True Education. 1868.
IV. EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR. 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- I am, Sir, your faithful servant, FOOTNOTES: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 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. God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. There are three volumes published of my Oxford lectures, Truly yours, FOOTNOTES:
My dear Sir: I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won't read what I ask them to read, nor believe any Ever faithfully yours, 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: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 Ever faithfully yours, 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:To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph." Sir: As, thirty years ago, 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, FOOTNOTES: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. 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 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, FOOTNOTES: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 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, FOOTNOTES:To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph." Sir: Your admirable leader of to-day J. Ruskin. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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: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 Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin. 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: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): ??ast?? ?? ?e?a? s???e??e??? ?? ??????? ?p' ?????? ???? pe? ?? ????? ???s??. Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin. FOOTNOTES: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, Ever faithfully yours, 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. Sheffield, October 19th, 1879. FOOTNOTES:Shall the strong full-flowing river, bearing on its mighty breast Half the wealth of some proud nation, precious spoils of East and West, Shall it mourn its mountain cradle and its infant heathery bed, All its youthful songs and dances, as adown the hills it sped, When by it in yon great city half a million mouths are fed? [Y. M. A. Magazine, October, 1879.] My dear Sir: I am always much interested in any effort such as you are making on the part of the laity. If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the judgment throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones. But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and the first position for young people is active and attentive kindness to animals, supposing themselves set by God to feed His real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated in a wild state. Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life.—Heaven will take care of them for the other. Truly yours, FOOTNOTES:My dear Sir: I should much like to send your class some message, but have no time for anything I like. My own constant cry to all Bible readers is a very simple Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, My dear Sir: I am sure you know as well as I that the best message for any of your young men who really are trying to read their Bibles is whatever they first chance to read on whatever morning. But here's a Pagan message for them, which will be a grandly harmonized bass for whatever words they get on the New Year. Inter spem curamque, timores et inter iras, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. ("Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believe every day that has dawned on thee to be thy last.") Ever faithfully yours, FOOTNOTES:My dear——: This is a nobly done piece of work of yours—a fireman's duty in fire of hell; and I would fain help The two great vices play into each other's hands. Ill-got money is always finally spent on the harlot. Look at Hogarth's two 'prentices; the sum of social wisdom is in that bit of rude art-work, if one reads it solemnly. FOOTNOTES:Venice, February 10th.Hence, if from any place in earth, I ought to be able to send you some words of warning to English youths, for the ruin of this mighty city was all in one word—fornication. Fools who think they can write history will tell you it was "the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope," and the like! Alas it was indeed the covering of every hope she had, in God and his Law. For indeed, my dear friend, I doubt if you can fight this evil by mere heroism and common-sense. Not many men are heroes; not many are rich in common-sense. They will train for a boat-race; will they for the race of life? For the applause of the pretty girls in blue on the banks; yes. But to win the soul and body of a noble woman for their own forever, will they? Not as things are going, I think, though how or where they are to go or end is to me at present inconceivable. You think, perhaps, I could help you therefore with a lecture on good taste and Titian? No, not at all; I might with one on politics, but that everybody would say was none of my business. Yet to understand the real meaning of the word "Sire," with respect to the rider as well as the horse, is indeed the basis of all knowledge, in policy, chivalry, and social order. All that you have advised and exposed is wisely said and bravely told; but no advice, no exposure, will be of use, until the right relation exists again between the father and the mother and their son. To deserve his confidence, to keep it as the chief treasure committed in trust to them by God: to be the father his strength, the mother his sanctification, and both his chosen refuge, through all weakness, evil, danger, and amazement of his young life. My friend, while you still teach in Oxford the "philosophy," forsooth, of that poor cretinous wretch, Stuart Mill, and are endeavoring to open other "careers" to English women than that of the Wife and the FOOTNOTES:Venice, 11th February.My dear——: I would say much more, if I thought any one would believe me, of the especial calamity of this time, with respect to the discipline of youth—in having no food any more to offer to their imagination. Military distinction is no more possible by prowess, and the young soldier thinks of the hurdle-race as one of the lists and the field—but the noble temper will not train for that trial with equal joy. Clerical eminence—the bishopric or popular pastorship—may be tempting to men of genial pride or sensitive conceit: but the fierce blood that would have burned into a patriarch, or lashed itself into a saint—what "career" has your modern philosophy to offer to it? The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exercised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic and casino Paradise. All these disadvantages, you will say, are inevitable, and need not be dwelt upon. In my own school of St. George I mean to avoid them by simply making the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual work; my boys shall at least know what their fathers believed, before they make up their own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and very modest ones, at And if you can found two such chairs in Oxford—one, of the Science of Physical Health; the other, of the Law of Human Honor—you need not trim your Horace, nor forbid us our chatty afternoon tea. I could say ever so much more, of course, if there were only time, or if it would be of any use—about the mis-appliance of the imagination. But really, the essential thing is the founding of real schools of instruction for both boys and girls—first, in domestic medicine and all that it means; and secondly, in the plain moral law of all humanity: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," with all that it means. Ever most truly yours, Venice, 12th February, '77.My dear——: Two words more, and an end. I have just re-read the paper throughout. There are two omissions which seem to me to need serious notice. The first, that the entire code of counsel which you have drawn up, as that which a father should give his son, must be founded on the assumption that, at the proper time of life, the youth will be able, no less than eager, to marry. You ought certainly to point out, incidentally, what in my St. George's work I am teaching primarily, that unless this first economical condition of human society be secured, all props and plasters of its morality will be in vain. And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust; that is the relation in Ever most truly yours, Malham, July 3d, 1878.Dear——: I wish I were able to add a few more words, with energy and clearness, to my former letters, respecting a subject of which my best strength—though in great part lately given to it, has not yet enforced the moment—the function, namely, of the arts of music and dancing as leaders and governors of the bodily, and instinctive mental, passions. No nation will ever bring up its youth to be at once refined and pure, till its masters have learned the use of all the arts, and primarily of these; till they again recognize the gulf that separates the Doric and Lydian modes, and perceive the great ordinance of Nature, that the pleasures which, rightly ordered, exalt, discipline, and guide the hearts of men, if abandoned to a reckless and popular Dis-order, as surely degrade, scatter, and deceive alike the passions and intellect. I observe in the journals of yesterday, announcement that the masters of many of our chief schools are at last desirous of making the elements of Greek art one of the branches of their code of instruction: but that they imagine such elements may be learned from plaster casts of elegant limbs and delicate noses. They will find that Greek art can only be learned from Greek law, and from the religion which gives law of life to all the nations of the earth. Let our youth once more learn the meaning of the words "music," "chorus," and "hymn" practically; and with the understanding that all such practice, from lowest to highest, is, if rightly done, always in the presence Have you ever heard the charity children sing in St. Paul's? Suppose we sometimes allowed God the honor of seeing our noble children collected in like manner to sing to Him, what think you might be the effect of such a festival—even if only held once a year—on the national manners and hearts? Ever faithfully and affectionately yours,
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. |