embarrassments for want of understanding; and not only so, but suffer much hindrance in our commercial discoveries, because many of our business men do not practically admit it.
Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from a wreck on an uninhabited island and left to their own resources, one of course, according to his capacity, would be set to one business and one to another; the strongest to dig and to cut wood, and to build huts for the rest: the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark and coats out of skins; the best educated to look for iron or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irrigation of the fields. But though their labours were thus naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked men would understand well enough that the speediest progress was to be made by helping each other,—not by opposing each other; and they would know that this help could only be properly given so long as they were frank and open in their relations, and the difficulties which each lay under properly explained to the rest. So that any appearance of secresy or separateness in the actions of any of them would instantly, and justly, be looked upon with suspicion by the rest, as the sign of some selfish or foolish proceeding on the part of the individual. If, for instance, the scientific man were found to have gone out at night, unknown to the rest, to alter the sluices, the others would think, and in all probability rightly think, that he wanted to get the best supply of water to his own field; and if the shoemaker refused to show them where the bark grew which he made the sandals of, they would naturally think, and in all probability rightly think, that he didn't want them to see how much there was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more corn and potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of making them deserved. And thus, although each man would have a portion of time to himself in which he was allowed to do what he chose without let or inquiry,—so long as he was working in that particular business which he had undertaken for the common benefit, any secresy on his part would be immediately supposed to mean mischief; and would require to be accounted for, or put an end to: and this all the more because, whatever the work might be, certainlythere would be difficulties about it which, when once they were well explained, might be more or less done away with by the help of the rest; so that assuredly every one of them would advance with his labour not only more happily, but more profitably and quickly, by having no secrets, and by frankly bestowing, and frankly receiving, such help as lay in his way to get or to give.
And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happiness to the whole of them, would follow on their perseverance in such a system of frank communication and of helpful labour;—so precisely the worst and poorest result would be obtained by a system of secresy and of enmity; and each man's happiness and wealth would assuredly be diminished in proportion to the degree in which jealousy and concealment became their social and economical principles. It would not, in the long run, bring good, but only evil, to the man of science, if, instead of telling openly where he had found good iron, he carefully concealed every new bed of it, that he might ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more corn from the farmer, or in exchange for the rude needle, more labour from the sempstress: and it would not ultimately bring good, but only evil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each other's cornstacks, that they might raise the value of their grain, or if the sempstresses tried to break each other's needles, that each might get all the stitching to herself.
Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authoritative in their application to the conduct of a million of men, as to that of six or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secresy are wholly, and in all circumstances, destructive in their nature—not productive; and all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness are invariably productive in their operation,—not destructive; and the evil principles of opposition and exclusiveness are not rendered less fatal, but more fatal, by their acceptance among large masses of men; more fatal, I say, exactly in proportion as their influence is more secret. For though the opposition does always its own simple, necessary, direct quantity of harm, and withdraws always its own simple, necessary, measurable quantity of wealth from the sum possessed by the community, yet, in proportion to thesize of the community, it does another and more refined mischief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspects of mercantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudes of false theories based on a mean belief in narrow and immediate appearances of good done here and there by things which have the universal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and powers of the nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling against each other, but in vain complaints, and groundless discouragements, and empty investigations, and useless experiments in laws, and elections, and inventions; with hope always to pull wisdom through some new-shaped slit in a ballot-box, and to drag prosperity down out of the clouds along some new knot of electric wire; while all the while Wisdom stands calling at the corners of the streets, and the blessing of heaven waits ready to rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than the dew, if only we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, and the first plain precepts of the skies; "Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion, every man to his brother; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart."[15]
Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil into social and communicative systems; and that one of the first means of our doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every important trade in a vital, not formal, condition;—that there will be a great council or government house for the members of every trade, built in whatever town of the kingdom occupies itself principally in such trade, with minor councilhalls in other cities; and to each council-hall, officers attached, whose first business may be to examine into the circumstances of every operative, in that trade, who chooses to report himself to them when out of work, and to set him to work, if he is indeed able and willing, at a fixed rate of wages, determined at regular periods in the council-meetings; and whose next duty may be to bring reports before the council of all improvements made in the business, and means of its extension: not allowing private patents of any kind, but making all improvements available to every member of the guild, only allotting, after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inventors.
For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and decorations of them, especial effort ought to be made to express the worthiness and honourableness of the trade for whose members they are founded. For I believe one of the worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to the character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen may be, ought to be—often are, more gentlemen than idle and useless people: and I believe that art may do noble work by recording in the hall of each trade, the services which men belonging to that trade have done for their country, both preserving the portraits, and recording the important incidents in the lives, of those who have made great advances in commerce and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject, it branches too far, and in too many directions; besides, I have no doubtyou will at once see and accept the truth of the main principle, and be able to think it out for yourselves. I would fain also have said something of what might be done, in the same manner, for almshouses and hospitals, and for what, as I shall try to explain in notes to this lecture, we may hope to see, some day, established with a different meaning in their name than that they now bear—workhouses; but I have detained you too long already, and cannot permit myself to trespass further on your patience except only to recapitulate, in closing, the simple principles respecting wealth which we have gathered during the course of our inquiry; principles which are nothing more than the literal and practical acceptance of the saying, which is in all good men's mouths; namely, that they are stewards or ministers of whatever talents are entrusted to them. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we more or less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is considered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's money. Well, we, in our poetical and spiritual application of this, say, that of course money doesn't mean money, it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. And do not you see what a pretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us, in this spiritual application? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the good of our fellow-creatures. But we haven't wit. Of course, if we had influence with the bishops, we would use it for the good of the Church; but we haven't any influence with the bishops. Of course, if we had political power, we would use it for the good of the nation; but we have no political power; we have no talents entrusted tousof any sort or kind. It is true we have a little money, but the parable can't possibly mean anything so vulgar as money; our money's our own.
I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel that the first and most literal application is just as necessary a one as any other—that the story does very specially mean what it says—plain money; and that the reason we don't at oncebelieve it does so, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit, and intellect, and all power of birth and position, are indeedgivento us, and, therefore, to be laid out for the Giver,—our wealth has not been given to us; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend it as we choose. I think you will find that is the real substance of our understanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by God—it is a talent; strength is given by God—it is a talent; position is given by God—it is a talent; but money is proper wages for our day's work—it is not a talent, it is a due. We may justly spend it on ourselves, if we have worked for it.
And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not that the very power of making the money is itself only one of the applications of that intellect or strength which we confess to be talents. Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well, who made him more persevering or more sagacious than others? That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calmness of judgment, which enable him to seize the opportunities that others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which others fail—are these not talents?—are they not, in the present state of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of mental gifts? And is it not wonderful, that while we should be utterly ashamed to use a superiority of body, in order to thrust our weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we unhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back from whatever good that strength of mind can attain? You would be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble neighbour by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back seats, or the street. You would be equally indignant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if, when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed—you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellectto take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this.
But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honourable men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust; in some degree it is necessary and intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be surpassed by energy; that the widest influence should be possessed by those who are best able to wield it; and that a wise man, at the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for that reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crushed down, and left in all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally inflict?—Not so. What do you suppose fools were made for? That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get the better of them in every possible way? By no means. They were made that wise people might take care of them. That is the true and plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and wise man to the world about him. He has his strength given him, not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and guide them. In his own household he is to be the guide and the support of his children; out of his household he is still to be the father, that is, the guide and support of the weak and the poor; not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but of the guiltily and punishably poor; of the men who ought to have known better—of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves. It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness. But it is something to use your time and strength to war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind; to keep the erring workman in your service till you have made him an unerring one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity which his dullness would have lost. This is much;but it is yet more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the helm and guide of labour far and near. For you who have it in your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the State.[16]It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used for good or evil, just as completely as kingly authority was ever given to a prince, or military command to a captain. And, according to the quantity of it that you have in your hands you are the arbiters of the will and work of England; and the whole issue, whether the work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon you. You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the English labourers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, "Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers, put away this plague that consumes our children; water these dry places, plough these desert ones, carry this food to those who are in hunger; carry this light to those who are in darkness; carry this life to those who are in death;" or on the other side you may say to her labourers: "Here am I; this power is in my hand; come, build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide; come, make crowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away; come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple;[17]come, dance before me, that I may be gay; and sing sweetly to me, that I may slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honour." And better than such an honourable death, it were that the day had perished wherein we were born, and the night in which it was said there is a child conceived.
I trust, that in a little while, there will be few of our rich men who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that wealth ill used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying: but wealth well used, is as the net of the sacred fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. A time will come—I do not think even now it is far from us—when this golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroadas the flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearing with them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as the summons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can we hope from your wealth than this, rich men of England, when once you feel fully how, by the strength of your possessions—not, observe, by the exhaustion, but by the administration of them and the power—you can direct the acts,—command the energies,—inform the ignorance,—prolong the existence, of the whole human race; and how, even of worldly wisdom, which man employs faithfully, it is true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that her paths are peace; and that, for all the children of men, as well as for those to whom she is given, Length of days are in her right hand, as in her left hand Riches and Honour?
FOOTNOTES:[11]Seenote 6th, in Addenda [p. 104].[12]The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appeal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art in England:—"O Magi of the east and of the west,Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!—What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spentIn handwork only? Have you nothing best,Which generous souls may perfect and present,And He shall thank the givers for? no lightOf teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,Who sit in darkness when it is not night?No cure for wicked children? Christ,—no cure,No help for women, sobbing out of sightBecause men made the laws? no brothel-lureBurnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou foundNo remedy, my England, for such woes?No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,No call back for the exiled? no repose,Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?No mercy for the slave, America?No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.No pity, O world, no tender utteranceOf benediction, and prayers stretched this wayFor poor Italia, baffled by mischance?O gracious nations, give some ear to me!You all go to your Fair, and I am oneWho at the roadside of humanityBeseech your alms,—God's justice to be done.So, prosper!"[13]It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures if it were made a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact spots in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing.[14]When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approximate estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of different classes; but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated in writing, without introducing more detail than the reader will have patience for. But I may state, roughly, that prices above a hundred guineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above five hundred for oils. An artist almost always does wrong who puts more work than these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvass—his talent would be better employed in painting two pictures than one so elaborate. The water-colour painters also are getting into the habit of making their drawings too large, and in a measure attaching their price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to thoughtful labour. Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as in the case of John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remunerative for such work.[15]It would be well if, instead of preaching continually about the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in all the Book we profess to believe, more specially and directly written for England, than the second of Habakkuk, and I never in all my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose the clergymen are all afraid, and know that their flocks, while they will sit quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain words:—"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,—Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to him thatladeth himself with thick clay.'" (What a glorious history, in one metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune.) "Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity."The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth a town with blood."[16]Seenote 7th, in Addenda [p. 106].[17]Seenote 8th, in Addenda [p. 107].
[11]Seenote 6th, in Addenda [p. 104].
[11]Seenote 6th, in Addenda [p. 104].
[12]The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appeal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art in England:—"O Magi of the east and of the west,Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!—What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spentIn handwork only? Have you nothing best,Which generous souls may perfect and present,And He shall thank the givers for? no lightOf teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,Who sit in darkness when it is not night?No cure for wicked children? Christ,—no cure,No help for women, sobbing out of sightBecause men made the laws? no brothel-lureBurnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou foundNo remedy, my England, for such woes?No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,No call back for the exiled? no repose,Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?No mercy for the slave, America?No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.No pity, O world, no tender utteranceOf benediction, and prayers stretched this wayFor poor Italia, baffled by mischance?O gracious nations, give some ear to me!You all go to your Fair, and I am oneWho at the roadside of humanityBeseech your alms,—God's justice to be done.So, prosper!"
[12]The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appeal for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibition of Art in England:—"O Magi of the east and of the west,Your incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent!—What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spentIn handwork only? Have you nothing best,Which generous souls may perfect and present,And He shall thank the givers for? no lightOf teaching, liberal nations, for the poor,Who sit in darkness when it is not night?No cure for wicked children? Christ,—no cure,No help for women, sobbing out of sightBecause men made the laws? no brothel-lureBurnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou foundNo remedy, my England, for such woes?No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,No call back for the exiled? no repose,Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?No mercy for the slave, America?No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.No pity, O world, no tender utteranceOf benediction, and prayers stretched this wayFor poor Italia, baffled by mischance?O gracious nations, give some ear to me!You all go to your Fair, and I am oneWho at the roadside of humanityBeseech your alms,—God's justice to be done.So, prosper!"
[13]It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures if it were made a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact spots in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing.
[13]It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures if it were made a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact spots in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing.
[14]When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approximate estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of different classes; but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated in writing, without introducing more detail than the reader will have patience for. But I may state, roughly, that prices above a hundred guineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above five hundred for oils. An artist almost always does wrong who puts more work than these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvass—his talent would be better employed in painting two pictures than one so elaborate. The water-colour painters also are getting into the habit of making their drawings too large, and in a measure attaching their price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to thoughtful labour. Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as in the case of John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remunerative for such work.
[14]When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approximate estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of different classes; but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated in writing, without introducing more detail than the reader will have patience for. But I may state, roughly, that prices above a hundred guineas are in general extravagant for water-colours, and above five hundred for oils. An artist almost always does wrong who puts more work than these prices will remunerate him for into any single canvass—his talent would be better employed in painting two pictures than one so elaborate. The water-colour painters also are getting into the habit of making their drawings too large, and in a measure attaching their price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to thoughtful labour. Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as in the case of John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing precision throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remunerative for such work.
[15]It would be well if, instead of preaching continually about the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in all the Book we profess to believe, more specially and directly written for England, than the second of Habakkuk, and I never in all my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose the clergymen are all afraid, and know that their flocks, while they will sit quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain words:—"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,—Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to him thatladeth himself with thick clay.'" (What a glorious history, in one metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune.) "Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity."The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth a town with blood."
[15]It would be well if, instead of preaching continually about the doctrine of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to their people a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in all the Book we profess to believe, more specially and directly written for England, than the second of Habakkuk, and I never in all my life heard one of its practical texts preached from. I suppose the clergymen are all afraid, and know that their flocks, while they will sit quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical text home to them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no distressful pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain words:—"Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied,—Shall not all these take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, 'Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his: and to him thatladeth himself with thick clay.'" (What a glorious history, in one metaphor, of the life of a man greedy of fortune.) "Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity."
The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads on their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that "buildeth a town with blood."
[16]Seenote 7th, in Addenda [p. 106].
[16]Seenote 7th, in Addenda [p. 106].
[17]Seenote 8th, in Addenda [p. 107].
[17]Seenote 8th, in Addenda [p. 107].
This statement could not, of course, be heard without displeasure by a certain class of politicians; and in one of the notices of these lectures given in the Manchester journals at the time, endeavour was made to get quit of it by referring to the Divine authority, as the only Paternal power with respect to which men were truly styled "brethren." Of course it is so, and, equally of course, all human government is nothing else than the executive expression of this Divine authority. The moment government ceases to be the practical enforcement of Divine law, it is tyranny; and the meaning which I attach to the words, "paternal government," is, in more extended terms, simply this—"The executive fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of mankind respecting His children." I could not give such a definition of Government as this in a popular lecture; and even in written form, it will necessarily suggest many objections, of which I must notice and answer the most probable.
Only, in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome phrases as "it may be answered in the second place," and "it will be objected in the third place," etc., I will ask the reader's leave to arrange the discussion in the form of simple dialogue, lettingO.stand for objector, andR.for response.
O.—You define your paternal government to be the executive fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. But, assuredly, that will cannot stand in need of aid or expression from human laws. It cannot fail of its fulfilment.
R.—In the final sense it cannot; and in that sense, men who are committing murder and stealing are fulfilling the will of God as much as the best and kindest people in the world.But in the limited and present sense, the only sense with whichwehave anything to do, God's will concerning man is fulfilled by some men, and thwarted by others. And those men who either persuade or enforce the doing of it, stand towards those who are rebellious against it exactly in the position of faithful children in a family, who, when the father is out of sight, either compel or persuade the rest to do as their father would have them, were he present; and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, for the time, the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in which I mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over the rest.
O.—But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many things in order to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty, and take upon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does not compel?
R.—It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatsoever, that human lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if you have no right to abridge any of the liberty which Providence has left to man, you have no right to punish any one for committing murder or robbery. You ought to leave them to the punishment of God and Nature. But if you think yourself under obligation to punish, as far as human laws can, the violation of the will of God by those great sins, you are certainly under the same obligation to punish, with proportionately less punishment, the violation of His will in less sins.
O.—No; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law, because you cannot properly define nor ascertain them. Everybody can determine whether murder has been committed or not, but you cannot determine how far people have been unjust or cruel in minor matters, and therefore cannot make or execute laws concerning minor matters.
R.—If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be defined, or to execute laws which cannot be made equitable, reject the laws I propose. But do not generally object to the principle of law.
O.—Yes; I generally object to the principle of law as applied to minor things; because, if you could succeed (which you cannot) in regulating the entire conduct of men by law inlittle things as well as great, you would take away from human life all its probationary character, and render many virtues and pleasures impossible. You would reduce virtue to the movement of a machine, instead of the act of a spirit.
R.—You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully and willingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor matters by law. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in which it ispossibleto regulate them by it, is also the degree in which it isrightto regulate them by it? Or what other means of judgment will you employ, to separate the things which ought to be formally regulated from the things which ought not. You admit that great sins should be legally repressed; but you say that small sins should not be legally repressed. How do you distinguish between great and small sins; and how do you intend to determine, or do you in practice of daily life determine, on what occasions you should compel people to do right, and on what occasions you should leave them the option of doing wrong?
O.—I think you cannot make any accurate or logical distinction in such matters; but that common sense and instinct have, in all civilized nations, indicated certain crimes of great social harmfulness, such as murder, theft, adultery, slander, and such like, which it is proper to repress legally; and that common sense and instinct indicate also the kind of crimes which it is proper for laws to let alone, such as miserliness, ill-natured speaking, and many of those commercial dishonesties which I have a notion you want your paternal government to interfere with.
R.—Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal government is likely to interfere with, but keep to the matter in hand. You say that "common sense and instinct" have, in all civilized nations, distinguished between the sins that ought to be legally dealt with and that ought not. Do you mean that the laws of all civilized nations are perfect?
O.—No; certainly not.
R.—Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination of what crimes they should deal with, and what crimes they should let alone?
O.—No; not exactly.
R.—Whatdoyou mean, then?
O.—I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws of civilized nations; and that, in due course of time, natural sense and instinct point out the matters they should be brought to bear upon. And each question of legislation must be made a separate subject of inquiry as it presents itself: you cannot fix any general principles about what should be dealt with legally, and what should not.
R.—Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any points in which our English legislation is capable of amendment, as it bears on commercial and economical matters, in this present time?
O.—Of course I do.
R.—Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly; and if the points that I want amended seem to you incapable of amendment, or not in need of amendment, say so: but don't object, at starting, to the mere proposition of applying law to things which have not had law applied to them before. You have admitted the fitness of my expression, "paternal government:" it only has been, and remains, a question between us, how far such government should extend. Perhaps you would like it only to regulate, among the children, the length of their lessons; and perhaps I should like it also to regulate the hardness of their cricket-balls: but cannot you wait quietly till you know what I want it to do, before quarrelling with the thing itself?
O.—No; I cannot wait quietly: in fact I don't see any use in beginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure from the first, that you want to meddle with things that you have no business with, and to interfere with healthy liberty of action in all sorts of ways; and I know that you can't propose any laws that would be of real use.[18]
R.—Ifyou indeed know that, you would be wrong to hear me any farther. But if you are only in painful doubt about me, which makes you unwilling to run the risk of wasting your time, I will tell you beforehand what I really do think about this same liberty of action, namely, that whenever we can make a perfectly equitable law about any matter, or even a law securing, on the whole, more just conduct than unjust, we ought to make that law; and that there will yet, on these conditions, always remain a number of matters respecting which legalism and formalism are impossible; enough, and more than enough, to exercise all human powers of individual judgment, and afford all kinds of scope to individual character. I think this; but of course it can only be proved by separate examination of the possibilities of formal restraint in each given field of action; and these two lectures are nothing more than a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, namely, that of art. You will find, however, one or two other remarks on such possibilities in the next note.
It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the spoken lecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on the questions of the regulation of labour and distribution of relief, as it would have been impossible to do so without touching in many disputed or disputable points, not easily handled before a general audience. But I must now supply what is wanting to make my general statement clear.
I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any business to see one of its members in distress without helping him, though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him: help, of course—in nine cases out of ten—meaning guidance, much more than gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a peasant mother sees one of her careless children fall into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull him out; her second, to box his ears; her third, ordinarily, to lead him carefully a little way by the hand, or send him home for the rest of the day. The child usually cries, and very often would clearly prefer remaining in the ditch; and if he understood any of the terms of politics, would certainly express resentment atthe interference with his individual liberty: but the mother has done her duty. Whereas the usual call of the mother nation to any of her children, under such circumstances, has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's,—"Stay still there; I shall clear you." And if we alwayscouldclear them, their requests to be left in muddy independence might be sometimes allowed by kind people, or their cries for help disdained by unkind ones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in fact, bound together, as men are by ropes on a glacier—if one falls, the rest must either lift him or drag him along with them[19]as dead weight, not without much increase of danger to themselves. And the law of right being manifestly in this, as, whether manifestly or not, it is always, the law of prudence, the only question is, how this wholesome help and interference are to be administered.
The first interference should be in education. In order that men may be able to support themselves when they are grown, their strength must be properly developed while they are young; and the state should always see to this—not allowing their health to be broken by too early labour, nor their powers to be wasted for want of knowledge. Some questions connected with this matter are noticed farther on under the head "Trial Schools:" one point I must notice here, that I believe all youths of whatever rank, ought to learn some manual trade thoroughly; for it is quite wonderful how much a man's views of life are cleared by the attainment of the capacity of doing any one thing well with his hands and arms. For a long time, what right life there was in the upper classes of Europe depended in no small degree on the necessity which each man was under of being able to fence; at this day, the most useful things which boys learn at public schools, are, I believe, riding, rowing, and cricketing. But it would be far better that members of Parliament should be able to plough straight, and make a horseshoe, than only to feather oars neatly or point their toes prettily in stirrups. Then, in literary and scientific teaching, the great point of economy is to give the discipline of it through knowledge which will immediately bear on practical life. Our literary work has long been economically useless to us because too much concerned with dead languages; and our scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost, because scientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems, and waste the student's time in endeavouring to give him large views, and make him perceive interesting connections of facts; when there is not one student, no, nor one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty of a system, or even take it clearly into his head; but nearly all men can understand, and most will be interested in, the facts which bear on daily life. Botanists have discovered some wonderful connection between nettles and figs, which a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in his life need not be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of the white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing how to find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk.
Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to make them practically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into life, that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where their private circumstances present no opening. There ought to be government establishments for every trade, in which all youths who desired it should be received as apprentices on their leaving school; and men thrown out of work received at all times. At these government manufactories the discipline should be strict, and the wages steady, not varying at all in proportion to the demand for the article, but only in proportion to the price of food; the commoditiesproduced being laid up in store to meet sudden demands, and sudden fluctuations in prices prevented:—that gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed which is properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw material and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency to produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked by directing the youth at the government schools into other trades; and the yearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means of government provision for the poor. That provision should be large, and not disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange notions in the public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people are willing to take them in the form of a pension from government, but unwilling to take them in the form of a pension from their parishes. There may be some reason for this singular prejudice, in the fact of the government pension being usually given as a definite acknowledgment of some service done to the country;—but the parish pension is, or ought to be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with his sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and therefore the wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may imply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming to the government: since improvidence is far less justifiable in a highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury, than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that the real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like alms to the people in the street; but they will not take alms consisting only of bread and water and coals, because everybody would understand what those meant.Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I should indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: but the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity is not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not that they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that they are unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence they wish to avoid, but gratitude. They will take places in which they know there is nothing to be done—they will borrow money they know they cannot repay—they will carry on a losing business with other people's capital—they will cheat the public in their shops, or sponge on their friends at their houses; but to say plainly they are poor men, who need the nation's help, and go into an almshouse—this they loftily repudiate, and virtuously prefer being thieves to being paupers.
I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to remain independent, may both be in some degree checked by a better administration and understanding of laws respecting the poor. But the ordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour must go together; otherwise distress caused by misfortune will always be confounded, as it is now, with distress caused by idleness, unthrift, and fraud. It is only when the state watches and guides the middle life of men, that it can, without disgrace to them, protect their old age, acknowledging in that protection that they have done their duty, or at least some portion of their duty, in better days.
I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these suggestions will appear to most of the business men of this day; men who conceive the proper state of the world to be simply that of a vast and disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, trampling down its children and old men in the mire, and doing what work it findsmustbe done with any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe or inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed andstrong-hearted as we are—not easily frightened by pushing, nor discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right way of doing things for people who call themselves Christians. Every so named soul of man claims from every other such soul, protection and education in childhood—help or punishment in middle life—reward or relief, if needed, in old age; all of these should be completely and unstintingly given; and they can only be given by the organization of such a system as I have described.
It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of painting talent we really lose on our present system,[20]and howmuch we should gain by the proposed trial schools. For it might be thought, that as matters stand at present, we have more painters than we ought to have, having so many bad ones, and that all youths who had true painters' genius forced their way out of obscurity.
This is not so. It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind which cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour tobecome artists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact is, that multitudes of young men do this, and that by far the greater number of living artists are men who have mistaken their vocation. The peculiar circumstances of modern life, which exhibit art in almost every form to the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency to fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or go to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business of the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience; or, if ambitious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic, meretricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill; while finally, many men earnest in feeling, and conscientious in principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify us in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the other hand, I believe that much of the best artistical intellect is daily lost in other avocations. Generally, the temper which would make an admirable artist is humble and observant, capable of taking much interest in little things, and of entertaining itself pleasantly in the dullest circumstances. Suppose, added to these characters, a steady conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty wherever it may be placed, and the power, denied to few artistical minds, of ingenious invention in almost any practical department of human skill, and it can hardly be doubted that the very humility and conscientiousness which would have perfected the painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming one; and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen—sagacious manufacturers and uncomplaining clerks—there may frequently be concealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of our public works, or to be the mark of our public praises.
It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art willconquer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding circumstances are such as at all to present the idea of such conquest, to the mind; but we have no ground for concluding that Giotto would ever have been more than a shepherd, if Cimabue had not by chance found him drawing; or that among the shepherds of the Apennines there were no other Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too much in the habit of considering happy accidents as what are called "special Providences;" and thinking that when any great work needs to be done, the man who is to do it will certainly be pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea-boy; and prepared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the best possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in other matters prove the contrary of this; we find that "of thousand seeds, He often brings but one to bear," often not one; and the one seed which He appoints to bear is allowed to bear crude or perfect fruit according to the dealings of the husbandman with it. And there cannot be a doubt in the mind of any person accustomed to take broad and logical views of the world's history, that its events are ruled by Providence in precisely the same manner as its harvests; that the seeds of good and evil are broadcast among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; and that according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of our husbandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that when it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that God did not wish it to be done, and therefore sent no man able to do it. The probability (if I wrote my own convictions, I should say certainty) is, that He sent many men, hundreds of men, able to do it; and that we have rejected them, or crushed them; by our previous folly of conduct or of institution, we have rendered it impossible to distinguish, or impossible to reach them; and when the need for them comes, and we suffer for the want of them, it is not that God refuses to send us deliverers, and specially appoints all our consequent sufferings; but that He has sent, and we have refused, the deliverers; and the pain is then wrought out by His eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought out by eternal law for a nation which willneither plough nor sow. No less are we in error in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be found, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to be done, as the key is to the lock; and that every accident which happened in the forging him, only adapted him more truly to the wards. It is pitiful to hear historians beguiling themselves and their readers, by tracing in the early history of great men, the minor circumstances which fitted them for the work they did, without ever taking notice of the other circumstances which as assuredly unfitted them for it; so concluding that miraculous interposition prepared them in all points for everything and that they did all that could have been desired or hoped for from them: whereas the certainty of the matter is that, throughout their lives, they were thwarted and corrupted by some things as certainly as they were helped and disciplined by others; and that, in the kindliest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of them, they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with a world more profoundly mistaken than they;—assuredly sinned against, or sinning in thousands of ways, and bringing out at last a maimed result—not what they might or ought to have done, but all that could be done against the world's resistance, and in spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to themselves.
And this being so, it is the practical duty of a wise nation, first to withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructive influences;—then to try its material as far as possible, and to lose the use of none that is good. I do not mean by "withdrawing from destructive influences" the keeping of youths out of trials; but the keeping them out of the way of things purely and absolutely mischievous. I do not mean that we should shade our green corn in all heat, and shelter it in all frost, but only that we should dyke out the inundation from it, and drive the fowls away from it. Let your youth labour and suffer; but do not let it starve, nor steal, nor blaspheme.
It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details of schemes of education; and it will be long before the results of experiments now in progress will give data for the solution of the most difficult questions connected with the subject, ofwhich the principal one is the mode in which the chance of advancement in life is to be extended to all, and yet made compatible with contentment in the pursuit of lower avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify them for the higher. But the general principle of trial schools lies at the root of the matter—of schools, that is to say, in which the knowledge offered and discipline enforced shall be all a part of a great assay of the human soul, and in which the one shall be increased, the other directed, as the tried heart and brain will best bear, and no otherwise. One thing, however, I must say, that in this trial I believe all emulation to be a false motive, and all giving of prizes a false means. All that you can depend upon in a boy, as significative of true power, likely to issue in good fruit, is his will to work for the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his schoolfellows; and the aim of the teaching you give him ought to be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own separate gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are everlastingly greater than he: still less ought you to hang favours and ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make the rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, not struggle with him.
There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest both progress and relative capacity; but our aim should be to make the students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their own true positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in which to carry away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in the course of the lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative capacity and individual character, as the roots of all realvaluein Art. We are too much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if Art worth a price in the market were a commodity which people could be generally taught to produce, and as if theeducationof the artist, not hiscapacity, gave the sterling value to his work. No impression can possibly be more absurd or false. Whatever people can teach each other to do, they will estimate, and ought to estimate, only as common industry; nothing will ever fetch a high price but precisely that which cannot be taught, and which nobody can do but the man from whomit is purchased. No state of society, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the natural pre-eminence of one man over another; and it is that pre-eminence, and that only, which will give work high value in the market, or which ought to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, and bad omen for the progress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to possess many artists of equal merit. Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great soul; and great souls are not common things. If ever we confound their work with that of others, it is not through liberality, but through blindness.
There is great difficulty in making any short or general statement of the difference between great and ignoble minds in their behaviour to the "public." It is by no meansuniversallythe case that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will bend itself to what you ask of it: on the contrary, there is one kind of mind, the meanest of all, which perpetually complains of the public, contemplates and proclaims itself as a "genius," refuses all wholesome discipline or humble office, and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin; also, the greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks of them, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would think degradation. But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises some day between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of humiliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to see something the public don't see. This something he will assuredly persist in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be ashesees it, not astheysee it; and all the world in a heap on the other side will not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world objects to the saying, he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, but that does not in the least matter to him; if the world has no particular objection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to himself till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot; thatalso does not matter to him—mutter it he will, according to what he perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roaring of the walls of Red sea on the right hand or left of him. Hence the quarrel, sure at some time or other to be started between the public and him; while your mean man, though he will spit and scratch spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will bow to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has got its ear, which he thinks will bring him another clap; and thus, as stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together.
There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man looks very like the obstinacy of the great one; but if you look closely into the matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of the first is in the pronunciation of "I;" and of the second, in the pronunciation of "It."
It would have been impossible for political economists long to have endured the error spoken of in the text,[21]hadthey not been confused by an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and refinements, as well as the riches of civilized life arose from imaginary wants. It is quite true, that the savage who knows no needs but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his venison and patched the rents of his hut, passes the rest of his time in animal repose, is in a lower state than the man who labours incessantly that he may procure for himself the luxuries of civilization; and true also, that the difference between one and another nation in progressive power depends in great part on vain desires; but these idle motives are merely to be considered as giving exercise to the national body and mind; they are not sources of wealth, except so far as they give the habits of industry and acquisitiveness. If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do good if we can persuade him to carve cherrystones and fly kites; and this use of his fingers and limbs may eventually be the cause of his becoming a wealthy and happy man; but we must not therefore argue that cherrystones are valuable property, or that kite-flying is a profitable mode of passing time. In like manner, a nation always wastes its time and labourdirectly, when it invents a new want of a frivolous kind, and yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthy activity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want may lead,indirectly, to useful discoveries or to noble arts; so that a nation is not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is either too weak or foolishto be moved to exertion by anything but fancies, or has attended to its serious business first. If a nation will not forge iron, but likes distilling lavender, by all means give it lavender to distil; only do not let its economists suppose that lavender is as profitable to it as oats, or that it helps poor people to live, any more than the schoolboy's kite provides him his dinner. Luxuries, whether national or personal, must be paid for by labour withdrawn from useful things; and no nation has a right to indulge in them until all its poor are comfortably housed and fed.