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Crown of The Wild Olive

John Ruskin

General Introduction John Ruskin

General Introduction

I. LIFE AND WORKS OF RUSKIN

The influence which Ruskin, the critic and philosopher and the master of a prose-
style, eminently poetic in quality, exercised, not merely over the literature, but
over the whole life and thought of two generations, is not the least extraordinary
phenomenon of the nine-teenth century.

Parentage and Boyhood––If origin, if early training and habits of life, if tastes and
character and associations, fix a man’s nationality, then John Ruskin must be
reckoned a Scotsman. The source of his name and pedigree is obscure. Soon after
the dissolution of the Furness Abbey, Richard Ruskin and his family were land-
owners at Dalton in Furness. Other Ruskins are known in the North of England ; one
branch settled in Edinburgh.

John Ruskin, our aurthor’s grandfather, married a gentle woman of Galloway,

Catherine Tweddale. Their son, John James Ruskin, having finished his education at
the High School of Edinburgh, went to London and became a wine-merchant. He
married his cousin, Margaret Cox, and their only child, John Ruskin, was born at 54,
Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, on February 8, 1819. Four years later they
moved to Herne Hill, their home, until John was grown up.

At the age of seven, he began to compose rhymes. He did not draw pictures until
he was twelve, but frequent travel familiarized him with scenery, and home
education gave him the opportunity to read for himself. At fifteen, he published
notes on Alpine geology, and a year later appeared his verses on Salzburg, the first
of many contributions to periodicals which seemed to promise success as a poet in
the dark time before Tennyson’s star arose.

Early in 1836, the quiet of Herne Hill was fluttered by a visit from the daughters
of Mr. Domecq, the wealthy Spanish-Parisian partner of the wine-merchant. To a
romantic boy, in a London suburb, the apparition was dazzling. The eldest, Adele,

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bewitched him at once with her graceful figure and the oval face which was so
admired in those times. He was on the brink of seventeen and fell passionately in
love with her.

When the party left for London, Ruskin was alone with his poetry again, but all his
plans were dropped for a new style of verse–– the love poems of 1836. His father
approved the verses, and did not disapprove his views on the young lady. But to
Mrs. Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable that the son whom she
had brought up in the strictest protestantism, should fix his heart on an alien in
race and creed.

Ruskin was, then, a student at Oxford. He had already won the Newdigate prize for
English verse, and his college-tutor seemed to think he might get a First in Greats.
But in May he was pro-nounced consumptive, and had to give up all hopes of
academic distinc-tions and with that all the plans that had been entertained for his
distinction in the church. He was taken abroad, and dragged about from place to
place in search of health for many months in vain. But in Italy he occupied himself
with pencil and pen, and at length recovered strength among the Alps. He records
that one day in a church at Geneva, he resolved to be something, to do something
useful. He had been reading Carlyle’s Heroes.

The work he found was the defence of Turner and the exposition of modern aims in
landscape. Some years earlier, before going up to Oxford, he had written a reply to
the severe criticisms of Black-wood’s Magazine on Turner’s Juliet and sent it to
the artist who replied pleasantly, but deprecated publication. Now, under the
influence of Harding, the Chief Landscape teacher of the time, and with fuller
knowledge of scenery and of painting, Ruskin felt that he had found a new vocation.
He was not to be a poet—that was bound up with the past, which he wanted to
forget—nor an artist, struggling with the rest to please a public he could teach ;
nor a man of science, for his science, for his botany and geology were to be means,
not the ends, of his teaching ; but the mission was laid upon him to tell the world
that art also had its heroes, that the mainspring of their energy was sincerity, and
the burden of their utterance was truth.

As Art Critic In May 1843, Modern Painters (Vol. I) appeared. The five volumes of
Modern Painters appeared from 1843, at intervals over a period of twenty years. It
was meant to be audacious and naturally created a storm. In these five volumes,
Ruskin set forth the principles of painting with a thoroughness and insight that had

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never been attempted before. The free criticisms of public favourites made an
impression, not because they were put into strong language—for the tone of the
press was stronger than now—but because they were backed with illustration and
argument. The descriptive passages were such as had never before appeared in
prose, and the obvious usefulness of the analyses of natural form and effect made
many an artist read on, while he shook his head.

When the secret of the “Oxford Graduate”—Ruskin’s pseu­donym—leaked out, he

was lionised. During the winter of 1843, he met celebrities at fashionable dinner-
tables ; and now that his parents were established in their grander house on
Denmark Hill, they could duly return the hospitalities of the world

On his way home from the Alps in 1844, a few days at the Louvre made him a
devotee of ancient art. He determined to go to Florence and Venice and study the
old religious painters. Of the volume thus produced, Sidney Smith said that it
“would work a complete revolution in the world of taste,” and his prophecy was
fulfilled.

Ruskin’s next work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, similarly called popular
attention to French and Italian Gothic architect ire. This book owes its origin to
certain conclusions Ruskin had arrived at while preparing his third volume of
Modern Painters. The Stones of Venice, which followed, was undertaken as a
description of mediaeval palaces and churches, but became, as Carlyle wrote, “a
strange, unexpected and I believe, most true and excellent Sermon in Stones,” in
which Ruskin contended that art cannot be produced except by artists. Great
architecture, in his view, never arose from mechanical execution, by unintelligent
workmen from the working drawings of an architect’s office ; and as Socrates -
postponed the thy of justice until philosophers were kings, so he looked for a time
when the workman should be a true artist.

This book deals with the archaeology and history of Venice, and expounds the
causes of her glory and strength, and of her downfall and ruin. The chief purpose is
to show that the Gothic Architecture of Venice arose out of her purity of faith
and national virtue which it mirrored forth in such triumphant perfections, while
her Renaissance architecture arose out of her concealed national infidelity and
domestic corruption.

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At the opening of the Working Men’s College (1854), a reprint of one chapter was
distributed as a statement of conclusions drawn from the study of art respecting
the conditions under which the life of the workman should be regulated and Ruskin
thenceforward taught drawing at the college. His object was, as he said before the
Royal Commission on National Institutions, not to create painters, but to educate
the workmen. The result proved that they could be interested in art ; that the
capacity shown in Gothic times, had not entirely died out, in spite of a century of
manufacture ; and the experience led him forward to wider views in the nature of
art and of social economy.

His chief colleague in these drawing classes was Rossetti, who had headed the Pre-
Raphaelite movement, with Millais and Holman Hunt, some years earlier. They were
not originally Ruskin’s pupils, but their moment was the outcome of a tendency
which he, more than any man, had fostered with his advice to “go to Nature,
selecting nothing, rejecting nothing and scorning nothing.” His pamphlet on Pre-
Raphaelitism (1851) showed that the leading motive of the new school was that of
Turner-sincerity as opposed to mechanical, academic art.

Turner died in that year, and Ruskin transferred his active sympathy to the Pre-
Raphaelites, championing, them in his Edinburgh Lectures (1853) and annual Notes
on the Royal Academy, as well as in the later volumes of Modern Painters. By 1854
he was already recognized as the leading authority upon taste, and trusted by the
public, who had not failed to notice how completely he and his friends were winning
the day.

Still a young man, Ruskin had wealth and fame and as his readers fancied, all that
could make life happy. They did not know how the labour involved in his work and
the drawback of ill-health made society distasteful to him and domestic life
difficult.

The Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, 1857 and the opening of the South
Kensington Museum, 1858 gave occasion for important public addresses by Ruskin,
printed in his Political Economy of Art and The Two Paths. The trend of his
thought was now less toward technical criticism, but more toward the ethical
aspects of art in its relation to the artists and the community.

Spending the summer of 1858 alone in Switzerland for the study of local history,
he noted that the virtues of poor and laborious people did not make them artistic,

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while the vices of Venice, though not, as commonly supposed, the cause of the
great school of painting, were unable for some generations to degrade it. He
formed the generalisation that art is the product of human happiness, created by
pleasure, not for pleasure ; and, as a consequence of that doctrine, he felt that the
one thing needful was to seek the grounds of national well-being from which art
would spontaneously arise. “The kind of painting they most wanted in London,” he
said in an address to a school of art, “was painting cheeks red with health.” A new
career opened before him, to face broader issues and sterner realities.

Hermit and Heretic—At forty years of age, Ruskin finished Modern Painters, which
concluded the cycle of work by which he is popularly known as a writer upon art.
From that time art was some-times his text, rarely his theme. He used it as the
opportunity for teachings about life as a whole, conclusions in ethics, economics
and religion, to which he sought to lead others as he was led by the way of art.
During the next few years he lived much alone among the Alps or at home, thinking
out the problems, sometimes feeling more acutely than was good for clear thought,
the burden of the mission laid upon him.

His Alpine hermitage was at Mornex, on the Saleve, near Geneva, where his chief
recreation was the study of physical geology and the structure of minerals,
especially agates, about which he lectured at the Royal Institution later on. But his
work was political economy, or rather, the relation of economy to ethics. On this,
he wrote two series of papers, Unto This Last (in Cornhill Magazine) and Munera
Pulveris (in Fraser’s Magazine).

Both series came to an untimely end ; the outcry against the heresies they
preached was-too loud for editors and publishers, and the papers were stopped.
Worst of all, his father strongly disapproved Carlyle, his firm ally, wrote to the old
man that “when Solomon’s temple was built, ten thousand sparrows sitting on the
trees round declared that it was entirely wrong ; nevertheless it got finished.” By
such advocacy the breach was healed and at the death of his father, in 1864, all
signs of difference had disappeared. His mother lived on for nearly eight years, to
find in her last days, his later works becoming, as she wrote, more and more what
they always ought to have been to her.

The loss of his father recalled Ruskin from abroad. Under the will he received
about £ 1,57,000, and was able to indulge tases and the generosity which in twenty
years made away with his fortune, together with another £ 50,000 left him by his

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mother. For the time, he devoted himself to preaching his new doctrines one thics
and education.

The first important publication was that of the two lectures given in Manchester in
1864 as Sesame and Lilies, followed by the addresses collected in The Crown of
Wild Olive, and the talks to school-girls at Winnington on minerals and morals—
Ethics of the Dust. The series of letters named Time and Tide, in which he set
forth the sketch of his Utopia, were written in 1867, and in that year he was
invited to deliver the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, receiving the honorary degree of
LL. D.

In the summer he revisited, after a long interval, the English lake district, and
found “the loveliest rock scenery, with silver waterfalls, that he ever set foot or
heart upon.” But it was not yet that he abandoned his ideal of a home among the
Alps for one at Coniston.

Next year he was in Ireland and delivered at Dublin the third lecture of Sesame
and Lilies. By this time his mother had the com-panionship of his young cousin, Miss
Agnew, afterwards Mrs. Arthur Severn, and he was able to go abroad again—to
Switzerland in 1866, to Abbeville in 1868, and in 1869 to Verona and Venice, where
he made acquaintance with the mystic paintings of Carpaccio.

The study of mythology as a revelation of human ideals was taking the place of
other interests ; the first chapter of The Queen of the Air, an attempt to explain
Greek Nature myths, was given as a lecture at University College, London in 1869,
and the interpretation of faith as expressed in art led him into many lbyways of
research, not always on firm ground. But it was the logica sequence of widen-ing
aims and views, embracing broader issues than the connoisseurship of Modern
Painters, the didacticism of Seven Lamps, and the historical imagination of Stones
of Venice, though it became a contributing cause to the strange mysticism of his
later period, which can hardly be understood without the key of biographical
development.

On his way home from Verona, he heard that he had been elected to the newly
founded Slade professorship in Fine Art at Oxford, and on February 8, 1870, gave
his inaugural lecture in the Sheldonian.

Professor and Prophet—Ruskin’s lectures are still fresh in the memory of many who
have forgotten much else of what they saw and learnt at Oxford. It was not

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strictly academic, the way he used to come into the room, fling off his long-sleeved
mister’s gown and plunge into his discourse. He would begin by reading carefully
written passages of rhetoric ; by and by he would break off and with quite another
air extemporise the liveliest interpolations. His voice till then artificially cadenced,
became vivacious ; his gestures, at first constrained, became dramatic ; and the
manner as well as the matter carried his hearers with him.

In his first three years at Oxford, he delivered five courses, reconstructing his
teaching upon general principles of art. In 1871 the drawing-school he founded and
endowed was opened. And, indeed Ruskin’s aim was not to attract amateurs, but
those who were to be thinkers and workers. As he could not make them draw, he
made them dig at his Hinksey road mending—a pretext for getting together
disciples for the doctrines he was preaching in Fors Clavigera.

This was the series of monthly Letters to Working Men, carried on from his date,
with some intermissions until 1884. The pamphlets were not regularly published,
but sold by his engraver, George Allen, formerly a Working Men’s College student,
through whose agency, Ruskin ultimately issued all his books, thus becoming his own
publisher.

In Fors he gradually developed his suggestions for a Guild of St. George, by which
he hoped to influence public opinion towards his altruistic ideals. He had begun with
successful attempts, under the management of Miss Octavia Hill, to reclaim London
slums, and to set an example in trade with his tea-shop in Paddington. Now he
proposed an organisation to promote simplicity of life, renunciation of commercial
methods, and the betterment of agricultural labour—not as a charitable colony, but
introducing his principles—educational, social and economic—into existing farms
and factories.

As one branch of this work he founded the Museum at Sheffield; as attempts in

other directions, several pieces of land, and a mill at Laxey, Isle of Man, came
under the Guild’s control, with varying fortune; the home industries of the Lake
district owed their origin to the movement But Ruskin was neither presonally
fitted, nor, after this time, in sufficient health to manage an enterprise of this
nature.

In 1876 at Venice, he showed definite signs of a great mental change. For many
years, he had been deeply attached to a young lady who had been a child, his pupil

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in drawing; estrangement, arising chiefly from religious differences, and at last her
death put an end to his romance. A medium had professed to show him her spirit;
and ever since he had watched eagerly for evidences of another life. The assurance
seemed to have come with the reawakening of religious feelings and the
strengthening of the mysticism derived from his study of mythology. He recanted
his scepticism, depreciated his former heroes, and searched the Bible for hidden
meanings. Under the new inspiration, he wrapped the prophet’s mantle more closely
round him as he denounced with growing fervour the crimes of an unbelieving age.

In 1879 he retired from his professorship to the quiet of his home at Coniston. He
had bought the cottage of Brantwood in 1871, with a few acres of moor and woad,
fronting on the Lake, and the finest view, he wrote in Cumberland or Lancashire
(Coniston being in Lancashire), “with the sunset visible over the same.” He repaired
and enlarged the dilapidated house, filled it with pictures and books, and spent his
afternoons in opening paths in the woods or engineering rock-gardens and
reservoirs on the moors. He found new friends in the neighbourhood, and took a
great interest in the village-school and institute, and in the life of his rustic
neighbours.

In retirement he still wrote, recasting his botanical and geological studies in

Proserpina and Deucalion. After a tour in France in 1880, he began The Bible of
Amiens as part of a series on old French history. A more extended tour, in 1882, to
revisit old haunts in view of an autobiography (Praeterita), so far restored his
health that he ventured once again to attempt the work of professorship at
Oxford. But the effort ended in another and more complete break-down. His last
lectures, vehement protests against modern life and thought in the strain of a
Hebrew prophet denouncing a Babylon, alarmed his strongest supporters. The
action of the university in establishing a physiological laboratory meant to him the
endowment of vivisection to which he was energetically opposed. He resigned his
post, feeling he was completely out of touch with the age, and that he must give up
the unequal fight.

For a few years more, he spent intervals of comparative health in travel, in writing
Praeterita, and in editing several works by friends; but his powers were spent.
After 1889, he passed into almost entire seclusion at Coniston, affectionately
tended by Mrs. Severn and resigned to inaction.

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His eightieth birthday was marked by an outburst of congratu-lations from many

unexpected quarters, for though he had survived his strength, the influence of his
work had been growing. “You have helped many,” said the address on this occasion
from Oxford University, “to find in life more happiness than they thought it held;
and we trust there is happiness in the later years of your long life.” But as the year
went on, he did not regain his normal summer strength. After an attack of
influenza he passed peacefully away an January 20, 1900. A grave in Westminster
Abbey was offered, but it had been his own desire to be buried at Coniston, where
he lies in the village churchyard among the friends of his later years, and under
the crags he loved in his childhood.

His death removed from England the last great figure of an age which included
Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, and so many other names of the first order. His life is
the history of an intellect which underwent many and various changes of position
His main enthusiasm was for truth in everything, at first for sincerity in taste and
judgement, afterwards for uprightness in public and private life. His remedies for
popular errors and national corruptions were numerous ; but, whatever his panacea
for the moment happened to be, he was convinced of its specific virtue, and what is
more, he managed to infect others with his conviction. The frequently aggressive
dogmatism of his eloquence, which must be a little irritating to all, save his
immediate followers, was the offspring of intense earnestness. While he strove for
truth and righteousness, he himself, in all he said or did, was as consistent with his
ideal as it is possible for man to be. And thus there is a distinct and firm bond,
connecting all his work, whatever may be its paradoxes and recantations of
sentiment. As a teacher and as a moral influence, he enjoyed, during his life-time, a
signal triumph : his thought has permeated English life and forms, at the present
time, one of the most important elements in its constitution. As a man of letters,
his position, so far as it is capable of definition, is founded upon his first books,
whose celebrity lay at the root of all his subsequent influence.

A List of Ruskin’s Principal Works

Ruskin is a most voluminous writer. His principal works will be found in the following
list in order of date :

1843—Modern Painters, Vol. 1.

1846—Modern Painters, Vol. 2.

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1849—The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

1851—The King of the Golden River.

1851—The Stones of Venice, Vol. 1.

1851—Examples of the Architecture of Venice.

1851—Pre-Raphaelitism.

1853—The Stones of Venice, Vols. 2 and 3.

1853—Giotto and his Works in Padua, Part 1.

1854—Giotto and his Works in Padua, Part 2.

1854—Lectures on Architecture and Painting.

1855—The Seven Lamps of Architecture, second edition (New Preface).

1856—Modern Painters, Vols. 3 and 4.

1857—The Political Economy of Art.

1859—The Two Paths.

1860—Modern Painters, Vol. 5.

1860 —Unto this Last (Cornhill Magazine).

1862—Essays on Political Economy (Fraser’s Magazine), Essays 1, 2, 3.

1863—Essays on Political Economy (Fraser’s Magazine), Essay, 4.

1865—Sesame and Lilies, second edition (New Preface).

1866—The Ethics of the Dust.

1866—The Crown of the Wild Olive.

1869—The Queen of the Air.

1870—Lectures of Art.

1871—Fors Clavigera, Vol. 1.

1872—Fors Clavigera, Vol. 2.

1872—Munera Pulveris (with Preface).

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1872—The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret.

1872—Time and Tide.

18731-Fors Clavigera, Vol. 3 and index to Vols. 1, 2.

1874—Fors Clavigera, Vol. 4.

1875— Fors Clavigera, Vol 5, and index to Vols. 3 and 4.

1875—Mornings in Florence, parts 1, 2, 3, 4.

1876-Fors Clavigera, Vol. 6.

1876—Mornings in Florence, part 5.

1876—Letters on Pre-Raphaelite Pictures.

1877—Fors Clavigera, Vol. 7.

1877—Mornings in Florence, part 6.

1878—Fors Clavigera, Vol. 8, letters 1, 2, 3.

1879—Letters to the Clergy of the Lord’s Prayer.

1880 —A Joy for Ever (New Preface).

1883—Mornings in Florence, part 6 (second editon).

1884—The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century.

1884—The Pleasures of England, lectures 1, 2.

1884—Roadside Songs of Tuscany, parts 1-4.

1885—The Pleasures of Egland, lectures 3, 4.

1885—Praeterita, parts 1—7—Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts perhaps Worthy of

Memory in my Past Life.

1885—Roadside Songs of Tuscany, parts 5—10.

1886—Praeterita, parts 8—21.

1887—Praeterita, parts 22—24.

1888—Praeterita, parts 25, 26.

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1892—Letters upon Subjects of General Interest.

1892—Letters to a London Bibliopole.

1892—The Poetry of Architecture.

1893— Letters from J. Ruskin to William Ward, 2 Vols.

1893––Three Letters, and an Essay on Literature, 1836—1841.

1894—Letters to a College Friend, 1840—1845.

1894—Letters on Art and Literature.

1898—Lectures on Landscape illustrated.

2. RUSKIN’S ENGLAND

Ruskin was born in the middle of the Industrial Revolution which changed the lives
of people immensely. Material culture began to gain ground. The revolution brought
in use steam and power-driven machinery and the growth of large mills and
factories with the result that green fields and clear streams could not be seen
fre-quently. In the Preface to The Crown of Wild Olive, the author cites an
instance in this connection :

“……just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading

currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street and house foulness ;
heaps of dust and slime and broken shreds of old metal and rags of putrid clothes.”
Thousands of acres of common land were in possession of factory-owners. Poor
people had to sell their little farms and became hired labourers at low wages. The
bulk of the rural population migrated to towns in the hope of improving their
economic status as is the tendency in modern India.

The other bad effect of the Industrial Revolution was the predominance of
machines. Cottage industries began to dwindle away. The factory-goods attracted
customers and captured the market and hence small industries suffered. Workers
who before the Industrial Revolution wove and spun and sold the finished goods in
the market gracefully and profitably could not compete with mill-made goods. They
sank from the position of skilled craftsmen to that of poorly employed mechanical
hands in factories. Mahatma Gandhi, keeping this point in view, opposed the growth
of mills and factories and favoured the prosperity of village industries. The large

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growth of mills and factories is bound to throttle village industries and handicrafts
as is seen in India. The effect of the Industrial Revolution was Mammon-worship :

“It brought prosperity……In fine, Mammon-worship grew. It also brought about a

depopulation of rural areas. Big towns––factory-towns grew up. It divided England
into the industrial north and the rural south.”

The industrialisation in England led to an evil exploitation of labour. Inhuman

treatment was meted out to workers. Low wages and the employment of women and
children were quite common. In 1825 about three millions of the wage-earners
were children who earned as little as one shilling a week. Out of four million adult
males, the great majority earned from 8 s. to 12 s. a week. Trade unions could not
be formed owing to severe penalty. Nobody could take part in a strike. Employers
were generally the magistrates ; hence more atrocities were done fearlessly.
Workhouse children were auctioned and carried off by contractors to work
sometimes 200 miles from their relatives. Contracts could not be dishonoured. In
1825, a woman of 22 was sent to jail for breaking a contract to work twelve hours a
day (exclusive of meal times) for two years at 3s 6d a week for the first year and
4s a week for the second ; she lived almost entirely on bread and water.

Children in factories were compelled to work even longer hours. In 1833, Carlyle
wrote of little children, labouring for 16 hours a day, inhaling at every breath a
quantity of cotton fuzz, falling asleep over their wheels and roused again by the
lash of thongs over their backs or the slop of ‘billy rollers’ over their little crowns,
in factories with temperature of 80o––85o. It is, then, no surprise that writers
like Carlyle, Ruskin, Dickens attacked most vehemently this type of social system.
Dickens describes the inhuman treatment meted out to children in David
Copperfield.

Until 1832 even the better-paid working people had no votes. Ruskin opposed the
current political economy which believed in laissez-faire. When the matter was
referred to the Parliament, it rejected any attempt to regulate hours and working
conditions by law because the magistrates were mainly mill owners. It was only in
1847 that the working hours of all factory children under 18 were limited to 10 a
day, exclusive of meal-times. But the hours of children not working in factories
remained unlimited.

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J. H. Fowler mentions, “In the sixties of last century, the mid-Victorian period as
it has come to be called, the great changes brought about by the Industrial
Revolution were already showing their effects. England had become a country of
huge, busy, over-crowded towns, continually encroaching upon and destroying the
green fields upon their margin ; wealth was growing fast, but it rested in mounded
heaps, enriching the few instead of alleviating the lot of the toiling multitudes ;
power had been taken from the aristo-cracy by the Reform Bill of 1832, but it had
passed to the middle classes, the prosperous trades-people of the towns, not to
the artisans who in the infancy of the trade-unions were still very much at the
mercy of their employers and who were not for many years to make full use of the
enfranchisement so soon to be given them by the Reform Bill of 1867. The middle-
classes thriving themselves and enjoying the additional comforts which the
development of trade, manufactures and mechanical inventions had brought within
their reach, were disposed to believe that all was well ; that commercial
intercourse would bind the nations together and put an end to wars and that with
the increase of trade and the spread of education, crime and poverty would
gradually diminish if they did not altogether disappear. As one’s prosperity
increases, it is so comforting to believe that all the world’s prosperity must
increase likewise.

Economists were in favour of State intervention only in the importation of corn.

The State levied heavy duties on imported corn so that the indigenous production
might not suffer. The system of protection raised the price of corn and therefore
of bread to a level which in the hungry forties meant literal starvation for several
workers. Bread was largely made of plaster. Most of the necessaries of life were
heavily taxed.

Education was the privilege of the few. Literacy was at low ebb. In 1842, for
instance, in South Wales not one grown-up male in fifty could read. On account of
heavy work, it was impossible for parents to pass their traditional knowledge to
their children. State provided no education. Wealth maddened employers. They did
not care for sanitation. A better return on capital could be got from hovels than
from wholesome houses. Ruskin hints at this point in the Preface to The Crown of
Wild Olive : “……and by this stately arrangement, the little piece of dead ground
within, between wall and street, became a protective receptacle of refuse ; cigar
ends, and oyster-shells and the like such as an open-hearted English street
populace habitually scatters ; and was thus left, unsweepable by an ordinary

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method.” Hence slums could be seen both in the towns and the country. When
cholera broke out in 1855, rich people were also affected by it as their clothes
were made by sweated workers in the slums. Then they realised that good business
might not mean real wealth. England became the richest country in the world due
to the doctrine of non-interference and the Industrial Revolution but she attained
to that position at the cost of thousands of young children, worked or stoned to
death and millions were ruined in health and reduced to the condition of ignorant
slaves.

Ruskin saw that the materialistic tendencies were harming the cause of spiritual
bliss. The prosperous classes were wholly blind to the fearful cost at which wealth
was being earned. He saw that in spite of talk about peace, wars were not dying
out; there was civil war in America, there were wars in Europe, and if England held
aloof, it was little to her credit—she had blustered and then betrayed those who
had relied upon her support. How could he rejoice in the mechanical triumphs of
the century when the whole sky to the horizon was blackening with clouds of
impending disaster ?

So the three lectures on Work, Traffic and War, are an arrange-ment of the
vaunted civilisation of the nineteeth century ; the work, that was a cause instead
of a blessing because it was ill-directed, devoted to the production of things that
were ugly, superfluous, trivial or even deadly, work in which the workman could take
no joy : the Traffic that was not fostered for the good of mankind, but merely for
the merchant’s gain, the worship of the cruel goddess of getting on; the war in
which the professional army was to carry out for wages the bidding of a nation of
merchants, themselves remote from the peril and suffering of warfare. The falsity
of the comfortable doctrine of the political economists—”To do the best for
yourself is finally to do the best for others” is relentlessly shown.

Ruskin largely influenced by Carlyle, opposed Mammon-wor-ship on moral grounds.

He set himself to work on a saner political economy which should recognise that
self-interest is one of the motives that move men and that the only true wealth of
a nation is healthy, happy children who have, as far as possible, developed their
faculties and are satisfying their creative and artistic, instead of merely their
acquisitive instincts. Greed leads to selfishness and selfishness leads to brutality.
Hence, man being man, should rise above animal instinct. That is possible when
selfless instinct works—when forces of love, kindness, cooperation and sympathy

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guide humanity. This was the path traversed by Buddha, Gandhi, Christ and that
very path was adopted by Ruskin. He sought man’s salvation in moral uplift rather
than in material pursuits— “In this, as in all other matters, whosoever will save his
life, shall lose it, whosoever loses it shall find it.”

3. THE TITLE

It was Ruskin’s way to choose fanciful but charmingly poetical titles for his books—
The Seven Lamps. Sesame and Lilies, Unto This Last, Munera Pulveris. Ethics of the
Dust, The Queen of the Air and The Crown of Wild Olive ; Fors Clavigera means
fate that holds the Key, Praeterita stands for things past. These are Latin
expressions. The title The Crown of Wild Olive has nothing directly to do with
Latin. It is connected with Greek life.

The meaning of the title is explained by Ruskin himself in the last paragraph of the
Preface to the book—“They (the ancient Greeks) knew that life brought its
contests but they expected from it also the Crown of all contests : no proud one !
No Jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited
throne : only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few
fears of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought but Jupiter was poor ;
this was the best the god could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they had
known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any
happiness to be found for them, only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath
was to be wild olive, mark you—the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks
with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; only with soft snow of blossom, and
scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thorn-set stem ; no fastening of
diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But this such as it is, you may win
while yet you live type of grey honour and sweet rest.” The above passage explains
the title fully, The adjective ‘wild’ is significant. It shows the natural growth of
the tree everywhere. Even when no gardener is to look after it, it grows—it is
available everywhere. Then Olive is symbolical of peace. Happiness, according to
Ruskin, can be found only in Kindly peace, fruitful and free. The reward is
indicative of honour ‘type of grey honour.’ It discards wealth or riches ‘no jewelled
circlet.’ Further, the leaves of the olive presented to the winner were also
soothing—‘cool to the tired brow.’ Thus all the reasons for the choice of ‘Crown of
Wild Olive’ have been given by the author.

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The title refers to the Olympic games of the Greeks which constituted the highest
test of the physical strength and skill of the people. The victor in the games was
awarded no gold, nor, land but a Grown of Wild Olive, a wreath of Wild Olive
leaves, which had no material value. This prize stood for honour, peace and rest-
honour, because it signified a public recognition and appreciation of the victor’s
triumph and worth, and peace and rest because after his supreme victory, the
winner could spend the remaining years of his life in peace and rest, in enjoying the
honour he had won. So the Crown of Wild Olive for which the Greeks contested in
the Olympic games, signified that the contestants did not seek any material reward
but only honour, peace and rest.

The Crown of Wild Olive had another significance for the Greeks. To them, the
Olympic contests had a symbolic significance and stood for the fact that all life is
a contest or struggle. And the highest reward which one was to expect for victory
in this struggle, was not wealth or power but only honour, peace and rest. This was
the significance of the Crown of Wild Olive for the Greeks. They did not aspire for
any material reward but only moral and spiritual prize.

Such being the significance of the Crown of Wild Olive, how far is it applicable to
the three lectures on Work, Traffic and War ? It is an appropriate title because in
all the there lectures, Ruskin’s central idea is that our main object in life should
not be wealth or power, but public service and the honour, peace and rest which it
brings. Just as the ancient Greeks did not desire any material reward for victory in
Olympic games but only a Crown of Wild Olive standing for honour, peace and rest,
similarly we should, in all our activities, seek not material reward or profit, but the
service of our fellowmen and the honour, and happiness which such service brings.
In the first lecture on Work, Ruskin explains at length that the duty of the worker
is to serve his country first by means of his labour. He may, of course, expect just
wages for work, but his primary motive should be public service and not personal
gain. In the lecture on Traffic, the same advice is given to the leaders of industry
and commerce. Ruskin condemns the capitalistic and profit-seeking system of
economy and lectures that the chief duty of industrialists and traders is to serve
the public by producing and distributing the essential commodities of life. They
should not care for personal gain at all.

In the third lecture, Ruskin applies the same principle to war and tells the soldiers
that they should fight, not for the sake of power or wealth, but only for the sake

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of honour or public services. Only three types of war are justifiable : war as a
noble game, under conditions meant to test the courage and skill of the combatants
; war for defending the just laws and institutions of one’s country, and war for
conquering evil in another country. All other wars are unjust. Thus the central idea
of the three lectures is that the worker, the capitalist and the solider, should not
seek material reward or profit but should serve their fellow-men in their
respective spheres of activity and win the honour and mental and spiritual peace
which such service inevitably brings. In other words, the worker, the capitalist and
the solider, should like the ancient Greeks, seek to win the noble reward which is
symbolised by the Crown of Wild Olive. The gold perishes and hence men should
strive for the approval of all-judging Jove by their self-less work and public
service :

“As he pronounces lastly on each deed

Of so much praise in heaven expect the meed.”

—Milton’s Lycidas.

John Ruskin's Message

RUSKIN’S MESSAGE

Ruskin found his age too much engrossed in material pursuits. The world was too
much with people and they wasted their energies in ‘getting and spending.’ The
Victorian prosperity dazzled the eyes of man who utterly lost sight of spiritual
heritage. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. It was Ruskin who alongwith
Carlyle, heralded a note of warning to his generation and tried to raise it to that
pedestal of morality from where man as man could be perceived. His ugliness, his
low and mean habits could not be seen from this vantage point.

Ruskin taught his age that wealth is not the equivalent of happiness. Factories and
mills deprive man of natural surroundings and contaminate his soul. In place of
greenery, he sees the smoke of the chimney and instead of the chirpings of birds
and musical flow of fountains and streams, he listens to the sirens of factories and
mills. Monetary habits degrade human beings and they become so shameless and
cruel as to exploit their own brothers and sisters without any tinge of repentance
or any fear from God. In such a society, avarice becomes the guiding principle and

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social affections are considered as accidental and disturbing elements in human

nature—“Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed
themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most
curious—certainly the least credible—is the modern soidistant science of political
econo-my , based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be
determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection.” (Unto This Last).
Ruskin opposes this statement of the political economist. To him, no social action is
possible without social affection. We agree with him today when we have to tackle
labour problem. Strikes and lock-outs have become very common because of
employer-labour rela-tions. Employers do not love their labourers as they
[Link]’s message in this respect is very practical. Men are more valuable
than money—this is the message of Ruskin in all books. In Unto This Last he writes
:

There is No Wealth But Life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy and of
admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of
noble and happy human beings.” The greatest good of the greatest number—that is
the aim of democ-racy and that objective was laid down and propounded by Ruskin
in the nineteenth century. In the Preface to The Crown of Wild Olive, Ruskin
repeats his notion of wealth :

“That the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers and
that the real good of all work and of all commerce depends on the final worth of
the thing you make or get by it.” This is a practical approach. The prime object of
life and labour is ‘the producing of as many as possible, full breathed, bright-eyed
and happy-hearted human beings.” Even his attitude to machinery is now seen to be
largely justified and though few today advocate the abolition of machinery, it is
increasingly recognised that machine-mindedness tends to dehumanise men and
that means must be sought to make man the master and not the servant of
machine.

Unto This Last expresses Ruskin’s message very clearly and powerfully. In Para 275
of Ad Valorem this message is given a nice-poetical image. If we need the passage,
we find it as the very basis of internationalism. If U.N.O. one day achieves this
objective (which, to me appears very difficult, judging the present drift of things
in the world), the earth will be converted into a heaven and we will become divine
beings. But Ruskin’s message to his generation is not confied to Unto This last, it

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can be traced out throughout all his work. Modern Painters taught the claim of all
lower nature in the hearts of men of the rock and herb as a part of their
necessary spirit life. The Stones of Venice taught the laws of constructive art and
the depend-ence of all human work of edifice, for its beauty on the happy life of
the workman. The Inaugural Oxford Lectures taught the necessity that it should
be led and the gracious laws of beauty and labour recog-nised by the upper no less
than the lower classes of England ; and last-ly, Fors Clavigera has declared the
relation of these to each other and the only possible conditions of peace and
honour for low and high, for rich and poor, together in the holding of that first
Estate, under the only Despot, God.

Ruskin’s teaching is first of all, the lesson of self-development. It is not what a

man has that is to be considered but what he is. Is he a self-made man not in
exterior circumstances, but in wealth of character ? One must at the very outset,
realise the mystery and wonder of life, discard the placid enshusiasm that is. the
mark of the artificial man, cultivate the openness of perception, the retention of
the childish sense of wonder that marks the true man, the man, who has eyes
admiringly wide to the world aeout him, is worthy of the power that-placed him in
it... to be willing to see the beauty that is—to show helpful sympathy for men about
us, to be willing and glad to work for the joy of doing our work well and above all, to
keep clear our sight of real mystery and nobility of life—that, in short, is the
burden of Ruskin’s message.

To Ruskin, viewing man as a being of emotions, sentiments and sympathies, and view
which did not call these into account seemed inadequate. Profit is not the only
motive of human action...Happiness in life must, besides, be measured by other
things than money. People, to be ideal men and women, not only must have food,
clothes and a place to sleep but must have also beautiful and ennobling
surroundings. Peace should be an estimable asset. In its ugly cities, its dishonestly
made clothing, its prevailing shames and meanness, the present time offends
against the ideals of life. William Morris, influenced by these teachings preached
an ideal commonwealth ; without smoke or machinery, without competition or envy.
Ruskin saw little good in the extreme socialistic ideal nor did he wish entirely to
dispose of machinery ; he did feel that the ugliness should be done away with and
that working people should not be relegated, as a penalty for leading industrial
livas, to filth and degradation. He denounced the idea of the economist that

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progress depends on compe-tition—the unceasing and merciless battle of each man

against his neighbour.

It was sympathy with man, especially with the working man of England which led
him to take up these questions. Was it necessary that things should be as they
were ? Was ugliness, irremediable vulgarity a part of the eternal scheme of
creation ? He prepared to look for a remedy. Apparently he failed. His writings
were not well received. He was told that an art-critic should not meddle with such
matters and what he said was regarded, coming from the writer of Modern
Painters, as the dreaming of a man who knew nothing of his subject. Yet looking
back today, we see that he did not fail. His lessons have had their effect and time
has justified, at least in part, his social philosophy.

In taking up the study of political economy, Ruskin was not changing his interests.
There is common factor between his writings upon art and upon political economy.
In both, his end was the improvement of man’s condition in the world and the
development of the spiritual in men……The elements that Ruskin wished men to
consider are being more and more taken into considera-tion. Man is regarded as
having some other elements than combative acquisitiveness. Beauty in one’s
surroundings is becoming recognized as of advantage. Parks, libraries, museums are
allowed to have a certain aesthetic value. It is acknowledged that a railway-train
need not be ugly and that an iron-bridge is not the worse for architecture.
Societies are formed to prevent the disfiguring of landscape by advertisements.
Laws are passed to obviate the clouds of smoke that darken our cities. The
needless noise of city is being, bit by bit, suppressed. New schemes are devised
almost daily for the housing of the workmen in model tenements and colonies. All
these reforms may have nothing to do with the message of the ‘unpractical’ Ruskin;
yet, coming as they do after his writings and lectures, accompanied as they are by
the building of Ruskin-halls in England and America, they are suggestive. Perhaps,
here as in the case of art, some are reluctant to trace an effect to its logical
cause.

The word ‘tender’ in spite of his hint of sentiment, best sums up the lesson of
Ruskin’s whole life and work. Tender, reverent study of God’s world, tender, helpful
love for fellowman, tender patience in the well-doing of what lies nearest, tender—
yes, though the voice be stern with the sense of love’s defeat—tender reproof of
man that forgets he is of the spirit and that misses God’s preferred inheritance.

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And in his written words, in the bland, pure, soothing music of his prose, there
sounds the same note of tenderness, the soft pleading of flute and hautboy, the
muted softness of the gentler brass, the, vibrant passion of the reed. It is a music
of peace, of all that peace brings and of all that makes for peace—beauty and
noble doing and tender charity. The ideals of beauty, truth, justice, cheerful and
self-sacrificing labour for the good of the community must reign in men’s hearts ;
the worship of Mammon must be abandoned. Then and then alone will the prophetic
vision of new heaven and a new earth be fulfilled.

Compton-Rickett summarises Ruskin’s message as follows :

“No writer in Victorian times did more than Ruskin to draw attention to the
terrible wastage going on in the social organism —under present economic
conditions—and to stir the individual to more serious effect in the cause of human
brotherhood, not in the spirit of condescending charity, but in the saner and
ampler spirit of common justice.”

RUSKIN AS AN ART-CRITIC
A large part of Ruskin’s work and especially of his earlier work was in the form of
art-criticism. His first notable work was Modern Painters, which he afterwards
modified and expanded through a series of years. It was not, as its title might
suggest, a history of modern painting, but rather a glorification of Turner as the
first and greatest of genuine landscape-painters. The book, especially in its
enlarged form, goes much farther.

For Ruskin enters into elaborate discussion of art-theories, of the characteristics

of various schools, of the true and false in art and especially of the relation of art
to Nature. This interest in landscape and the recognition of its place in art,
associates itself with the naturalistic movement in poetry, otherwise called
Romanticism. It associates itself, however, quite as much with modern scientific
study of nature for Ruskin was concerned even more with natural truth than with
natural beauty. Other art-works of importance are his Seven Lamps of
Architecture and his Stones of Venice. The former of these aptly illustrates the
very important fact that Ruskin believed the inspiration of all true art to lie in the
moral nature of the artist and of his age and also the further and the greater fact

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that all Ruskin’s work of whatever name or nature—is at bottom, dealing with moral
questions. The Seven Lamps are—Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory,
Obedience. They suggest much as to Ruskin’s spirit and method. The Stones of
Venice is a work of larger scope, but it is informed by the same general purpose.
The effect of the three works taken together is to show Ruskin’s conception that
the natural world is the expression of the divine mind, and filled, therefore, with
spiritual suggestion and that all human art must find its highest power in fidelity to
nature and in humble obedience to moral law. Such doctrine as this, Ruskin
preached to his generation and he preached it with a prophetic fervour, not merely
because he wished to see modern life made more beautiful, but because he
believed that beauty is at bottom a matter of righteousness.

Ruskin’s value as an art-critic lay chiefly in the inspiration be supplied to his

generation to appreciate the beauty of natural phenomena; he showed then the
absurdity of compounding the grandeur of nature merely with her big scenic
effects when a blade of grass or an ordinary cloud can reveal as richly the
possibilities of beauty. To this extent, he supplemented the teaching of
Wordsworth and Shelley. Approaching art with this underlying thought, he remarks
that painting should be something more than an ingenious arrangement of pigments.
Without under-estimating technique, he emphasises passionately the importance of
sincerity and truthfulness. “In these books of mine,” he declared, “their distinctive
character as essays on Art is bringing everything to a root in human passion or
human hope.”

From 1843 to 1860, he concerned himself with the fine arts, especially painting,
sculpture and architecture. From 1860 onwards, he carried the principles
underlying this criticism into social life and just as Turner inspired his earlier
work, so does Carlyle inspire his later. Ruskin has summed up for us clearly and
concisely the trend of his teaching in his Fors Clavigera :

Modern Painters taught the claims of all lower nature in the hearts of men; of the
rock and wave and hut as a part of their necessary life, in all that I now bid you to
do, to dress the earth and keep it, I am fulfilling what I then began. The Stones of
Venice taught the laws of constructive Art and the dependence of all human work
or edifice for its beauty on the happy life of the workman. Unto This Last taught
the laws of that life itself and its dependence on the Sun of Justice, the Oxford

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Lectures the necessity that it should be led and the gracious laws of beauty and
labour recognised by the upper, no less than the lower classes of England and lastly
Fors Clavigera has declared the relation of these to each other and the only
possible conditions of peace and honour for low and high, rich and poor.”

Hence we are fully prepared for the thesis maintained by Ruskin that a lack of
feeling for beauty means more than blunted art sensibility, it means “a contempt
for right sense—beauty is the concrete final expression of rightness .”

“The jerry builder symoblises for Ruskin the defective idealism that he found in
the life of our day. In a corrupt age, he argued, you have corrupt art : in an age of
noble aims and endeavours, great art. As stated by him, the generalisation seems
too sweeping. The history of art can show periods of splendour when there was
abundant moral depravity. Ruskin overemphasises the correspondence between art
and morality. Beauty may be the concrete final expression of rightness. But
rightness of what ? Not necessarily of conduct surely, but of feeling. High and
enduring beauty cannot be the expression of a debased and low nature. But it may
well be that the artist expresses here merely his feeling for what is good and
great, although the evil influences in his nature conspire to prevent him from
expressing this feeling in action as a man. Few men are so vicious and rotten
throughout as to have no gleam of rightness (to adhere to Ruskin’s terminology) but
they may be too poor and weak to let the rightness dominate their lives.

The vision of beauty is by no means confined to the virtuous soul, any more than is
spiritual intuition. The crafty and scheming Jacob sees a ladder ascending from
earth to heaven where his robester moral brother sees only a heap of stones in a
desert-place. Ruskin, therefore, circumscribes his argument too narrowly,
identifying great art with the outward expression of a healthy conscience.

Benson explains the position of Ruskin as a critic of art in the following sentences :

“Ruskin was never in the technical sense an art-critic at all. He wrote about art and
he wrote about it with considerable technical skill. He was a real artist himself and
he, thus, had a considerable practical knowledge of the aims, the difficulties, the
obstacles, the theory and the treatment of art. But to be a comprehensive critic
of art and it was this which Ruskin undertook to be, a man must have a
comprehensive view of art—he must be erudite, he must have a knowledge at once
wide and detailed and this Ruskin did not possess. His acquaintance with pictorial

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art was partial and limited.” Further, Benson remarks about him : “We must then,
keep this in mind—that art-criticism was, to Ruskin, not more than the habit and
vesture of the priest, but that all the time his hand was raised to consecrate and
to bless and his heart was set upon the divine mystery, of which the bread on the
gleaming dish and the wine in the jewelled chalice were but the fair and seemly
symbols.”

RUSKIN AS A SOCIAL REFORMER

It has become a fashion to remark that Ruskin, the great art critic spoiled himself
by meddling with social problems. But it is not a sane and reasonable view. In fact,
he never deserted art for sociology.

The course of evolution from his dominant interest in art and architecture to an
examination of the conditions of labour was consistent. Ruskin himself described
the development of his ‘message’ through his various works : “Modern Painters
taught the claim of all lower human nature in the hearts of men of the rock, and
wave, and herb, as a part of their necessary spirit life……The Stones of Venice
taught the laws of constructive art and the dependence of all human work or
edfice for its beauty on the happy life of the workman. Unto This Last taught the
laws of that life itself and its dependence on the Sun of Justice, the Inaugural
Oxford Lectures, the necessity that it should be led and the gracious laws of
beauty and labour recognised by the upper no less than the lower classes of
England and lastly, Fors Clavigera has declared the relation of these to each other
and the only possible conditions of peace and honour for low and high, for rich and
poor, together in the holding of that First Estate, under the only Despot,
God……and in keeping which service is perfect freedom and inheritance of all that a
loving Creator can give to His creature and an immortal Father to his Children.”
Thus his social criticism marks no sharp break in his career, it is only a
development.

It is wrong to imagine that Ruskin became a social reformer with the publication of
Unto This Last. The germs of a social critic were already in him. It is futile to
separate Ruskin, the art-critic from Ruskin, the social reformer. His attitude
towards social matters is clear from the following passage from The Seven Lamps
of Architecture:

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“We have just spent for instance, a hundred and fifty millions with which we have
paid men for digging ground from one place and depositing it in another. We have
formed a large class of men, the railway navies especially reckless, unmanageable
and dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the benefits as fairly as
possible) a number of iron founders in an unhealthy and painful employment : we
have developed (this at least is good) a very large amount of mechanical ingenuity
and we have, in fine, attained the power of going fast from one place to another.
Meantime, we have had no mental interest or concern ourselves in the operations
we have set on foot but have been left to the usual vanities and cares of our
existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we had employed the same sums in
building beautiful houses and churches. We should have maintained the same
number of men, not in driving wheel barrows, but in a distinctly technical, if not
intellectual employment, and those who were more intelligent among them, would
have been specially happy in that employment as having room in it for the
development of their fancy……Meantime, we should ourselves have been made
happier and wiser by the interest we should have taken in the work with which we
were personally concerned and when all was done, instead of the very doubtful
advantage of the power of going fast from place to place we should have had the
certain advantage of increased pleasure in stopping at home.”

In regarding Ruskin as a social reformer, we have to bear in mind his thorough

qualifications for the role of a reformer. He had the necessary training and
knowledge for it. J. A. Hobson, in his study of Ruskin as a social reformer, points
out that Ruskin possessed “special qualifications for social and economic criticism :
for he was a skilled specialist in the finer qualities of work which men put into the
raw material supplied by Nature in order to furnish the necessaries of human
consumption. His technical knowledge went far beyond a knowledge of the fine arts
in architecture and he was throroughly acquainted with the practical bearing of
weaving, wood and metal work, pottery and other handicrafts : moreover, he had
made a life-long study of animal and vegetable life and of the structure and
composition of the earth, thus gaining an intimate acquaintance with, the nature of
the raw materials of that wealth which formed the chief subject-matter of
commercial economy.”

Ruskin’s change-over from art to sociology was the outcome of an intimacy between
Ruskin and Carlyle. Ruskin called Carlyle his master and read him so constantly as to
find himself, “perpetually falling into his modes of expression,” as he himself

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acknowledges in the preface to Munera Pulveris. This influence increased greatly

after 1850. In 1856, Ruskin wrote, “I find Carlyle’s strange thinking colour­ing mine
continually.” Carlyle’s influence can be traced in Ruskin’s views of the condition of
England in his contempt for the existing mercantile economy, in his Conservatism
and his Radicalism. The book that affected Ruskin most, was Carlyle’s Past and
Present. Carlyle’s pro-found sympathy for the struggling and staggering multitude
found an echo in Ruskin. Carlyle’s war on the economists was also Ruskin’s war ; only
Ruskin’s was conducted with far greater precision of attack. Carlyle scoffed at the
utilitarian philosophy of the current times. Ruskin does the same thing, but while
Carlyle is sarcastic in his wrathful attitude, Ruskin maintains artistic elaboration
and elegance He is equally critical of materialistic tendencies of his age. He speaks
of the flowing of the streams to the sea as the perfect image of the operation of
wealth in society and that brings out the poet and the artist in him, who constantly
modulates the bitter indignation into something which makes an artistic appeal. He
held the view that no art can prosper under ugly and wretched conditions. How can
the inward beauty and power of the soul be felt when the modern conditions of
living are so deadening ?

Ruskin realised that greed and desire for progress (materialistic progress) lead
man to the negation of soul. He becomes self-centred and neglects the general
interest. For such a man, the roots of honour lie in the acquisition of wealth. He
studies and masters the science of getting rich. To Ruskin, all acquisition of wealth
without spiritual or moral wealth is useless :

“Its real value depends on the moral sign attached to it just as sternly as that of a
mathematical quality depends on the algebraical sign attached to it.” If these
moral or spiritual virtues are sold out for monetary gains, the society is bound to
rot. Work that debilitates a people drawing away its best energies can produce only
a sorry kind of wealth. To Ruskin, the real wealth of a nation is its own citizens and
this fact is powerfully expressed in the following words from Unto This Last :

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of life, of joy and of
admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of
noble and happy human beings.” This is also the secret of democracy—the greatest
good of the greatest number. If the society exploits the labour and fattens the
capital, it is bound to shatter into pieces one day.

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“The true veins of wealth are purple—and not in rock but iii flesh, perhaps even
that final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as
possible, full-breathed , bright eyed and happy-hearted human creatures.” What
else can be the end of any form of government ? If the people are well satisfied
and self-content-ed, they are better than all costly jewels. Ruskin prophesies that
the time may come when the desire for wealth goes back to the barbarian tribes
which were its original devotees and when man is considered as the only jewel
worth aspiring for :

“Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamt of hour, I can even ima-gine that England
may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among
whom they first rose and that while the sands of the Indus and adamant of
Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger and flash from the turban of
the slave, she as a christian mother may at last attain to the virtues and
treasurers of a heathen one and be able to lead forth her sons, saying : “These are
my Jewels.” Without social and ethical values, man is a beast. If even after the
economic prosperity, man remains degraded and de based, what is the use of the
so-called improved status ? Persons must be inspired by high ideals of sacrifice,
selflessness, brotherhood and kindness before any real progress can be made or
even named.

Ruskin’s great role as a social reformer was, then, to humanise political economy, to
express the jargon of the economist about ‘cost’ and ‘utility’ in terms of human life.
He did this not as an emotional moralist but as a keen scientific inquirer. The
ordinary economist interprets “utility” with reference to the finished product,
overlooking the far more important process of production. In this way, wealth is
estimated by the economist as a question of material welfare only whereas Ruskin
asserts that material welfare must be balanced by the character of the labour
that goes to produce it : its duration, monot-ony, wholesomeness or
unwholesomeness. The true wealth, in fact, is life. That is Ruskin’s conclusion and
his entire social theory concerns itself with the relation between labour and life.
He ex-amines the doctrine of wages and contests the point that they are
“universally or even generally determined by the exclusive action of competition”
other considerations enter in, such as, custom and good feeling :

“Cheap labour is not merely bad from the standpoint of morality, it is bad even
from the low stand-point of economy. For cheap labour means impoverished lives

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and impoverishedlives mean inefcient work. The consumer gains at the outset but
loses ultimately for if you squeeze wages to starvation point, you get inferior work
and shoddy goods.” Every word of the author is correct. We cannot expect quality
and efficiency from cheap labour. When workers famish, they will produce goods of
inferior quality. Ruskin mentions another facet of his social theory :

“Specialisation is good upto a point, but over-specialisation is bad for it deadens

the worker. A man whose labour consists, say, in making a fractional part of a pin
becomes a mere machine. Division of labour you call it, it is division of human
beings—dividing men into segments.”

Labour should be made healthy and pleasurable. The great evils of his civilization
lay because the labour was not recognised and honoured. The workers took no
pleasure in the work entrusted to them, they simply looked to the acquisition of
money as the means of pleasure. So long as the worship of supply and demand
exists, there cannot he genuine pleasure :

“Nor must we blame the employer only for this state of things; the public—the
consumer are also at fault. They demand cheap things, not good things. Were they
longer-sighted, they would realise that in the long run good thing is the cheap
thing.”

In the first lecture on Work in The Crown of Wild Olive, Ruskin pursues the social
criticism. He does not like that society in which the poor become poorer and the
rich, richer. The upper classes enjoy themselves by compelling the poor labourers
to work for them and to provide for them. There is no difference between the
modern capitalists and the barons in the Middle Ages so far as the poor are
concerned :

“And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the road-side suffer now quite as much as
from the bag baron as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and crags have just
the same result on rags.”

Another important cause of the sufferings and evils in England is that the English
worship the Goddess of Getting on. Their religion is the worship of Mammon and as
such they are Christian only in name. There is as much scope for heroism and self-
sacrifice in commerce and industry as in the battle-field.

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The Social theory of Ruskin is thus wedded to general well-being which is the first
and foremost principle of democracy. The social evils described by Ruskin have
been remedied, to a great extent but still the poor and middle-classes stand in dire
need of economic relief. So Ruskin’s fervent and penetratring social criticism
remains practically as valid today as when be uttered it in the sixties of the last
century.

RUSKIN AS A POLITICAL ECONOMIST

Ruskin attacked the materialistic tendencies of his nation and thus evoked the
sinister criticism of the conservatives. The essays of Unto This Last in which
Ruskin first formulated his economic theories aroused so much indignation that the
publishers of the ‘Cornhill Maga-zine, refused further contributions from him on
the subject. His doctrines were condemned as windy hysterics, intolerable twaddle,
etc. He was called merely a sentimental idealist. For long, his remarkable book,
Unto This Last was mocked at as the beautiful vapouring of an unpractical idealist.
His ideas on Work and Traffic expressed in The Crown of Wild Olive were
regarded so highly unpractical and foolish.

Despite this outright condemnation of Ruskin’s political econo­my, the real value of
his views on this ‘dismal science’ cannot be minimised. He was convinced that a
nation loses its glory when it adds nothing to the beauty of the world and when it
jumps headlong into material mire, other voices were also heard against the
orthodox views on that subject. But Ruskin was certainly the first to expose the
fallacies of political economy as it was commonly understood. He gave a literary
form to his views. He criticised the orthodox economists like Ricardo, Malthus and
M’culloch. Dickens, Kingsley had freely attacked the Gradgrind philosophy of labour
and the moral and social curse it involved. According to Harrison, “he certainly was
the first to put these doubts and criticisms into trenchant form such as long
stirred the general public as with a trumpet note.”

Ruskin’s views on political economy are best expressed in Unto This Last, where he
defines various economic terms in a novel and humanitarian manner. The opening
sentence of the book makes a ridicule of the orthodox economy. “Among the

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delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of

large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious,-certainly the least
credible in the modern soi disant science of political economy, based on the idea
that an advantageous code of social action may be deter-mined irrespectively of
the influence of social affections.” The basis of Ruskin’s political economy is human
welfare. He differentiates between Political Economy and Mercantile Economy as
under :

“Political Economy (the economy of a State or of citizens) consists simply in the

production, preservation and distribution at fittest time and place, of useful or
pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time...and the singer
who rightly disci-plines and never over-strains her voice are all political economists
in the true and final sense ; adding continually to the riches and well-being of the
nation to which they belong. But mercantile economy signifies the accumulation in
the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim upon or power over the labour of
others.” The writer defines several economic terms in relation to human labour. He
defines wealth as “the possession of useful articles which we can use.” It is not
defined in terms of market as was done by orthodox economists—“Wealth consists
of all useful and agreeable objects which possess exchangeable value.” He states
the purpose of political economy in the essay ‘Ad Valorem’ as under : “The real
science of political economy which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard
science, as medicine from witchcraft and astronomy from astrology, is that which
teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life and which
teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that ‘lead to destruction’.

The last essay, ‘Ad Valorem, in Unto This Last is devoted to the study and
discussion of economic terms He defines labour as follows: “Labour is the contest
of the life of man with an opposite ; the term ‘life’ including his intellect, soul and
physical power, contending with ,question, difficulty, trial or material force.” He
writes about Capital : “Capital signifies seed or source or root material—it is
material by which some derivative or secondary good is produced.” Ruskin wanted
the minimum wages to all workers so that they might feed themselves properly. He
assigned a new meaning to ‘value’. In common transaction it means exchange. J. S.
Mill wrote, “Wealth consists of all useful and agreeable objects which possess
exchangeable value.” Ruskin regarded it as a fallacy. He believed : “There is the
exchange value and the intrinsic value.” The latter is the life-giving force. “The
fundamental characteristic of Ruskin’s teaching is the welding of aesthetic and

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ethics into a doctrine of social as distinct from financial values.” He explained

every economic term in the sense of life. His approach was humanitarian and not
utilitarian––“To be valuable is to avail towards life. A truly valuable or availing thing
that which leads to life with its whole strength.

Like a true devotee of Gandhiji and Acharya Vinoba Bhave, he denounces the
material pursuits of man and extols his spiritual power. A worker to him is not the
engine of that motive power which functions with the aid of steam or some
calculable force. On the other hand, he is an engine whose motive power is a soul.

He is highly satirical and denounces the habit of profit-making at the cost of

human values :

“Buy in the cheapest market ? Yes, but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal
may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire and bricks may be cheap in your
streets after an earthquake, but fire and earthquake may not therefore be
material benefits.” He expresses the true concept of political economy in the most
memorable, poetical and rhythmical words.

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy and of
admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of
noble and happy human beings.” All the philosophers of the world and all sincere
democrats insist on life-giving and life-generating forces. Life is to be enriched by
powers of love, sympathy, brotherhood and cooperation. We do not need Shylocks
in our midst. We wait for Harshas and Karnas. They are the real benefactors of
mankind.

To Ruskin, the central economic doctrine of his age that national prosperity is best
advanced by everyone doing the best for oneself is absurd and wicked. This
doctrine is responsible for all exploitation and human sufferings. Regarding the
labourers and conditions of labour, Ruskin remarks that they ought to be paid
according to justice and not according to laws of competition. Under the present
system, they are miserably and inadequately paid and many persons are unable to
get employment even on such dishonourable terms. Regarding the distribution of
hard work, he remarks in the essay on Work in The Crown of Wild Olive : “Now,
nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing ; work is only done when it is
done with a will and no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is doing
what he should and is in his place.”

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Ruskin advises people to discard money and strive for general well-being. He writes
in Traffic : “But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be
striven for—life for all men as for yourselves—If you can determine fome honest
and simple order of existence ; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are
pleasantness and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths; which are peace.” He
becomes eloquent and ornate in the last sentence of this lecture :

“You will know then, how to build, well enough, you will build with stone well, but
with flesh better : temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; and that
kind of marble, crimson-veined is indeed eternal.” The passage is a fine specimen of
rhythmical prose. The harmony of tone and the ease of words are so complete, that
we hasten through the passage in a rapture of admiration. Milton, Browne, Jeremy
Taylor could not attain this amazing triumph of mastery over language.

The greatness of Ruskin as a political economist lies in the fact that most of his
plans have been incorporated into Acts of Parliament. He was the pioneer of
policies relating to wastelands, care of the aged poor, the hours and conditions of
labour, the relations between capital and labour, problems of unemployment,
reforms of educational system and the planning of cities and so on. Some of these
policies are still the guiding principles of the democratic countries. His idea that
economic well-being is subordinate to the moral life, is on every politician’s lips. His
notion that the use of wealth is more important than its accumulation, is the
hobby-horse of all modern statesmen. Today we are all socialists but socialism is
incomplete without moral or spiritual essence and this message was conveyed to us
by Ruskin who himself was not a socialist, but an aristocratic absolutist. “He is
forgotten now”, writes Harrison in an inspired bit of prose, “because he went forth
into a sort of moral wilderness and cried, ‘repent and reform, for the kingdom of
heaven is at hand.’ The kingdom of heaven is not yet come on us, perhaps is yet far
off, but John was the fore-runner of that which will one day come to pass. He was
not, as the mocking crowd said, ‘a reed shaken with the wind’.” The ideals of truth,
beauty, justice, cherful and self-sacrificing labour for the good of the community
must reign in men’s hearts : the worship of Mammon must be abandoned. Then and
only then will the prophetic vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” be fulfilled.

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RUSKIN, THE MORALIST

Ruskin revolted against the materialism of the eighteenth century. Poetry had
become mere polished verse, life mere polished existence. High morals were not
cared for. Prophets came in the nineteenth century. The poetic utterances of
Wordsworth and Coleridge created a congenial atmosphere in the ethical sense.
And upon these like supporting atillery, followed the writings of Carlyle and Ruskin
to arouse a new awakening in the mind of the public.

Ruskin linked art and life with morality. He emerged as a great moralist both in the
realm of art and in the various spheres of the society.

Like Plato, Ruskin adopted the moralistic attitude towards fine arts. Plato would
banish from his Republic all poets who art not edifying; his test of good music is its
effect upon the moral character. Ruskin carried the idea still further, making the
arts an exponent of the social and political virtues of a nation and of the writers
them-selves. This reciprocity of art and morals in the State was not a new
discovery. It had been discussed by other writers before 1850-Hume, Burke,
Reynolds, Kant, Ballanche, Chateaubriand and Carlyle. But Ruskin made the idea so
peculiarly his own that in England, at least, it is always associated with him. Ruskin
expresses his views in the Stones of Venice and in Lectures on Art. It is true that
the efflorescence of art seems always to accompany corruption in society, but this
may be because the evil is a challenge which brings out the good. It does not alter
the fact that art comes from goodness.

Ruskin never swerved from the belief that no great art was ever created by a bad
man. Within limits, the theory needs little argument, but when be applies it to
individuals, Ruskin is inclined to carry his ideas too far. This is more obvious in the
application of the theory to painting and architecture than in its relation to
literature, for a great literary work is usually the product of one man whose life is
well known: whereas it is difficult to generalise on the lives of all those who
contribute to the building of a Gothic Cathedral. Literature, in general, supports
the theory that there is a correspondence between moral elevation and imaginative
work. Good art, Ruskin says, is balanced, reserved, constructive, inventive,
complete. pure and lovely as opposed to the unsymmetrical, intemperate,
unconstructive, unimag-inative, incomplete, sensual and undelightful and it requires

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little demonstration to show that each of these attaches itself to a quality of the
soul which produces them all. The best artist is one who exhibits most of these
qualities. Ruskin draws from this theory various inferences as to the elements of
character necessary for the production of true formative art. These are, first,
brightness of physical life and the manly virtues belonging to it, then the broad
scope of reflection and purpose; then the distinctive gift of imagination, together
with the innocent perception of beauty and to crown all, the perfect peace of an
honest and living faith. Finally, Ruskin works out the relationship between the
artist and the ethical state of his age. The finest artists live entirely within their
own age. In it, they find their characters and their themes. Thus all the qualities
of the artist will be rendered useless if the condition of persons and things around
them is degraded. It is only in a nation, unselfish and generous, seeking truth,
loving goodness and hating falsehood that the artist will find the subject necessary
to make him great.

Ruskin applied the same principles of art to his social and economic theories. If
people were not moral, all materialistic prog-ress was useless. What was the good
of opulence when it produced corruption ? Social peace could be established when
the relations between employers and workers were good. Equitable distribution of
wealth is the key to all social and economic ills and so he remarks in Unto This Last
: “Political economy (the economy of a state or of citizens) consists simply in the
production, preservation and distribution at fittest time and place of useful or
pleasurable things.” He emphasises the moral approach to all things in The Crown of
Wild Olive :

“That the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers !”

In his lecture on Traffic in The Crown of Wild Olive he exhorts people to give up
Mammon-worship because it is detrimental to art, science and pleasure :

“Continue to make that forbidden duty your principal one and soon no more art, no
more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come or worse
than catastrophe, slow mouldeing and withering into Hades. But if you can fix some
conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life for all men as for
your-selves—if you can determine some honest and simple order of exist-ence;
following these trodden ways of wisdom which are pleasantness and seeking her
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace ;—then, and so sanctifying wealth into

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“commonwealth,” all your art, your literature, daily labours, your domestic
affection, and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony.”

After the publication of the last volume of Modern Painters in 1860, Ruskin
appeared in a new role—as a writer on political economy and social reform. At first
sight, there may seem very little connection between such subjects and Art, but to
Ruskin the connection was natural and even vital. He lived at a time when the rise
of modern industrialism with its, factories, its mines, railroads and its keen
competition for wealth was ravaging the beauty of the English country-side,
polluting the sky with smoke and the rivers with refuse. The old order was
changing, giving place to new and Ruskin’s artist-soul was torn by the indifference
of the wealthy classes and degradation of the toiling multitudes. He saw clearly
enough that beautiful pic-tures, buildings, sculpture and even beautiful clothes,
household utensils and furniture are neither produced nor enjoyed by a people,
wholly devoted to the gospel of getting on, people whose minds are debased by the
contemplation of sordid squalor on the one hand and tasteless luxury on the other.
His energies from this time onwards were largely directed to the working out of
his social theories. To this self-appoint-ed task, he brought all the forces of what
the great Mazzini declared to be “the most analytical mind in Europe.”

His first step was to attack current ideas on wealth and wages and he showed
successfully that money is not wealth and that it is bad policy (even from money
point of view) to reduce half the popula-tion of a country to a state of virtual
slavery. He exposed the folly of thinking that so long as man works, it does not
matter what he works at and he maintained that since man is not made to live by
bread alone, all lively things are also necessary. The happiness of men is
determined not by the amount of money they possess, but by the kind of things
they enjoy and their opportunities for enjoying them. No country can afford to
ignore the divine command to deal justly and to love and have mercy, since the only
true wealth is life—life at its fullest and happiest for the greatest number of
people. Ruskin imagines that the time would come when England would discard
wealth and would pay all attention to the finest bringing up of her children :

“Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England
may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among
whom they first arose ; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of
Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban

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of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the
treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead her Sons, saying––

“These are my Jewels.”

––Unto This Last.

Ruskin’s moral vein pervades even such topics as war. He exhorts soldiers to
achieve honour in life :

“First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow to your country; but all industry
and earnestness will be useless unless they are consecrated by your resolution to
be in all things, men of honour; not honour in the commonsense only but in the
highest.”

—The Crown of Wild Olive.

It is on account of this moral obsession that he is making fre-quent uses of Biblical

expressions. In the lecture on Work, he uses nearly sixty texts of scripture. It is
this constant prepossession for the Biblical phrases or allusions which is
responsible for the moral earnestness and prophetic fervour of Ruskin.

RUSKIN’S STYLE

Ruskin occupies a prominent place in the history of English prose. He is certainly

one of the greatest masters of English prose style. Living in an age, when grand
style was popular, he made his contribution to English prose without indulging in
“Lylyan antitheses and similes or Johnsonian parellelism and balance.” Language is a
flexible instrument in his hand and he bends it to many uses—argu-ment, pictorial
description, eulogy, invective, persuasion, passionate appeal. It is correct that he
read Pope, Hooker and Dr. Johnson quite carefully but he maintains his unique
individuality in forming his style. He stands now as a supreme master of the English
tongue.

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In the earlier writings of Ruskin, we find an ornamental, gorg-eous prose. There

are brilliant descriptive passages which demon-strate his feeling for beauty of
form and colour and a tendency to go into superlatives. Beginning as an art-critic,
he cannot avoid the picturesque in his literary expressions. He clothes his thought
in the language of exceptional beauty. He writes in Modern Painters

“Thank heaven, we are in sunshine again—and what sunshine : Not the lurid, gloomy,
plague-like oppression of Canaletti, but while flashing fullness of dazzling light,
which the waves drink and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of
Joy.” Here we have rhetorical, poetic tinge. The words have been used for
orna-mentation. The writer shows the mastery of sound, colour and motion of
words. He is rich in the power of illustration. There is a sense of being clamoured
at rather than of being persuaded.

But in the later style and especially in his socio-economic writings, the sentences
are simpler and they are not so overloaded with ornament as in The Modern
Painters. The writer in the later Ards tries to convince the reader by clear
arguments, expressed in a plain, clear-cut style. There is no scope for vagueness.
Facts-are put forth in the most vigorous and convincing manner.

“You knock a man into a ditch and then you tell him to remain content in the
position in which providence has placed him. That is modern Christianity.”
—Work.

Rhythm is the principal weapon of Ruskin. Saintsbury remarks “It is of a piece with
the wilful lawlessness and want of self-criticism which distinguish all his work that
he too often transgresses the bound­ary between rhythm and metre.” His prose,
consequently becomes blank verse. The influence of the Bible is responsible for the
rhymic flow of sentences. Choice of words and the beauty of his imagery create
the rhythm :

“Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the posture that has been shut from you, but
the presence.” Unto This Last.

Words flow as rhythmically as the waves in a sea :

“……sick, we do not enquire for a physician who takes less than,

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a guinea, litigious we never think of reducing eight pence to four and six pence,
caught in a shower, we do not canvass the cabman to find one who values his driving
at less than six pence a mile.”

The other salient feature of Ruskin’s style is the length of his sentences. He is the
first writer since the seventeenth century who dared indulge in sentences of
twenty or thirty lines and even more of a whole page. The sentences contain 200
words or more, 250, nay 280 words without a single pause—each sentence with 40,
59, 60 commas, colons and semi-colons and yet the whole symphony flows on with
such just modulation, the images melt so naturally into each other, the harmony of
tone and the ease of words are so complete that we hasten through the passage in
a rapture of admiration. The example of a long sentence is given below from the
lecture on Work :

“But if you put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if
you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body and blast his soul and
at last leave him not so much as strength to reap the poor fruit of his degradation,
but gather that for yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done
with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of the grave everlasting,
(though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults will hold
closer in the resurrection day than the sod over the labourer’s head), this you
think is no waste, and no sin !” The language is powerful and alliterative. We have
the simple mono-syllabic words—base, bind, etc. There is rhyme in ‘blunt’ and
‘stunt.’ Ruskin’s great power lies in the skilful handling of mono-syllabic words. In
this long sentence, the only words which are not monosyllabic are ‘body’ and
‘degradation’. Such lengthy sentences remind us of liana, the Sanskrit author.
According to Saintsbury, “This extreme length is also partially justified by the
fact that Ruskin, even when nominally arguing, is for the most part, building up
pictures for the eye by successful strokes...” G. K. Chesterton sums up this special
trait of Ruskin’s style as follows : “A Ruskin sentence is long as the swimming
creeper is long ; it is long as the line of the Napoleonic army was long.”

Ruskin is biassed towards the Biblical language and scriptural allusions and,
phrases. It is the woof of which his style and diction are made. He is fully
saturated with its spirited and Biblical phrases which came to him without any
effort. As a child sitting at the knees of his mother, he had read or listened to the
reading of the Bible, many times over and some of the passages he had got by

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heart and he had early learnt to think in terms of the Biblical phrases and
situations about the incidents of everyday life. To him, for instance, the idea of
Rich and Poor was almost inseparable from Dives and Lazarus. This profuse use of
Biblical references and phrases, contributes so vitally to the moral earnestness and
prophetic fervour of Ruskin. The Biblical references and episodes are very useful
when the common people who believe in the Bible, are addressed. In his lecture on
Work, he makes use of nearly sixty Texts of scripture. Sixty seems to be modest
estimate. In the last paragraph of this lecture, one will be astonished to find not
less than ten of the texts accumulated.

Ruskin’s style exhibits the author’s wonderful descriptive power, unequalled

anywhere else in English prose. Only loving observation and the trained eye of the
landscape artist and the student of paint-ing could make possible such a
description as that of the Carshalton pool at the beginning of the Introduction :

“Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light,
enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel,
through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep
threads of clearness, like the Chalcedony etc.” The description is the outcome of
poetic imagination. The last sentence of the lecture on Traffic is highly poetical :

“You will know then how to build, well enough ; you will build which stone well, but
with flesh better ; temples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; and that
kind of marble crimson-veined, is indeed eternal.”

Ruskin’s style abounds in irony and sarcasm. Ruskin’s irony is incisive but not
malicious like that of Swift. It is genial, sweet and tolerant like Chaucer’s and
Addison’s. In the lecture on Work, the author does not like the tendency of the
well-to-do British citizens to take their well dressed children to church on Sunday.
They should have sympathy with the poor little crossing-sweeper. Christian Justice
then becomes the butt of the author’s irony :

“Christian Justice has been strongly mute and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,
decrepit, this many a day; she keeps her accounts still, however—quite steadily--
doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through acutest
spectacles.” There is again irony in the following words from the lecture on Traffic
:

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“But your railroad mounds, prolonged masses or Acropolis, your railroad stations,
vaster than the Parthenon and innumerable ; your chimneys, now much more mighty
and costly than cathedral spires.” Like irony, the other powerful instrument with
Ruskin is satire. He satirises London in the following sentence :

“It is only Lord’s cricket ground without the turf —a huge billiard table without
the cloth, and with pockets as deepas the bottomless pit : but mainly a billiard
table, after all.” Again, he speaks of London as “the foul city of London there—
rattling, growling, smok-ing, stinking—a ghastly heap of fermenting brick-work,
pouring out poison at every pore.”

Ruskin’s style is thus, effective, incisive, imaginative and lucid. In the words of
Harrison, “It is a type of clearness, wit, eloquence, versatility and passion.” It can
be simple, and sublime, complex and grand, persuasive, expository, sarcastic or
ironical. At times, it becomes the voice of a prophet, at others, like that of a
professor of economics. It is rhythmic and sonorous—”Through this exuberance of
rhythmic and sonorous language there runs a more familiar, more spontaneous vein :
that of some works, like the Fors Clavigera where the artist no longer, strained,
instead of exhausting his temperament, draws upon the accumulated energy of his
passion and his faith and most happily reconciles forcefulness with simplicity.”

—Legouis and Cazamian.

There are certain defects in Ruskin’s style. It is not self-revelatory like that of
Lamb or Montaigne. It lacks the good humoured laughter and agreeable nonsense of
Lamb or Cowper. It is ever didactic. He is speaking and we are listening. Sometimes
his constructions are complicated. The use of too many Biblical allusions make the
style obscure and boring. Thoughts are not developed by the author in a steady
order and hence we notice an inherent diffusive-ness in his style. Dr. Johnson
advised people to devote their days and nights to the study of Addison’s work for
achieving perfection in their style but this advice does not hold good in the case of
Ruskin. It is like the bow of Ulysses which no man can bend. Harrison is nearest the
mark when he remarks :

“It is indeed, very far from a perfect style : much less is it in any sense a model
style or one to be cultivated, studied or followed.” Despite these obvious defects,
Ruskin is a great master of an English style, of faultless ease and simplicity. He

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increased the range of English prose by adding to harmony and animation the
resources of the richest imagination and colouring. G. K. Chesterton aptly remarks :

“If there is an age which did not realise that Ruskin wrote great English, it would
be an age that had ceased to write English at all.”

Bring out the special significance of Ruskin’s ideas for his

age.
Ruskin’s ideas are full of deep significance for his age. Before going in to the
significance of his ideas, it is apt to have glimpse on the conditions of his age. It
was a period of social delusions and contrast. The age of Ruskin was too much
angrossed in sheer materialism. The Victorian prosperity dazzled the eyes of man
who utterly lost sight of spiritual heritage. Ruskin found that English workman was
unhappy.

Wealth was growing fast but it enriched only a few. The Reform Act of 1832 had
broken the back of the aristocracy and transferred power to the prosperous
tradesman of the towns, the worshippers of “Britannia of the Market”, that
goddess whose temple Ruskin proposed in his lecture on Traffic to decorate with
“pendent purses”. The artisans were very much at the mercy of the employers. The
middle classes enjoyed the additional comforts which the development of trade,
manufactures, and mechanical inventions had brought within their reach and they
were rich in optimistic hope and thought that they were living in the very best of
all possible times and places. But it was a vain hope. In fact darkness surrounded
man on all sides.

Ruskin stood up against this prevailing darkness of his age. He taught people that
wealth is not the equivalent of happiness. Factories and mills deprive man of
natural surroundings and contami-nate his soul. In place of greenery, he sees the
smoke of the chimney and instead of the charpings of birds and musical flow of
fountains and streams, he listens to the sirens of factories and mills. Monetary
habits degrade human beings who become so selfish and shameless that they do
not hesitate in exploiting their own brothers and sisters without any tinge of
repentance or any fear from God. In Unto This Last, Ruskin offer his message:
“There is no wealth but life. Life, includ-ing all its powers of love, of joy and of

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admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of
noble and happy human beings”. The greatest good of the greatest number—that is
the aim of democracy and that objective was laid down and propounded by Ruskin in
the 19th century. In the preface to The Crown of Wild Olive Ruskin speaks of his
notion of wealth ;

“That the wealth of notions, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers and
that the real good of all work and of all commerce depends on the final worth of
the thing you make or get by it.”

He further says that prime object of life and labour is “the producing of as many
as possible, full breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human beings.” Even his
attitude to machinery is now seen to be largely justified and though few today
advocate the abolition of machinery, it is increasingly recognized that machine-
mindedness tends to dehumanize men and that means must be sought to make man
the master and not the servant of the machine.

To his age, Ruskin taught the lesson of self-development. It is not what a man has
that is to be considered but what he is. The important question is : Is he a self-
made man not in exterior circumstances, but in wealth of character ? One must at
the very outset, realise the mystery and wonder of life, discard the placid
enthusiasm that is the mark of the artificial man, cultivate the openness of
perception, the retention of the childish sense of wonder that marks the true man,
the man, who has eyes admiringly wide to the world about him, is worthy of the
power that placed him in it

to be willing to see the beauty that is—to show helpful sympathy for men about us,
to be willing and glad to work for the joy of doing our work well and above all to
keep clear our sight of the real mystery and nobility of life—that, in short, is the
burden of Ruskin’s message.

In the age of gross materialism, Ruskin’s message to the people was quite
significant. To Ruskin, man is a being of emotions, sentiments and sympathies, and
the view which did not call these into account seemed inadequate. Profit is not the
only motive of human action……Happiness in life must, besides, be measured by
other things than money. People, to be ideal men and women, not only must have
food, clothes and shelter but must have also beautiful and ennobling surroundings.
Peace should be an esteemable asset. In its ugly cities, its dishonestly made

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clothing, its prevailing shames and meanness, the present time offends against the
ideals of life. William Morris, influenced by these teachings preached an ideal
common-wealth; without smoke or machinery, without competition or envy. Ruskin
saw little good in the extreme socialistic ideal nor did he wish entirely to dispose
of machinery : he did feel that the ugliness should de done away with and that
working people should not be relegated, as a penalty for leading industrial lives, to
filth and degradation. He denounced the idea of the economist that progress
depends on competition––the uneasing and merciless battle of each man against his
neighbour.

Throughout his writings, Ruskin offered a message to his time. Unto this Last
expresses his message very clearly and explicitly. In Para 275 of Ad Valorem, his
message finds a poetical image. If we read the passage, we find it as the very basis
of internationalism. If UNO one day achieves this objective, the earth will be
converted into a heaven and we will become divine-beings. Likewise, Modern
Painters taught the claim of all lower nature in the hearts of men of the rock and
herb as a part of their necessary spirit life. The Stones of Venice taught the laws
of constructive art and dependence of all human work of edifice, for its beauty on
the happy life of the work-man. The Inaugural Oxford Lectures taught the
necessity that it should be led and the gracious laws of beauty and labour
recognised by the upper no less than the lower classes of England ; one lastly, Fors
Clavigera has declared the relation of these to each other and the only possible
conditions of peace and honour for low and high, for rich and poor, together in the
holding of that first Estate, under the only Despot, God.

Compton-Rickett summarises Ruskin’s message as follow “No writer in Victorian

times did more than Ruskin to draw attention to the terrible wastage going on in
the social organism—under present economic conditions—and to stir the individual
to more serious effect in the cause of human brotherhood, not in the spirit of
condescending chastity, but in the saver and ampler spirit of common justice”.

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Examine the significance of Ruskin’s views on Political

Economy of his age.
Ruskin’s ideas on the political economy of his time are very significant. Though they
were condemned as windy hysterics, intolerable twaddle and the like, but their
significance in views of the growing menace of materialism cannot be undervalued.

Ruskin was deeply fed up with the growing materialism and its consequent evils. He
was convinced that a nation loses its glory when it adds nothing to the beauty of
the world and when it jumps headlong into material mire. Other vices were also
pointed out against the orthodox views on that subject. Ruskin criticized such
orthodox economists as Ricardo, Malthus and M’culloch. In the words of Harrison,
“he (Ruskin) certainly was the first to put these doubts and criticisms into
trenchant form such as long stirred the general public as with a trumpet note.”

In Unto This Last, Ruskin speaks voluminously of his views on political economy. The
opening , sentence of the book makes a ridicule of the orthodox economy : “Among
the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds
of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious—certainly the least
credible in the modern soi distant science of political economy, based on the idea
that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the
influence of social affections.” The basis of Ruskin’s political economy is human
welfare. He differentiates between Political Economy and Mercantile Economy as
under :

“Political Economy (the economy of a State or of citizens). consists simply in the

production, preservation and distribution at . fittest time and place, of useful or
pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time and the singer
who rightly dis-ciplines and never overstrains her vice are all political economists in
the true and final sense ; adding continually to the riches and well-being of the
nation to which they belong. But merchantile economy signifies the accumulation in
the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim upon or power over the labour of
others.”

Ruskin does not consider wealth as orthodox economists do. He defines wealth as
“the possession of useful articles which we can use”. Likewise he states the
purpose of political economy in the essay Ad Valorem : “The real science of political
economy which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine

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from witchcraft and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to
desire and labour for the things that lead to life and which teaches them to scorn
and destroy the things that lead to destruction.”

Ruskin places human values above profit-making tendency. He asks : “Buy in the
cheaptest market ? Yes, but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal may be
cheap among your roof timbers after a fire and bricks may be cheap in your
streets after an earth-quake, but fire and earthquake may not therefore be
material benefits.” Therefore, like Gandhiji and Vinoba, he emphasises the
cultivation of spiritual power in man. He says, “There is no wealth but life. Life,
including all its powers of love, of joy and of admira-tion. That country is the
richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.” All
the philosophers of the world and all sincere democrats insist on life giving and
life-generating forces. A life is to be enriched by powers of love, sympathy,
brotherhood and cooperation. We do not need Shylocks in our midst, instead, we
require Harshas and Karnas, as being the real benefactors of mankind.

Ruskin denounces the general belief of his age that national prosperity is best
advanced by everyone doing the best for oneself. This doctrine is responsible for
all exploitation and human sufferings. Regarding the labourers and conditions of
labour, Ruskin remarks that they ought to be paid according to justice and not
according to laws of competition under the present system, they are miserably and
inadequately paid. Regarding their miserable working conditions, Ruskin writes in
‘Work’, “Now, nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing : work is only
done well when it is done with a will and no man has a thoroughly sound will unless
he knows he is doing what he should and is in his place.”

Advising people to discard money and material pursuits, Ruskin writes in ‘Traffic’ :
“But if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven
for—life for all men as for yourselves—If you can determine some honest and
simple order of existence; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are
pleasantness and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths; which are peace.” He goes
on to write : “You will know them, how to build, well enough you will build with stone
well, but with flesh better; temples not made with hands but riveted of hearts ;
and that kind of marble, crimson-veined is indeed eternal.”

The greatness of Ruskin as a political economist lies in the fact that most of his
plans have been incorporated into Acts of Parliament. He was the pioneer of

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policies relating to wastelands, care of the aged poor, the working hours and
conditions of labourers, the relation between labour and capital, problems of
unemployment, reforms of educational systems and planning of cities, and so on.
Some of these policies are still the guiding principles of the democratic countries.
His idea that economic well-being is subordinate to the moral life, is on every
politician’s lips. His notion that the use of wealth is more important than its
accumulation, is the hobby-horse of all modern statesmen. The ideals of truth,
beauty, justice, cheerful and self-sacrificing labour for the good of the community
must reign in men’s hearts : the worship of Mammon must be abandoned. Then and
only then will the prophetic vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” be fulfilled.

Ruskin exposed “the ugliness of an industrial world, the

selfishness of an economic order.” Expound and illustrate.
Ruskin was born and brought up in an industrial age which saw the rapid emergence
of factories and mills. The cottage industries were replaced by machine-led mills.
The green pastures, gardens and open fields were pushed into background and new
industrial colonies were taking their place. The obvious result was that instead of
fresh air and beauties of natural landscape, the smoky, filthy and choking
atmosphere was visible everywhere. People were migrating from their simple
villages to industrial towns in order to find a livelihood. Ruskin gives a graphic
picture’ of the changed image of villages in the preface to The Crown of Wild Olive
:

“Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of lowland scenery in South England,
nor any more pathetic, in the world by its expression of sweet human character
and life, than that immediately bordering on the sources of the Wandle and
including the lower moors of Addington and the villages Biddington and Carshalton,
with all their pools and streams.”

These pools and streams were defiled by the human hand. All filth of houses and
streets was thrown into them, thereby diffusing venom and infection in all places
where Gad meant those waters to bring joy and health. Wordsworthian vernal
bloom disappeared giving place to layers of smoke and stench.

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The industrialization affected not only nature but the soul of man. Instead of
getting pleasure in peace of nature, people began to take pleasure in getting and
spending. Utilitarianism and Mammon-worship became their ideal of life. Attaching
the utilitarian attitude of man, Ruskin enunciated certain golden principles of life in
Unto this Last : (i) Man is more .important than money ; (ii) Man’s real wealth is his
soul and he should enrich it ; and (iii) The object of life and labour is to produce
happy, healthy men and women.

In fact, Ruskin had the deepest hatred for the materialistic tendencies of his age.
This tendency dwarfed man’s personality and made him a beast. This materialistic
tendency was a direct offshoot of growing industrialization which ‘makes people
selfish and greedy. Such people do not hesitate from exploiting the poor and
helpless. They do not care even for their religion because their main aim is to earn
money. All other considerations are secondary. Ruskin satirises such people in his
lecture on ‘Work’ :

“However, in every nation, there are and must always be a certain number of these
Friend’s servants who have it principally for the object of their lives to make
money. They are always, as I said, more or less stupid and cannot conceive of
anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain.”

Another evil of industrialization is that it made the rich richer and the poor
poorer. The rich grew more influential and being without real culture, sacrificed all
moral scruples in order to prosper themselves. Wealth became the idol of England
and with financial prosperity came vanity and luxury. Trade and commerce
developed to an unwanted extent and new inventions multiplied the comforts and
enjoyments of the middle-classes. They entertained the idea that commerce was
the only means of national prosperity. But Ruskin could not relish his complacent
self-satisfaction. He saw that all was not well even with the prosperous classes.
They were being deadened in soul by the wealth they possessed.

Ruskin, therefore, exhorts people not to make money the goal of their life. This is
his solution of the evils of money. He makes his stand clear in the following words :

“That whenever money is the principal object of life with either man or nation, it is
both got-ill and spent ill and does harm both in getting and spending ; but when it is
not the principal object, it and other things will be well got and well spent.”

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Likewise, the practical solution for fighting the ills of wealth is an honest and
simple life devoted to wisdom and peace :

“But if you can fix some conception of a true human state can life to be striven
for—life for all men as for yourselves—if you of determine some honest and simple
order of existence ; following those trodden ways of wisdom, which are
pleasantness and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace—then and
so sanctifying wealth into ‘common-wealth’, all your art, your literature, your daily
labours, your domestic affection and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one
magnificent harmony.”

The following remedies have been suggested by Ruskin to arrest the evils of
industrialization :

(i) There should be training schools for youths, established at Government cost and
supervision. Every child born in the country should, at the parent’s wish, be
permitted to pass through them ; and in these schools the child should imperatively
be taught with the best skill of teaching that the country could produce, the
following three things :

(a) The laws of health and exercises enjoined by them.

(b) Habits of gentleness and justice ; and

(c) The calling by which he is to live.

(ii) Alongwith these schools should be established factories and workshops, for the
production and sale of every necessary of life and the exercise of every useful art.
And that, interfering no whit with private enterprise, nor setting any restraints or
tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and beat the Government if
they could— there should, as these factories and shops, be authoritatively good
and exemplary work done, and pure and true substance sold ; so that a man could be
sure, if he chose to pay the Government price, that he got for his money bread
that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work.

(iii) Any man or woman or boy or girl, out of employment, should be at once received
at the nearest Government school and set to work as it appeared, on trial, they
were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable every year. Those found
incapable of work through ignorance, through sickness, should be tended ; but
those being found objecting to work, they should be set under compulsion of the

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strictest nature, to the more painful and degrading forms of necessary toil,
especially to that in mines and other places of danger (such danger being, however,
diminished to the utmost by careful regulation and discipline) and the due wages of
such work be retained—cost of compulsion first abstracted—to be at the
workman’s command, as soon as he has come to sounder mind respecting the laws of
employment.

(iv) For the old and destitute, comfort and home should be provided ; which
provision, when misfortune had been by the working of such a system sifted from
guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful to the receiver.

Bring out the significance of the title of the Crown of

Wild Olive.
Ruskin was in the habit of choosing queer and fantastic titles for his works. Very
often his titles are expressed in Latin. For example, Aratra Pentelici meaning, ‘the
Quarrying of Pentalicus’ is the title given to a book containing six lectures on
sculpture. Munera Pulveris is the title of another of his books, which takes a
phrase from an ode of Horace for its motto : ‘Dust Offerings’, which means a
handful of dust offerred to a dead body so that the dead might sleep peacefully in
the grave. Similarly, Fors Clavigere means ‘Fate that holds the key’ and Praeterita
means ‘Things Past’.

But The Crown of Wild Olive has nothing to do with Latin, but it concerns much
with Greek We. The wild olive was the prize of the victor in the Olympic games in
Greece and in the Ruskinian cryptogram it means ‘the crown of consummate honour
and of rest’. In fact, the title ‘Crown of Wild Olive’ treats of the ideal work of (i)
the workman, (ii) the merchant, (iii) the soldier, and the reward he is to expect for
such ideal work, which will be a crown of wild olive. Ruskin speaks about it in the
last paragraph of his introduction to the Greek view of life :

“No proud one ! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the
unmerited throne ; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow,
through a few years of peace…… Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there
any happiness to be found for them—only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The
wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you……, But this, such as

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it is, you may win while yet you live.”

This, according to Ruskin, was to be the reward which the workman, the merchant
and the soldier would win in the race of life. This reward, the wild olive of honour
and rest means, (i) free-hearted-ness, (ii) graciousness, (iii) undisturbed trust, (iv)
requited love, (v) the sight of peace of others, and (vi) the ministry to their pain.
Besides these spiritual consolations, Ruskin offers the only, material reward to his
workman, merchant and soldier, that of (i) the blue sky above, and (ii) the sweet
waters and flowers of the earth.

These are the rewards which Ruskin offers to the winner in the contest of life.
The contest—agorae in Greek—reminds him of the Greek view of life and the
Greek crown of contest in the Olympic and other contests1 being generally the
‘crown’ or ‘wreath’ of the leaves of the wild olive is chosen to body forth in
concrete ,form the spiritual consolations, Ruskin offers to the ideal workman,
merchant or soldier.

Ruskin refers to the Crown of Wild Olive in his other works also. In The Queen of
the Air, he discourses that alive “has triple signi­ficance in symbolism, for the use
of its oil for sacred anointing, for strength in the gymnasium, and for light. Hence
in numberless divided and reflected ways, it is connected with the power of
Hercules and Athena ; Hercules plants the Wild Olive, for its shade on the course
of Olympia, and it thence-forward gives the Olympic crown of consumenate honour
and rest; while the prize at the Panathenaic games is a vase of its oil (meaning
encouragement to continuance of effort) ; and from the paintings on these
Panathenaic vases we get the most precious clue to the entire character of
Athena.”

In this connection it should be remembered that Athena gave to the people of

Athens, the olive plant as her special gift. The Panathenaic games above referred
to by Ruskin, were the greatest and most splendid of the festivals celebrated in
Athica in honour of Athena, as the protectress of the City.

Thus the title of the work, The Crown of Wild Olive is significant as well as
meaningful.

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Discuss The Crown of Wild Olive as a criticism of con-

temporary socio-economic life.
Ruskin’s Crown of Wild Olive consists of lectures which were meant for workers,
traders and soldiers. Ruskin asks each one of them about the real nature of his
calling. He takes up various contemporary social and economic problems and offers
his own view-point about their solution. In fact, Ruskin was a social reformer
possessing all qualifications of a social reformer. J. A. Hobson, in his study of
Ruskin as a social reformer, points out that Ruskin possessed “special qualifications
is for social and economic criticism; for he was a skilled specialist in the finer
qualities of work which men put into the raw material supplied by Nature in order
to furnish the necessaries of human consumption.”

In his first lecture on work in The Crown of Wild Olive, Ruskin takes up some
glaring problems of the poor. He does not like that society in which the poor
become poorer and the rich richer. The upper classes enjoy themselves by
compelling the poor labourers to work for them and to provide for them. There is
no difference between the modern capitalists and the barons in the Middle Ages so
far as the poor are concerned :

“And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the road-side suffer now quite as much
from the bag baron as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and Crags have just
the same result on rags.”

In the same lecture, Ruskin clarified the false notions about the rich and the poor.
There are two bases of distinction between the two—the lawful and the unlawful.
The lawful basis of wealth is that a man who works should be paid the fair value of
his work and that if he does not like it spend it today, he should have freedom to
keep it for tomorrow. Thus an industrious man working daily will save something in
the end. On the other hand, there is the idle person who does not work and the
wasteful person who lays nothing by will be doubly poor in possession and dissolute
in moral habit. A law should be enacted in society that only he who earns justly
should keep money. This is the proper basis of distinction between the rich and the
poor. But there is also a false basis. There are people who inherit money and make
more money by the power to use it. They set themselves to the accumulation of
money as the sole object of their lives. Ruskin feels that such people are an

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uneducated class because an educated or brave man cannot make money-earning

the chief object of his thoughts. With them work is first and money second. They
are God’s servants. The former are slaves of money, they are satans.

In his lecture on Traffic in The Crown of Wild Olive, Ruskin exhorts people to give
up Mammon-worship because it is detrimental to man’s moral, social and spiritual
development. He says, “Continue to make that forbidden duty your principal one and
soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe
will come or worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering into Hades. But
if you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life
for all men as for yourselves—if you can determine some honest and simple order
of existence ; following these trodden ways of wisdom which are pleasantness and
seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace; then, and so sanctifying
wealth into ‘common wealth’ all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your
domestic affection and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent
harmony.”

Ruskin was aware of the ills of growing industrialization. The industrial urge of his
times led to unhealthy competitions and intolerance. It made people greedy and
selfish. The money-making tendency made the privileged class exploit the poor
workers. Ruskin satirizes such people in his lecture on work : “However, in every
nation, there are and must always be a certain number of these Friend’s servants
who have it principally for the object of their lives to make money. They are
always, as I said more or less stupid and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as
money. Stupidity is always the basis of Judas bargain.”

Thus Ruskin told the people of his age that all was not well with the prosperous
classes. They were being deadened in soul by the wealth they possessed. They were
wholly blind to the fearful cost at which it was being won to the destruction of the
beauty and the country which was gradually but surely removing some of the most
purifying and uplifting influences that can work upon the hearts of men and to the
self-destroying drudgery and monotony of the mechanical toil to which the boasted
inventions of the century were condemning the vast majority of the population.

The Crown of Wild Olive is, therefore, a commentary on the contemporary social
and economic life. In it Ruskin appears not merely as a satirist, but he changes
himself into a preacher and a prophet. The satirist being changed into a preacher,

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exhorts work-men to be loyal and to love their work and their employers; asks the
traders not to be money-minded and advises the soldier to be loyal to his calling.

“I venerate Ruskin”, said George Eliot, “as one of the great

teachers of the age ; he teaches with the inspiration of the
Hebrew prophet.” In the light of this encomium, briefly underline
the core of Ruskin’s message in The Crown of Wild Olive.

Ruskin has been acclaimed as a great teacher and a prophet of the age. Like
Hebrew prophet he exhorts his people to shun the path of evil and to adopt the
path of righteousness and upright living. Almost all that he wrote conveys his moral
message. Ruskin revolted against the gross materialistic attitude of the eighteenth
century.

Poetry has become mere polished exercise, life mere polished existence. High
morals were not cared for. With the advent of the nineteenth century, prophets
like Wordsworth and Coleridge came to enlighten the age. They were followed by
Ruskin and Carlyle who wrote to arouse a new awakening in the mind of the public.
‘Ruskin linked art and life with morality. He emerged as a great moralist both in the
realm of art and in the various spheres of society.

Like Plato, Ruskin stood for morality in art and literature. Plato would banish from
his Republic all poets who were not edifying. Ruskin carried the idea still further,
making the arts an exponent of the social and political virtues of a nation and of
the writers themselves. Though Ruskin was not the first exponent of this type of
reciprocity of art and morals, yet he made the idea so peculiarly his own that, in
England at least, it is always associated with him. Literature, according to him,
supports the theory that there is a correspondence between moral elevation and
imaginative work. Good art, he says, is balanced, reserved, constructive, inventive,
complete, pure and lovely. The best artist exhibits all these qualities. Finally,
Ruskin works out the relationship between the artist and the ethical state of the
age. All the good qualities of the artist will be rendered useless if the condition of
the age is degraded.

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The Crown of Wild Olive embodies this message of Ruskin. He emphasises the
moral approach to all things : “the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in
substance, not in ciphers.” In his lecture on Traffic, he exhorts people to give up
Mammon-worship because it is detrimental to art, science and pleasure. He says,
“Continue to make that forbidden duty your principal one and soon no more art, no
more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come or worse
than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering into Hades. But if you can fix
some conception of a true human state of life to be striven for—life for all men as
for yourselves if you can determine some honest and simple order of existence ;
following these trodden ways of wisdom which are pleasantness and seeking her
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;—then, and so sanctifying wealth into
‘commonwealth’, all your art, your literature, your daily labours, your domestic
affection and citizen’s duty, will join and increase into one magnificent harmony.”

He gives a message to the lovers of money : “However, in every nation, there are
and must always be certain number of these Friend’s servants who have it
principally for the object of their lives to make money. They are always, as I said,
more or less stupid and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money.” He
continues to say, “That whenever money is the principal object of life with either
man or nation, it is both got ill and spent ill and does harm both in the getting and
spending ; but when it is not the principal object it and all other things will be well
got and well-spent.”

Ruskin was a staunch advocate of self-development. It is not what a man has that
is to be considered but what he is. Is he a self-made man not in exterior
circumstances, but in wealth of character ? One must be at the very outset,
realize the mystery and wonder of life, discard the placid enthusiasm that is the
mark of the artificial man, cultivate the openness of perception, the retention of
the childish sense of wonder that marks the true man, who has eyes admiringly
wide to the world about him, is worthy of the power that placed him in it……to be
willing to see the beauty that is……to show helpful sympathy for men about us, to
be willing and glad to work for the joy of doing our work well and above all to keep
clear our sight of the real mystery and nobility of life—that in short, is the burden
of the prophecy of Ruskin.

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What, according to Ruskin, are the three kinds of ‘noble

war’?
Ruskin calls was as the foundation of all arts. He means to say that it is the
foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It is a practical fact that
peace and vices of civil life flourish together. All nations realized the truth that
war nourishes and invigorates them whereas peace wastes and debilitates them.
But Ruskin does not refer to the wars of barbarians or the Scotch border feuds or
the Napoleonic war, because such wars build nothing except tombs.

He refers to creative or ‘noble war’ which disciplines love and ambition and kills
evil. In such wars the natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the
nobleness of the institutions and purity of the households which they are called
upon to defend.

Ruskin divides this ‘noble war’ into three kinds :

(1) War for Exercise or Play

Ruskin condemns war for the sake of war. He justifies that war which is
undertaken more as a play or exercise of the personal power of human creatures
than a tool of vengeance upon innocent people. In the past war used to be more an
exercise than any thing else among the classes who caused and proclaimed it. To
the governor and the soldier, it had always been a grand pastime. No king whose
mind was fully occupied with the development of the inner resources of his
kingdom, ever entered into war except under compulsion. No youth who was
sincerely busy with any peaceful subject of study ever became a soldier.

Fighting is implanted in human nature and hence for all healthy men, fair fight is
the best play and that a tournament was a better game than a steeple-chase. Only
that game of war is justifiable in which the full personal power of the human
creature is brought out in management of its weapons. There are three reasons for
this. First, the great justification of this game is that when well played, it
determines, who is the best man, who is the most fearless, the swiftest of eye and
hand. The issue of the battle must not depend on the longest gun or the best gun-
power but on the firmness of frame and fairness of hand. The other two reasons
for this mode of decision are the lessening of material destructiveness or cost and
the physical distress of war.

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(ii) War of Dominion

This is the commonest type of war. The real motive for such wars is not unholy
because human nature is essentially noble. But when this nobility is forgotten, man
begins to commit follies and sins. Ruskin says that the kings and princes are free to
extend their domin-ion, but they should be gentlest and the most generous of all
nobles. If the rulers had any idea of welfare for their subjects, the wars for the
increase of power would not have taken place. .If the ruler neglects his subjects
and revels only in extending his territory, he is failing in his duty. To hear the
complaints of numerous people, to make laws for them and lead them to purer life
is a big work for the king and he should concentrate on this.

In this connection, Ruskin defines true power. He says that it does not depend
either on multitude of men or on extent of territory. It is wrong to suppose that
nations become strong according to their numbers. They become strong only if
these numbers are one mind. But mere number is not sufficient. A little group of
wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools. Only that nation gains true
territory which gains itself.

(iii) War for Defence

The third kind of war that Ruskin calls a ‘noble deed’ is the war for defence. It is
the war waged simply for the defence of the country in which we were born and
for the maintenance and execution of her laws by whomsoever threatened or
defied. Most men joining the army consider themselves bound to duty. These
persons should act as sentimental beings, because it is on the whole, the love of
adventure, love of fine dress, love of the pride of fame which chiefly make a boy
like going into the Guards better than into a counting house. Therefore, for their
honour and that of their familities, they should choose brave death in a red coat in
preference to brave life in a black coat.

The soldiers who dedicate their lives to the cause of their country, feel that the
wars fought by them are always for the cause of the good. But Ruskin feels that
the soldiers, who have to fight at the orders of others, have to labour under a
form of slavery. The ruler, and administrators, the persons who govern, are not
always the best men, and it is they who decide where the soldiers have to fight.
Therefore, the guides and leaders of the soldiers need to be noble and righteous
people. Passive obedience is not the ideal of soldiership. A separation between civil

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and military duties— brave men fighting and cowards thinking and directing—is not
a happy state of things. To ennoble their country, the soldiers should be
industrious they should think and feel as well as fight for their country.

Q. 8. What, according to Ruskin, are the three distinct schools of

architecture and religions in Europe ?

Ans. In his lecture on Traffic, Ruskin speaks of the archi-tecture and religion of
Europe. According to him, Europe had three distinct schools of architecture and
three great religions. The schools of architecture were the direct offshoot of
religions. Religion had a deep impact on the kind of architecture that came into
being from, time to time. Ruskin mentions these three schools : (i) the Greek,
which worshipped the God of wisdom and power, (ii) the Medieval, which
worshipped the God of judgment and consolation, and (iii) the Renaissance, which
worshipped the God of Pride and Beauty.

(i) The Greek School

The first Greek idea of Deity was expressed in the words ‘Diurnal’ and ‘Divine’,
meaning the god of Day, Jupiter the revealer. From his daughter, Athena, who is
Intellect, rose strength and peace. The Greek sought this bright, serene,
resistless wisdom, with a resolute energy of will, knowing that for failure there was
no conso-lation, and for sin there was no remission. Greek architecture rose
unerring, bright, clearly defined and self-contained.

(ii) The Christian School

Next came the Christian faith, which was essentially the religion of comfort and
consolation. Its doctrine is the remission of sins; for which cause it happens, too
often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly
glorified, as if, the more it had to be healed of, the more divine was the healting.
The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual contemplation of sin and
disease, and of imaginary states of purification from them. Conse-quently, such a
state resulted into an architecture conceived in a mingled sentiment of melancholy
and aspiration, partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to everyone of
our needs and everyone of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are

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strong or weak. Of all architecture, it is the noblest when built by the noble, and
the basest, when built by the base.

(iii) The Renaissance School

The Christian faith was followed by the religion of pleasure in Europe. All Europe
gave herself to luxury, ending in death—first the Maskball and then the guillotine.

According to Ruskin, these three worships issued in vast temple building. The
Greek built the Parthenon, the medieval built chapels to the Virgin—our Lady of
Salvation. The Renaissance built the’ Vetican and Versailles.

What, according to Ruskin, can women do to prevent war?

While discussing the role of the soldiers in wars, Ruskin does not forget to mention
the role of women in shaping the destiny of soldiers. He calls women as the souls of
soldiers. If women fail in their part, soldiers will also fail in the discharge of their
duty. Women are, in fact, absolute helpmates without whose help and aid no man
can stand on his own.

Women generally think that it is their duty to render help to men in their hour of
peril. They are courageous enough to bear up against the pangs of separation,
suspense and grief for the death of their dear ones. But there is a greater
heroism, that is, the heroism in prosperity. This heroism is revealed when their
young soldiers are in the bloom of their vanity and mothers and maidens must pray
for the moral welfare of their sons and lovers. It is during these hours of
prosperity that there is the greatest danger of their being led into paths of evil.
Women can shape the lives of men as they desire. They can make their husbands
brave and wise as well as coward and foolish. It all depends on the influence they
exercise over them. They provide them peace through all the world’s warfare and
they accord them praise in the win of the world. They brighten, all that is dark in
them.

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Ruskin is of the view that women are responsible for poverty, misery and rage of
battle throughout Europe. If they wish, no war in the world would last long. If wars
smashed the China in the drawing-rooms of ladies, instead of unroofing peasants’
houses, no war in civilized countries would last a week, Every battle makes many
widows and orphans. Nobody has a sincere heart to mourn with these. If every
Christian lady takes a vow to mourn, at least outwardly for God’s killed creatures,
war would end. If every lady in the upper classes of civilized, Europe simply vows
that while war continues, she will wear black garments, as a symbol of mourning, no
war would last a week. And lastly, Ruskin says that women should not vainly boast
of their son’s or husband’s bravery. The mothers should teach their sons to be just
and perfect in the Fear of God and they should not hail the bravery of their sons
which is but a fool’s boast and then there will be no war.

Enumerate Ruskin’s view of work. How many kinds of-work

does he refer to in his lecture on work ?

In his lecture on work, Ruskin refers to four types of distinctions among various
activities known as work. They are :

(i) Between work and play ;

(ii) Between production and consumption ;

(iii) Between brain work and manual labour ; and

(iv) Between wise labour and foolish labour.

(i) Ruskin, first of all, defines the words ‘work’ and ‘play’. Play is an exertion of
body or mind made to please ourselves and with no determined end. If play were
done as an ordered exercise for health’s sake, it would become work. In work,
there is a definite aim and there is utility.

Ruskin refers to various games. The first of all English games is the game of
making money. Money is accumulated for itself, not as a means to an end. Next
English games are Hunting and Shooting, which are costly. Horse-racing is ‘a

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fashionable game which results in gambling. Next game is the ladies’ game of
dressing which is also costly. But the greatest game of all, the play of plays, is the
game of war, the costliest of games. The money for war is paid by men working in
fields and factories. The jewel-cutter whose sight fails over the diamonds, the
wearer whose arm fails over the web, the iron-forger whose breath fails before
the furnace, pay for wars and they are the sincere workers who know no play.

(ii) Referring to the second distinction, Ruskin speaks of the luxurious life led by
the rich at the cost of the poor. The lawful basis of wealth is that a man who
works should be paid the fair value of his work and if he does not spend it today,
he should be free to keep it for tomorrow. But accumulation of wealth is done by a
thoughtless person. The idle person does not work, and the wasteful person who
lays nothing by will be doubly poor in possession and poor in morals. The capitalist
throbs en the money actually earned by others, whereas the actual producers of
money remain poor and become victims of evils of poverty.

(iii) The third distinction is between the intellectual and manual labour. Both kinds
of work are indispensable. The work should be done by arms, otherwise none of us
could live. Brain work must also be done otherwise life would not be worth living
Rough work is to be done by rough men and gentle work by gentlemen. It is
physically impossible that one class should do or divide the work of the other.
Whether manual work is honourable or not, one fact is clear that the labour is
totally exhausted after the day’s work. He is not the same man at the end of the
day or night as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything
comfortable about him. Rough work is at all events real, honest and generally
useful, whereas the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish, false and
dishonourable.

(iv) Speaking of the last point, Ruskin tells that there are three tests of wise work
: it is honest, useful and cheerful when we get honesty in play, we call it fair play,
when we hate it, we call it foul play. Similarly there is fair work and foul work.
Secondly, wise work is useful. It matters little if it is hard. It must lead to some
usefulness. It should not be wasteful because of all wastes, the greatest waste is
that of labour. To, waste the labour of man is to kill him. Lastly, wise work should
be cheerful as a child’s work is. To attain God’s kingdom on earth, we require the
character of child. This character consists of three elements : (i) Modesty ; (ii)
Faithfulness; (iii) Lovingness ; and (iv) Cheerfulness. By including these qualities in

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him, man can enter the kingdom of God. Working men can seek inspiration among
children for the redress of their grievances.

“No great art ever yet rose upon earth but among a nation
of soldiers.” Discuss the views of Ruskin on the relation
between art and war.
According to Ruskin, there is a close relationship between art and war. All great
arts have been created by nations of soldiers and warriors. It may seem
paradoxical, because soldiers have been seen to destroy the work of art during the
course of war. But it is a historical fact that art has been cultivated and produced
in those countries which engaged, themselves in great battles.

Ruskin tells that great art started in Egypt. The Egyptians-were war-like people. In
their social system, the ruling, caste were priests and the second, soldiers. But the
themes of their famous sculptures and the exploits of warrior kings, going to
battle or receiving the homage of conquered armies. Even the priests were not
merely occupied with theology but played a vital role in the government and laws of
the country.

The next nation to develop art is Greece, All Greek poetry and all painting are
nothing else than the description, praise or dramatic representation of wars and
battles. All Greek institutions accorded greatest respect to war. It is evident from
the Greek images. Apollo is the god of all wisdom, but he bears the arrow and the
bow before he bears the lyre. Athena is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. But
she is distinguished from other deities by means of the helmet and the shield and
not by the shuttle.

However, there are two great differences in principle between the Greek and the
Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece, there was no soldier caste, every citizen
was necessarily a soldier. Again while the Greeks rightly despised mechanical arts
as much as the Egyptians, they did not make the fatal mistake of despising
agricultural and pastoral life, but perfectly honoured both. These two advantages
raised them to- the highest rank of wise manhood. That has yet been reached. No
wonder that modern Europe’s all great arts and all great thoughts have been

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borrowed or derived from the Greeks. If they are taken away from the Europeans,
they stand nowhere.

Ruskin says that war is not the only thing for the development of art. Art-instinct
is equally necessary. He takes the example of the Romans, who were great
fighters, but art-instinct was wholly wanting in them. Ruskin feels that though the
Roman boasted of being born of Mars and suckled by the wolf, he was at heart
more of a farmer than soldier. He went to war with some practical purpose and so
his poetry was in domestic life only. The stage was of Gothic chivalry and the
romantic knights before whom was a passion and with that passion came the revival
of the arts which reached its zenith in the great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany
which witnessed fierce battles. Likewise, the art reached its culmination in Venice
which gave to European history the heroic feats of king Dandolo.

Ruskin, lastly, says that art in Europe declined with the decline of martial spirit.
Art is also associated with luxury and degeneration. Whenever, the faculties of
men are at the highest, they must express themselves by art. So a state without
such an expression is at the lowest level of human nature. So when the author says
that war is the foundation of all the arts, he means also that it is the foundation of
all the high virtues and faculties of men.

“As an artist in prose, he (Ruskin) is one of the most

miraculous products of the extremely poetical genius of
England.” (G.K. Chesterton) Comment.
For the first two questions, see ‘Introduction—Ruskin’s Style’. For the third
question, add the following :

Very often it is said that what Ruskin said is more academic than practical. His
views are generally whimsical, in which exaggeration is to be found. For example,
the theory he has propounded as to the intimate relation between war and art can
scarcely be said to be justified. He tried to get rid of the objection that the
Romans, though great soldiers were not art-lovers, by stating that at heart the
Roman soldier was a farmer, a lover of his field. But that is also the case with the
Maratha soldier. He is not less a soldier on that account—though to be sure

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neither the Roman nor the Maratha soldier was an art-lover, is it fair to say that
he—the Roman or the Maratha—was not a soldier ?

But his matter is not always of uncertain values. Not doubt, in his own time he
cried in wilderness. But almost within a decade of his death, several of his schemes
were realized and put to practice. His matter may be considered as of uncertain
value, but his expression is unequalled.

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