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019 - Of the Mystery of Life Part 4 · Sesame and Lilies

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  Speaker 1: Section nineteen of Sesame and Lilies Revised and enlarged edition
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  Speaker 1: by John Ruskin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Oxen Handler, The Mystery of Life and Its Arts,
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  Speaker 1: Part four. And now may I have your pardon for
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  Speaker 1: pointing out, partly with reference to matters which are at
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  Speaker 1: this time of greater moment than the arts, that if
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  Speaker 1: we undertook such recession to the vital germ of national
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  Speaker 1: arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular
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  Speaker 1: arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other
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  Speaker 1: European country. For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a
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  Speaker 1: school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, which, in
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  Speaker 1: many of its qualities, apparently in all essential qualities of
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  Speaker 1: decorative invention, was quite without rival, seeming as if it
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  Speaker 1: might have advanced to the highest triumphs in architecture and
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  Speaker 1: in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in its
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  Speaker 1: nature by which it was stayed, and stayed with a
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  Speaker 1: conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel. So
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  Speaker 1: that long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools
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  Speaker 1: from infancy to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington,
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  Speaker 1: in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples of early
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  Speaker 1: art of equal skill, but in the one case, skill
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  Speaker 1: which was progressive, in the other skill which was at pause.
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  Speaker 1: In the one case it was work receptive of correction,
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  Speaker 1: hungry for correction, and in the other work which inherently
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  Speaker 1: rejected correction. I chose for them a couragible eve and
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  Speaker 1: an incouragible angel, and I grieved to say that the
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  Speaker 1: incouragible angel was also an Irish angel. Footnote see the
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  Speaker 1: Two Paths, page twenty seven. End of footnote, and the
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  Speaker 1: fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of
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  Speaker 1: art there was an equal falling short of the needs
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  Speaker 1: of fact. But the Lombardi eve knew she was in
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  Speaker 1: the wrong, and the Irish angel thought himself all right.
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  Speaker 1: The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting on his childish idea,
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  Speaker 1: yet showed in the irregular broken touches of the features
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  Speaker 1: and the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the form
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  Speaker 1: a perception of beauty and law that he could not render.
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  Speaker 1: There was the strain of effort under conscious imperfection in
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  Speaker 1: every line, But the Irish missile painter had drawn his
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  Speaker 1: angel with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and
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  Speaker 1: put red dots into the palms of each hand, and
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  Speaker 1: rounded the eyes into perfect circles, and I regret to say,
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  Speaker 1: left the mouth out altogether with perfect satisfaction to himself.
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  Speaker 1: May I, without offense, ask you to consider whether this
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  Speaker 1: mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may not be
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  Speaker 1: indicative of points of character which, even yet in some measure,
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  Speaker 1: arrest your national power. I have seen much of Irish character,
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  Speaker 1: and have watched it closely, for I have also much
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  Speaker 1: loved it, and I think the form of failure to
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  Speaker 1: which it is most liable is this, that, being generous
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  Speaker 1: hearted and wholly intending always to do right, it does
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  Speaker 1: not attend to the external laws of right, but thinks
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  Speaker 1: it must necessarily do right because it means to do so,
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  Speaker 1: and therefore does wrong without finding it out. And then
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  Speaker 1: when the consequences of its wrong come upon it or
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  Speaker 1: upon others connected with it, it cannot conceive that the
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  Speaker 1: wrong is in any wise of its causing or of
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  Speaker 1: its doing, but flies into wrath and a strange agony
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  Speaker 1: of desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which
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  Speaker 1: leads it farther astray until there is nothing that it
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  Speaker 1: is not capable of doing with a good conscience. But mind,
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  Speaker 1: I do not mean to say that in past or
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  Speaker 1: present relations between Ireland and England you have been wrong
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  Speaker 1: and we right. Far from that. I believe that in
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  Speaker 1: all great questions of principle, and in all details of
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  Speaker 1: administration of law, you have been usually right and we wrong,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. Nevertheless,
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  Speaker 1: in all disputes between states, though the strongest is nearly
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  Speaker 1: always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is often so
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  Speaker 1: in a minor degree. And I think we sometimes admit
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  Speaker 1: the possibility of our being in error, and you never do.
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  Speaker 1: And now returning to the broader question, what these arts
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  Speaker 1: and labors of life have to teach us of its mystery?
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  Speaker 1: This is the first of their lessons, that the more
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  Speaker 1: beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work
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  Speaker 1: of people who feel themselves wrong, who are striving for
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  Speaker 1: the fulfillment of a law, and the grasp of a
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  Speaker 1: loveliness which they have not yet attained, which they feel
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  Speaker 1: even farther and farther from attaining the more they strive
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  Speaker 1: for it. And yet in still deeper sense, it is
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  Speaker 1: the work of people who know also that they are right.
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  Speaker 1: The very sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks
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  Speaker 1: the perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of
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  Speaker 1: failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes more
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  Speaker 1: clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth. This is
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  Speaker 1: one lesson. The second is a very plain and greatly
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  Speaker 1: precious one, namely that whenever the arts and labors of
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  Speaker 1: life are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against misrule
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  Speaker 1: and doing whatever we have to do honorably and perfectly,
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  Speaker 1: they invariably bring happiness as much as seems possible to
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  Speaker 1: the nature of man. In all other paths by which
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  Speaker 1: that happiness is pursued, there is disappointment or destruction. For ambition,
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  Speaker 1: and for passion there is no rest, no fruition. The
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  Speaker 1: fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater than
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  Speaker 1: their past light, and the loftiest and purest love too
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  Speaker 1: often does but inflame the cloud of life with endless
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  Speaker 1: fire of pain, but ascending from lowest to highest through
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  Speaker 1: every scale of human industry. That industry worthily followed gives peace.
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  Speaker 1: Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or
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  Speaker 1: in the mine. Ask the patient, delicate fingered artisan, or
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  Speaker 1: the strong armed, fiery hearted worker in bronze and in marble,
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  Speaker 1: and with the colors of light. And none of these,
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  Speaker 1: who are true workmen, will ever tell you that they
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  Speaker 1: have found the law of heaven an unkind one that
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  Speaker 1: in the sweat of their face they should eat bread
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  Speaker 1: till they returned to the ground, nor that they ever
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  Speaker 1: found it an unrewarded obedience, if indeed it was rendered
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  Speaker 1: faithfully to the command. Quote whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
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  Speaker 1: do it with thy might unquote. These are the two
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  Speaker 1: greatest and constant lessons which our laborers teach us of
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  Speaker 1: the mystery of life. But there is another, and a
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  Speaker 1: sadder one, which they cannot teach, which we must read
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  Speaker 1: on their tombstones. Quote do it with thy might unquote.
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  Speaker 1: There have been myriads upon myriads of human creatures who
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  Speaker 1: have obeyed this law, who have put every breath and
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  Speaker 1: nerve of their being into its toil, who have devoted
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  Speaker 1: every hour and exhausted every faculty, who have bequeathed their
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  Speaker 1: unaccomplished thoughts at death, who, being dead, have yet spoken
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  Speaker 1: by majesty of memory and strength of example. And at last,
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  Speaker 1: what has all this might of humanity accomplished in six
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  Speaker 1: thousand years of labor and sorrow? What has it done?
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  Speaker 1: Take the three chief occupations and arts of men one
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  Speaker 1: by one and count their achievements. Begin with the first,
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  Speaker 1: the lord of them all, agriculture. Six thousand years have
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  Speaker 1: passed since we were set to till the ground from
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  Speaker 1: which we were taken? How much of it is tilled?
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  Speaker 1: How much of that which is wisely or well? In
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  Speaker 1: the very center and chief garden of Europe, where the
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  Speaker 1: two forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses, where
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  Speaker 1: the noble Catholics of the forest Cantons and the noble
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  Speaker 1: Protestants of the Vaudeaux Valleys have maintained for dateless ages
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  Speaker 1: their faiths and liberties. There the unchecked alpine rivers yet
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  Speaker 1: run wild in devastation, and the marshes, which a few
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  Speaker 1: hundred men could redeem with a year's labor, still blast
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  Speaker 1: their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism. That is so in
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  Speaker 1: the center of Europe, while on the near coast of Africa,
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  Speaker 1: once the garden of the Hesperides an Arab woman, but
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  Speaker 1: a few sunsets since ate her child for famine. And
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  Speaker 1: with all the treasures of the East at our feet,
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  Speaker 1: we in our own dominion could not find a few
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  Speaker 1: grains of rice for a people that asked of us
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  Speaker 1: no more, but stood by and saw five hundred thousand
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  Speaker 1: of them perish of hunger. Then, after agriculture, the art
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  Speaker 1: of kings take the next head of human arts, weaving,
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  Speaker 1: the art of queens, honored of all noble Heathen women
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  Speaker 1: in the person of their virgin Goddess, honored of all
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew women by the word of their wisest king. Quote.
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  Speaker 1: She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands
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  Speaker 1: hold the distaff. She stretcheth out her hand to the poor.
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  Speaker 1: She is not afraid of the snow for her household,
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  Speaker 1: for all her household are clothed with scarlet. She maketh
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  Speaker 1: herself covering of tapestry. Her clothing is silk and purple.
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  Speaker 1: She maketh fine linen and selleth it, and delivereth girdles
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  Speaker 1: to the merchant. Unquote. What have we done in all
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  Speaker 1: these thousands of years with this bright art of Greek
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  Speaker 1: maid and Christian matron, six thousand years of weaving? And
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  Speaker 1: have we learned to weave? Might not every naked wall
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  Speaker 1: have been purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced
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  Speaker 1: with sweet colors from the cold? What have we done?
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  Speaker 1: Our fingers are too few, it seems to twist together
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  Speaker 1: some poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams
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  Speaker 1: to work for us, and choke the air with fire
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  Speaker 1: to turn our spinning wheels. And are we yet clothed?
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  Speaker 1: Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe vowel
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  Speaker 1: with sail of cast clouts and rotten rags? Is not
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  Speaker 1: the beauty of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace?
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  Speaker 1: While with better honor nature clothes the brood of the
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  Speaker 1: bird in its nest and the suckling of the wolf
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  Speaker 1: in her den. And does not every winter's snow robe
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  Speaker 1: what you have not robed, and shroud what you have
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  Speaker 1: not shrouded, And every winter's wind bear up to Heaven
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  Speaker 1: its wasted souls to witness against you. Hereafter, by the
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  Speaker 1: voice of their Christ quote I was naked and ye clothed,
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  Speaker 1: may not unquote lastly take the art of building the strongest, proudest,
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  Speaker 1: most orderly, most enduring of the arts of man, that
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  Speaker 1: of which which the produce is in the surest manner, accumulative,
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  Speaker 1: and need not perish or be replaced, but if once
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  Speaker 1: well done, will stand more strongly than the unbalanced rocks,
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  Speaker 1: more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is
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  Speaker 1: associated with all civic pride and sacred principle, with which
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  Speaker 1: men record their power, satisfy their enthusiasm, make sure their defense,
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  Speaker 1: define and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand
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  Speaker 1: years of building, what have we done of the greater
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  Speaker 1: part of all that skill and strength. No vistage is
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  Speaker 1: left but fallen stones that encumber the fields and impede
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  Speaker 1: the streams. But from this waste of disorder and of
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  Speaker 1: time and of rage, what is left to us, constructive
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  Speaker 1: and progressive creatures that we are, with ruling brains and
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  Speaker 1: forming hands, capable of fellowship and thirsting for fame. Can
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  Speaker 1: we not contend in comfort with the insects of the forest,
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  Speaker 1: or in achievement with the worm of the sea. White
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  Speaker 1: surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by poor
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  Speaker 1: atoms of scarcely nascent life. But only ridges of formless
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  Speaker 1: ruin mark the places where once dwelt our noblest multitudes.
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  Speaker 1: The ant and the moth have cells for each of
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  Speaker 1: their young. But our little ones lie in festering heaps,
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  Speaker 1: in homes that consume them like graves, And night by
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  Speaker 1: night from the corners of our streets rises up the
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  Speaker 1: cry of the homeless quote, I was a stranger, and
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  Speaker 1: YE took me not in? Must it be always thus
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  Speaker 1: in our life? Forever to be without prophet, without possession,
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  Speaker 1: shall the strength of its generations be as barren as death,
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  Speaker 1: or cast away their labor as the wild fig tree
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  Speaker 1: casts her untimely figs. Is it all a dream, then,
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  Speaker 1: the desire of the eyes and the pride of life?
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  Speaker 1: Or if it be, might we not live in nobler
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  Speaker 1: dream than this? The poets and prophets, the wise men,
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  Speaker 1: and the scribes, though they have told us nothing about
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  Speaker 1: life to come, have told us much about the life
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  Speaker 1: that is now. They have had they also their dreams,
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  Speaker 1: and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of
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  Speaker 1: mercy and of justice. They have dreamed of peace and
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  Speaker 1: good will. They have dreamed of labor undisappointed, and of
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  Speaker 1: rest undisturbed. They have dreamed of fullness in harvest and
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  Speaker 1: overflowing in store. They have dreamed of wisdom in counsel,
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  Speaker 1: and of providence in law, of gladness of parents and
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  Speaker 1: strength of children, and glory of gray hairs. And at
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  Speaker 1: these visions of theirs we have mocked and held them
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  Speaker 1: for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we
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  Speaker 1: accomplished with our realities? Is this, what has come of
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  Speaker 1: our worldly wisdom tried against their folly, This our mightiest
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  Speaker 1: possible against their impotent ideal? Or have we only wandered
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  Speaker 1: among the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms
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  Speaker 1: of the tombs instead of visions of the earth almighty,
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  Speaker 1: and walked after the imaginations of our evil hearts instead
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  Speaker 1: of after the counsels of eternity, Until our lives, not
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  Speaker 1: in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of
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  Speaker 1: the smoke of hell, have become quote as a vapor
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  Speaker 1: that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away unquote.
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  Speaker 1: End of section nineteen