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017 - Of the Mystery of Life Part 2 · Sesame and Lilies

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  Speaker 1: Section seventeen of Sesame and Lily's 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 Oxenhandler of The Mystery of Life and Its Arts,
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  Speaker 1: Part two. Nothing that I have ever said is more
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  Speaker 1: true or necessary. Nothing has been more misunderstood or misapplied
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  Speaker 1: than my strong assertion that the arts can never be
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  Speaker 1: right themselves unless their motive is right. It is misunderstood
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  Speaker 1: this way. Weak painters, who have never learned their business
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  Speaker 1: and cannot lay a true line continually come to me
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  Speaker 1: crying out. Look at this picture of mine. It must
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  Speaker 1: be good. I had such a lovely motive. I have
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  Speaker 1: put my whole heart into it, and taken years to
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  Speaker 1: think over its treatment. Well, the only answer for these
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  Speaker 1: people is if one had the cruelty to make it. Sir,
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  Speaker 1: you cannot think over anything in any number of years.
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  Speaker 1: You haven't the head to do it. And though you
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  Speaker 1: had fine motives strong enough to make you burn yourself
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  Speaker 1: in a slow fire, if only first you could paint
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  Speaker 1: a picture. You can't paint one, nor half an inch
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  Speaker 1: of one. You haven't the hand to do it. But
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  Speaker 1: far more decisively we have to say to the men
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  Speaker 1: who do know their business, or may know it if
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  Speaker 1: they choose, Sir, you have this gift and a mighty one,
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  Speaker 1: See that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It
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  Speaker 1: is a greater trust than ships and armies. You might
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  Speaker 1: cast them away if you were their captain, with less
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  Speaker 1: treason to your people than in casting your own glorious
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  Speaker 1: power away and serving the devil with it. Instead of men,
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  Speaker 1: ships and armies you may replace if they are lost.
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  Speaker 1: But a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to
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  Speaker 1: the earth forever. This, then, I meant by saying that
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  Speaker 1: the arts must have noble motive. This also I said,
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  Speaker 1: respecting them, that they never had prospered, nor could prosper,
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  Speaker 1: but when they had such true purpose and were devoted
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  Speaker 1: to the proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet
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  Speaker 1: I saw also that they had always failed in this proclamation,
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  Speaker 1: that poetry and sculpture and painting, though only great when
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  Speaker 1: they strove to teach us something about the gods, never
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  Speaker 1: had taught us anything trustworthy about the gods, but had
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  Speaker 1: always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, and
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  Speaker 1: with their powers at the full reach, became ministers to
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  Speaker 1: pride and to lust. And I felt also with increasing amazement,
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  Speaker 1: the unconquerable apathy in ourselves, the hearers, no less than
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  Speaker 1: in these the teachers, And that while the wisdom and
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  Speaker 1: rightness of every act and art of life could only
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  Speaker 1: be consistent with the right understanding of the ends of life,
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  Speaker 1: we were all plunged as in a languid dream, our
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  Speaker 1: heart fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed,
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  Speaker 1: lest to the inspiration of hand or war should reach us,
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  Speaker 1: lest we should see with our eyes and understand with
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  Speaker 1: our hearts and be healed. This intense apathy in all
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  Speaker 1: of us is the first great mystery of life. It
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  Speaker 1: stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There
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  Speaker 1: is no making ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That
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  Speaker 1: the occupation or pastimes of life should have no motive
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  Speaker 1: is understandable. But that life itself should have no motive,
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  Speaker 1: that we neither care to find out what it may
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  Speaker 1: lead to, nor to guard against its being forever taken
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  Speaker 1: away from us. Here is a mystery. Indeed, For just
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  Speaker 1: suppose I were able to call at this moment to
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  Speaker 1: any one in this audience by name, and to tell
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  Speaker 1: him positively that I knew a large estate had been
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  Speaker 1: lately left to him on some curious conditions. But that
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  Speaker 1: though I knew it was large, I did not know
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  Speaker 1: how large, nor even where it was, whether in the
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  Speaker 1: East Indies or the West, or in England or at
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  Speaker 1: the Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate,
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  Speaker 1: and that there was a chance of his losing it
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  Speaker 1: altogether if he did not soon find out on what
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  Speaker 1: terms it had been left to him. Suppose I were
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  Speaker 1: able to say this positively to any single man in
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  Speaker 1: this audience, and he knew that I did not speak
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  Speaker 1: without warrant. Do you think that he would rest content
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  Speaker 1: with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise possible to
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  Speaker 1: obtain more? Would he not give every energy to find
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  Speaker 1: some trace of the facts, and never rest till he
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  Speaker 1: had ascertained where this place was and what it was like.
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  Speaker 1: And suppose he were a young man, and all he
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  Speaker 1: could discover by his best endeavor was that the estate
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  Speaker 1: was never to be his at all unless he persevered,
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  Speaker 1: during certain years of probation in an orderly and industrious life,
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  Speaker 1: But that, according to the rightness of his conduct, the
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  Speaker 1: portion of the estate assigned to him would be greater
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  Speaker 1: or less so that it literally depends on his behavior
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  Speaker 1: from day to day whether he got ten thousand a
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  Speaker 1: year or thirty thousand a year, or nothing whatever. Would
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  Speaker 1: you not think it strange if the youth never troubled
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  Speaker 1: himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor even
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  Speaker 1: to know what was required of him, but lived exactly
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  Speaker 1: as he chose, and never inquired whether his chances of
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  Speaker 1: the estate were increasing or passing away. Well you know
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  Speaker 1: that this is actually and literally so with the greater
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  Speaker 1: number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries.
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  Speaker 1: Nearly every man and woman in any company such as
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  Speaker 1: this outwardly professes to believe, and a large number unquestionably
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  Speaker 1: think they believe much more than this, not only that
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  Speaker 1: a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them if
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  Speaker 1: they pleased the holder of it, but that the infinite
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  Speaker 1: contrary of such a possession, and a state of perpetual misery,
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  Speaker 1: is in store for them if they displease this great landholder,
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  Speaker 1: this great heaven holder. And yet there is not one
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  Speaker 1: in a thousand of these human souls that cares to
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  Speaker 1: think for ten minutes of the day where his estate is,
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  Speaker 1: or how beautiful it is, or what kind of life
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  Speaker 1: they are to lead in it, or what kind of
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  Speaker 1: life they must lead to obtain it. You fancy that
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  Speaker 1: you care to know this? So little do you care? That?
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  Speaker 1: Probably at this moment many of you are displeased with
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  Speaker 1: me for talking of the matter you came to hear
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  Speaker 1: about the arts of this world, not about the life
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  Speaker 1: of the next. And you are provoked with me for
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  Speaker 1: talking of what you can hear any Sunday in church.
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  Speaker 1: But do not be afraid. I will tell you something
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  Speaker 1: before you go about pictures and carvings and pottery, and
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  Speaker 1: what else you would like better to hear of than
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  Speaker 1: the other world. Nay, perhaps you say, we want you
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  Speaker 1: to talk of pictures in pottery because we are sure
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  Speaker 1: that you know something of them and you know nothing
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  Speaker 1: of the other world. Well I don't. That is quite true.
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  Speaker 1: But the very strangeness and mystery of which I urge
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  Speaker 1: you to take notice is in this that I do
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  Speaker 1: not nor you either. Can you answer a single, bold question,
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  Speaker 1: unflinchingly about that other world? Are you sure there is
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  Speaker 1: a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure that men
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  Speaker 1: are dropping before your faces through the pavements of these
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  Speaker 1: streets into eternal fire. Or sure that they are not
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  Speaker 1: sure that at your own death you are going to
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  Speaker 1: be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue,
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  Speaker 1: to be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpetual
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  Speaker 1: companionship with a king compared to whom the kings of
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  Speaker 1: the earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations as the
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  Speaker 1: dust of his feet. Are you sure of this? Or
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  Speaker 1: if not sure, do any of us so much as
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  Speaker 1: care to make it sure? And if not, how can
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  Speaker 1: anything that we do be right? How can anything we
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  Speaker 1: think be wise? What honor can there be in the
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  Speaker 1: arts that amuse us? Or what profit in the possessions
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  Speaker 1: that please? Is not this a mystery of life? But Father,
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  Speaker 1: you may perhaps think it a beneficent ordinance for the
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  Speaker 1: generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety,
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  Speaker 1: dwell on such questions of the future, because the business
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  Speaker 1: of the day could not be done if this kind
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  Speaker 1: of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow.
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  Speaker 1: Be it so, but at least we might anticipate that
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  Speaker 1: the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the
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  Speaker 1: appointed teachers of the rest, would set themselves apart to
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  Speaker 1: seek out whatever could be surely known of the future
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  Speaker 1: destinies of their race, and to teach this in no
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  Speaker 1: rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest and most
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  Speaker 1: severely earnest words. Now the highest representatives of men who
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  Speaker 1: have thus endeavored during the Christian era to search out
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  Speaker 1: these deep things and relate them are Dante and Milton.
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  Speaker 1: There are none who, for earnestness of thought, for mastery
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  Speaker 1: of word, can be classed with these. I am not
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  Speaker 1: at present mind speaking of persons set apart in any
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  Speaker 1: priestly or pastoral office to deliver creeds to us or doctrines,
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  Speaker 1: but of men who try to discover and set forth,
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  Speaker 1: as far as by human intellect as possible, the facts
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  Speaker 1: of the other world. Divines may perhaps teach us how
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  Speaker 1: to arrive there. But only these two poets have in
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  Speaker 1: any powerful manners striven to discover, or in any definite words,
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  Speaker 1: professed to tell what we shall see and become there,
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  Speaker 1: or how those upper and nether worlds are and have
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  Speaker 1: been inhabited, and what have they told us. Milton's account
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  Speaker 1: of the most important event in his whole system of
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  Speaker 1: the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable
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  Speaker 1: to himself, and the more so that it is wholly
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  Speaker 1: founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded
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  Speaker 1: from Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger
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  Speaker 1: Gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is
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  Speaker 1: a picturesque drama in which every artifice of invention is
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  Speaker 1: visibly and consciously employed, not a single fact being for
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  Speaker 1: an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith. Dante's
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  Speaker 1: conception is far more intense, and by himself for the
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  Speaker 1: time not to be escaped from it is indeed a vision,
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  Speaker 1: but a vision only, and that one of the wildest
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  Speaker 1: that ever entranced a soul, a dream in which every
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  Speaker 1: grotesque type of fantasy of heathen tradition is renewed and adorned,
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  Speaker 1: and the destinies of the Christian Church, under their most
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  Speaker 1: sacred symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and are
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  Speaker 1: only to be understood by the aid of one dear
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  Speaker 1: Florentine maiden. I tell you truly that as I strive
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  Speaker 1: more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself and
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  Speaker 1: awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems
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  Speaker 1: daily more amazing to me that men such as these
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  Speaker 1: should dare to play with the most precious truths or
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  Speaker 1: the most deadly untruths, by which the whole human race
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  Speaker 1: listens to them, could be informed or deceived, all the
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  Speaker 1: world their audiences, forever with pleased ear and passionate heart.
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  Speaker 1: And yet to this submissive infinitude of souls, and ever
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  Speaker 1: more succeeding and succeeding multitude hungry for bread of life,
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  Speaker 1: they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes with pompous nomenclature,
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  Speaker 1: adorn the councils of hell, touch a troubadour's guitar to
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  Speaker 1: the courses of the sons, and fill the openings of
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  Speaker 1: eternity before which prophets have veiled their faces, in which
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  Speaker 1: angels desire to look into with idle puppets of their
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  Speaker 1: scholastic imagination and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their
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  Speaker 1: lost mortal love. Is not this a mystery of life?
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  Speaker 1: But more, we have to remember that these two great
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  Speaker 1: teachers were, both of them warped in their temper and
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  Speaker 1: thwarted in their search for truth. They were men of
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  Speaker 1: intellectual war, war, unable through darkness of controversy or stress
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  Speaker 1: of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified,
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  Speaker 1: their utterances of the moral law, or their own agony
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  Speaker 1: mingled with their anger at its violation. But greater men
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  Speaker 1: than these have been innocent hearted, too great for contest,
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  Speaker 1: men like Homer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality that
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  Speaker 1: it disappears in future ages and becomes ghostly, like the
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  Speaker 1: tradition of a lost Heathen god. Men. Therefore, to whose unoffended,
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  Speaker 1: uncondemning sight, the whole of human nature reveals itself in
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  Speaker 1: a pathetic weakness with which they will not strive, or
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  Speaker 1: in mournful and transitory strength which they dare not praise.
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  Speaker 1: And all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to them.
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  Speaker 1: It does not matter how little or how much any
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  Speaker 1: of us have read either of Homer or Shakespeare. Everything
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  Speaker 1: round us, in substance or in thought, have been molded
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  Speaker 1: by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer, all
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  Speaker 1: Roman gentlemen by Greek literature, all Italian and French and
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  Speaker 1: English gentlemen by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of
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  Speaker 1: the scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that the
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  Speaker 1: intellectual measure of every man since born in the domains
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  Speaker 1: of creative thought, may be assigned to him according to
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  Speaker 1: the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare. Well,
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  Speaker 1: what do these two men, centers of mortal intelligence, deliver
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  Speaker 1: to us of conviction? Respecting what it most behooves that
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  Speaker 1: intelligence to grasp? What is their hope, their crown of rejoicing?
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  Speaker 1: What manner of exhortation have they for us? Or of rebuke?
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  Speaker 1: What lies next to their own hearts and dictates their
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  Speaker 1: undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest?
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  Speaker 1: Any redemption to our misery? Take homer first, and think
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  Speaker 1: if there is any sadder image of human fate than
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  Speaker 1: the great Homeric story. The main features in the character
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  Speaker 1: of Achilles are its intense desire of justice and its
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  Speaker 1: tenderness of affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad,
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  Speaker 1: this man, though aided continually by the wisest of the gods,
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  Speaker 1: and burning with the desire of justice in his heart,
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  Speaker 1: becomes yet through ill governed passion, the most unjust of men,
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  Speaker 1: and full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes yet,
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  Speaker 1: through ill governed passion, the most cruel of men intense
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  Speaker 1: alike in love and in friendship. He loses first his
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  Speaker 1: mistress and then his friend. For the sake of the one,
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  Speaker 1: he surrenders to death the armies of his own land.
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  Speaker 1: For the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will
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  Speaker 1: a man lay down his life for his friend, yea
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  Speaker 1: even for his dead friend. This Achilles, though God is
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  Speaker 1: born and Goddess taught, gives up his kingdom, his country,
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  Speaker 1: and his life, casts alike the innocent and guilty with
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  Speaker 1: him unto one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last
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  Speaker 1: by the hand of the basest of his adversaries. Is
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  Speaker 1: not this a mystery of life? End of Section seventeen.