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Sesame and Lilies

J >> John Ruskin >> Sesame and Lilies




You fancy that you care to know this: so little do you care that,
probably, at this moment many of you are displeased with me for
talking of the matter! You came to hear about the Art of this
world, not about the Life of the next, and you are provoked with me
for talking of what you can hear any Sunday in church. But do not
be afraid. I will tell you something before you go about pictures,
and carvings, and pottery, and what else you would like better to
hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you say, "We want you to
talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you know
something of them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well--
I don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery
of which I urge you to take notice, is in this--that I do not;--nor
you either. Can you answer a single bold question unflinchingly
about that other world?--Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there
is a hell? Sure that men are dropping before your faces through the
pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure that they are
not? Sure that at your own death you are going to be delivered from
all sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue, to be gifted with all
felicity, and raised into perpetual companionship with a King,
compared to whom the kings of the earth are as grass-hoppers, and
the nations as the dust of His feet? Are you sure of this? or, if
not sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and, if not,
how can anything that we do be right--how can anything we think be
wise? what honour can there be in the arts that amuse us, or what
profit in the possessions that please?

Is not this a mystery of life?

But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent ordinance for
the generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety,
dwell on such questions of the future because the business of the
day could not be done if this kind of thought were taken by all of
us for the morrow. Be it so: but at least we might anticipate that
the greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the appointed
teachers of the rest, would set themselves apart to seek out
whatever could be surely known of the future destinies of their
race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in
the plainest and most severely earnest words.

Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus endeavoured,
during the Christian era, to search out these deep things, and
relate them, are Dante and Milton. There are none who for
earnestness of thought, for mastery of word, can be classed with
these. I am not at present, mind you, speaking of persons set apart
in any priestly or pastoral office, to deliver creeds to us, or
doctrines; but of men who try to discover and set forth, as far as
by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other world.
Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these two
poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become
there; or how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been,
inhabited.

And what have they told us? Milton's account of the most important
event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels,
is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is
wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled and degraded from,
Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the
Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every
artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a
single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any
living faith. Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by
himself, for the time, not to be escaped from; it is indeed a
vision, but a vision only, and that one of the wildest that ever
entranced a soul--a dream in which every grotesque type or phantasy
of heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned; and the destinies of
the Christian Church, under their most sacred symbols, become
literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be understood
by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden.

I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy
and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it
seems daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to
play with the most precious truths, (or the most deadly untruths,)
by which the whole human race listening to them could be informed,
or deceived;--all the world their audiences for ever, with pleased
ear, and passionate heart;--and yet, to this submissive infinitude
of souls, and evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hungry
for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes;
with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell; touch a
troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the
openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces,
and which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their
scholastic imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in
their lost mortal love.

Is not this a mystery of life?

But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were
both of them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search
for truth. They were men of intellectual war, unable, through
darkness of controversy, or stress of personal grief, to discern
where their own ambition modified their utterances of the moral law;
or their own agony mingled with their anger at its violation. But
greater men than these have been--innocent-hearted--too great for
contest. Men, like Homer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognised
personality, that it disappears in future ages, and becomes ghostly,
like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men, therefore, to whose
unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human nature reveals
itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not strive; or
in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not praise.
And all Pagan and Christian Civilization thus becomes subject to
them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have
read, either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in
substance, or in thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek
gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek
literature. All Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, by
Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the scope of
Shakespeare, I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every
man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him, according to the degree in which he has been taught by
Shakespeare. Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal
intelligence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what it most
behoves that intelligence to grasp? What is their hope--their crown
of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation have they for us, or of
rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and dictates their undying
words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest--any redemption
to our misery?

Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder image of human
fate than the great Homeric story. The main features in the
character of Achilles are its intense desire of justice, and its
tenderness of affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this
man, though aided continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning
with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-
governed passion, the most unjust of men: and, full of the deepest
tenderness in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion,
the most cruel of men. Intense alike in love and in friendship, he
loses, first his mistress, and then his friend; for the sake of the
one, he surrenders to death the armies of his own land; for the sake
of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down his life for
his friend? Yea--even for his DEAD friend, this Achilles, though
goddess-born, and goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country,
and his life--casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself,
into one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the
basest of his adversaries.

Is not this a mystery of life?

But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, and searcher
of hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been
numbered over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than
the Heathen's--is his hope more near--his trust more sure--his
reading of fate more happy? Ah, no! He differs from the Heathen
poet chiefly in this--that he recognizes, for deliverance, no gods
nigh at hand; and that, by petty chance--by momentary folly--by
broken message--by fool's tyranny--or traitor's snare, the strongest
and most righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish without
word of hope. He indeed, as part of his rendering of character,
ascribes the power and modesty of habitual devotion to the gentle
and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright with visions of
angels; and the great soldier-king, standing by his few dead,
acknowledges the presence of the Hand that can save alike by many or
by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit,
meditate, and with deepest passion, mourn, there are no such words
as these; nor in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead of
the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of the Deity, which,
through all heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in
battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, we find
only in the great Christian poet, the consciousness of a moral law,
through which "the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make
instruments to scourge us;" and of the resolved arbitration of the
destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we feebly and
blindly began; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us, and
our deepest plots do pall, to the confession, that "there's a
divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."

Is not this a mystery of life?

Be it so, then. About this human life that is to be, or that is,
the wise religious men tell us nothing that we can trust; and the
wise contemplative men, nothing that can give us peace. But there
is yet a third class, to whom we may turn--the wise practical men.
We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they
have told us their dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang
of earth, and they have chanted to us dirges and words of despair.
But there is one class of men more:- men, not capable of vision, nor
sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose--practised in business;
learned in all that can be, (by handling,) known. Men, whose hearts
and hopes are wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore, we
may surely learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to live in
it. What will THEY say to us, or show us by example? These kings--
these councillors--these statesmen and builders of kingdoms--these
capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust
of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely; and what is the
mystery of life to us, is none to them. They can surely show us how
to live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what
is best.

I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling you a dream I
had once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes:- I
dreamed I was at a child's Mayday party, in which every means of
entertainment had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host.
It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it;
and the children had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no
care whatever but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did
not, indeed, know much about what was to happen next day; and some
of them, I thought, were a little frightened, because there was a
chance of their being sent to a new school where there were
examinations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their heads
as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house,
I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden were all kinds
of flowers; sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play;
and pleasant streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And
the children were happy for a little while, but presently they
separated themselves into parties; and then each party declared it
would have a piece of the garden for its own, and that none of the
others should have anything to do with that piece. Next, they
quarrelled violently which pieces they would have; and at last the
boys took up the thing, as boys should do, "practically," and fought
in the flower-beds till there was hardly a flower left standing;
then they trampled down each other's bits of the garden out of
spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; and so they
all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for the time
when they were to be taken home in the evening. {30}

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves
happy also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every
kind of indoor pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and
the library was open, with all manner of amusing books; and there
was a museum full of the most curious shells, and animals, and
birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenter's tools,
for the ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for
the girls to dress in; and there were microscopes, and
kaleidoscopes; and whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table,
in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat.

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more
"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed
nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them
out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells,
took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the
children, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling out
brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull out, they were
not satisfied; and then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's.
And at last, the really practical and sensible ones declared, that
nothing was of any real consequence, that afternoon, except to get
plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and the cakes, and
the microscopes were of no use at all in themselves, but only, if
they could be exchanged for nail-heads. And at last they began to
fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of garden.
Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and
tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise;
but all the practical ones thought of nothing else but counting
nail-heads all the afternoon--even though they knew they would not
be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with them. But
no--it was--"Who has most nails? I have a hundred, and you have
fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you have two. I must have as many
as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go home in
peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and thought
to myself, "What a false dream that is, of CHILDREN!" The child is
the father of the man; and wiser. Children never do such foolish
things. Only men do.

But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The
wise religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative
men, in vain; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another
group yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty religion--of tragic
contemplation--of wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for
dust, there is yet one great group of persons, by whom all these
disputers live--the persons who have determined, or have had it by a
beneficent Providence determined for them, that they will do
something useful; that whatever may be prepared for them hereafter,
or happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve the food that
God gives them by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen
from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry out
the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and
dress and keep the wilderness, though they no more can dress or keep
the garden.

These,--hewers of wood, and drawers of water,--these, bent under
burdens, or torn of scourges--these, that dig and weave--that plant
and build; workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom all
food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of delight are
produced, for themselves, and for all men beside; men, whose deeds
are good, though their words may be few; men, whose lives are
serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy of honour, be they
never so humble;--from these, surely, at least, we may receive some
clear message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the
mystery of life, and of its arts.

Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to
say, or rather--for that is the deeper truth of the matter--I
rejoice to say--this message of theirs can only be received by
joining them--not by thinking about them.

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in
coming. But the main thing I have to tell you is,--that art must
not be talked about. The fact that there is talk about it at all,
signifies that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter
ever speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The greatest
speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of all
that he could not himself do, and was utterly silent respecting all
that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about
it. All words become idle to him--all theories.

Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it
when built? All good work is essentially done that way--without
hesitation, without difficulty, without boasting; and in the doers
of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power which
approximates literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I am
certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does NOT
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine
than that of the lower animals as the human body is more beautiful
than theirs; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than
the nightingale, but with more--only more various, applicable, and
governable; that a great architect does not build with less instinct
than the beaver or the bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of
proportion that embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill
that improvises all construction. But be that as it may--be the
instinct less or more than that of inferior animals--like or unlike
theirs, still the human art is dependent on that first, and then
upon an amount of practice, of science,--and of imagination
disciplined by thought, which the true possessor of it knows to be
incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, except
through long process of laborious' years. That journey of life's
conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and
sank,--do you think you can make another trace it painlessly, by
talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an Alp, by talking. You
can guide us up it, step by step, no otherwise--even so, best
silently. You girls, who have been among the hills, know how the
bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "Put your foot here;"
and "Mind how you balance yourself there;" but the good guide walks
on quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on you when need is,
and his arm like an iron bar, if need be.

In that slow way, also, art can be taught--if you have faith in your
guide, and will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when need is.
But in what teacher of art have you such faith? Certainly not in
me; for, as I told you at first, I know well enough it is only
because you think I can talk, not because you think I know my
business, that you let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell
you anything that seemed to you strange you would not believe it,
and yet it would only be in telling you strange things that I could
be of use to you. I could be of great use to you--infinite use--
with brief saying, if you would believe it; but you would not, just
because the thing that would be of real use would displease you.
You are all wild, for instance, with admiration of Gustave Dore.
Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the strongest terms I could
use, that Gustave Dore's art was bad--bad, not in weakness,--not in
failure,--but bad with dreadful power--the power of the Furies and
the Harpies mingled, enraging, and polluting; that so long as you
looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful art was possible
for you. Suppose I were to tell you that! What would be the use?
Would you look at Gustave Dore less? Rather, more, I fancy. On the
other hand, I could soon put you into good humour with me, if I
chose. I know well enough what you like, and how to praise it to
your better liking. I could talk to you about moonlight, and
twilight, and spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of
Raphael--how motherly! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo--how
majestic! and the Saints of Angelico--how pious! and the Cherubs of
Correggio--how delicious! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on
the harp yet, that you would dance to. But neither you nor I should
be a bit the better or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wisdom
could be of no practical effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards
teachableness, differ from the sciences also in this, that their
power is founded not merely on facts which can be communicated, but
on dispositions which require to be created. Art is neither to be
achieved by effort of thinking, nor explained by accuracy of
speaking. It is the instinctive and necessary result of power,
which can only be developed through the mind of successive
generations, and which finally burst into life under social
conditions as slow of growth as the faculties they regulate. Whole
aeras of mighty history are summed, and the passions of dead myriads
are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art, and if that noble
art were among us, we should feel it and rejoice; not caring in the
least to hear lectures on it; and since it is not among us, be
assured we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the
place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began to
die.

And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, partly with
reference to matters which are at this time of greater moment than
the arts--that if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of
national arts that have decayed, we should find a more singular
arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other European country?
For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a school of art in her
manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its qualities--
apparently in all essential qualities of decorative invention--was
quite without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced to the
highest triumphs in architecture and in painting. But there was one
fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, and stayed with a
conspicuousness of pause to which there is no parallel: so that,
long ago, in tracing the progress of European schools from infancy
to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lecture
since published, two characteristic examples of early art, of equal
skill; but in the one case, skill which was progressive--in the
other, skill which was at pause. In the one case, it was work
receptive of correction--hungry for correction; and in the other,
work which inherently rejected correction. I chose for them a
corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say that
the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish Angel! {31}

And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both pieces of art
there was an equal falling short of the needs of fact; but the
Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought
himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly
insisting on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken
touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines
in the form, a perception of beauty and law that he could not
render; there was the strain of effort, under conscious
imperfection, in every line. But the Irish missal-painter had drawn
his angel with no sense of failure, in happy complacency, and put
red dots into the palm of each hand, and rounded the eyes into
perfect circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out
altogether, with perfect satisfaction to himself.

May I without offence ask you to consider whether this mode of
arrest in ancient Irish art may not be indicative of points of
character which even yet, in some measure, arrest your national
power? I have seen much of Irish character, and have watched it
closely, for I have also much loved it. And I think the form of
failure to which it is most liable is this,--that being generous-
hearted, and wholly intending always to do right, it does not attend
to the external laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily do
right because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong without
finding it out; and then, when the consequences of its wrong come
upon it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot conceive that
the wrong is in anywise of its causing or of its doing, but flies
into wrath, and a strange agony of desire for justice, as feeling
itself wholly innocent, which leads it farther astray, until there
is nothing that it is not capable of doing with a good conscience.

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