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III.

JOHN RUSK IN

ECONOMIST

EDINBURGH : WILLIAM BROWN
26 PRINCES STREET

MDCCCLXXXIV

/'~\F old sang Chaucer of the Flower and Leaf :
N-X The mii'thful singer of a golden time ;

And szveet birds' song throughout his daisied rhyme
Rang fearless ; for our cities held no grief

Dumb in their blackened hearts beneath the grime
Of factory and furnace, atid the sheaf

J J 'as borne in gladness at the harvest-time.
So now the Seer would quickeji our belief :

' Life the green leaf saith he, ' and Art the flower.
Blow winds of heaven about the hearts of men,

Come love, and hope, and helpfulness, as ivhen
On fainting vineyard falls the freshening shozver :

Fear not that life may blossom yet again,
A nobler beauty from a purer power I '

434522

J^HN RUSKIN.

THE surprise, perplexity, and sometimes indeed
exasperation with which so many of even the
more sympathetic of Mr. Ruskin's earher readers and
critics have received his recent works must be
frankly admitted, and as far as possible accounted for.
To most people, ordinary difficulties, such as are
exhibited by other authors, whether of unconvention-
ality of thought, profundity of learning, or intricacy
of style, are far exceeded by the personal one — -of
interpreting what seems an unreasonable and violent
change of career. They hear of a veteran art teacher,
critic, and man of letters suddenly casting aside his
hard-won laurels, resuming the weapons with which
in his youth he had hardly slain the small art-critics
of the magazines, dashing off into apparently the most
remote of all possible fields, that of political economy,
casting down his glove in challenge among its sturdy
and sober cultivators, loudly proclaiming their patiently-
o^athered harvest mere tares and darnel, hurlingf blazine
pamphlets into the overflowing granaries of their
science, and charging with fiery impetuosity against
its massive loo'ic mills.

It is not, then, to be wondered at, if the bystanders,
mostly plain common-sense people, who think that
art and political economy are no doubt all very well,

2-^ ; •, ., yo/ni Ruslcin.

but will get on best, as they themselves have done, by
mindin<^ their own business and letting that of other
folks alone, sec in this would-be-delivering knight only
the latest avatar of the truly immortal hero of Cer-
vantes, and so either join merrily in the hooting, or
pass by in sorrow, as their own moral temper happens
to incline. Even from those who love progress so
warmly as not to be deterred by the strange appear-
ance of the new reformer, and who seek the out-of-
the-way village where costly books are published for
poor men, we gather tidings of the establishment for
the hundredth time of a new Utopia, — surely at most an
ominous sign that the leaven of economic heresy,
which is spreading so fast on the Continent and in
America, and w^ith such grim results of Socialism and
Communism, of Nihilism and Anarchy, is in our quiet
industrial community too, and will henceforth work.
The student, indeed, who has learned from Bismarck,
Hildebrand, or Lassalle, statesman, professor, and
radical alike, that our German neighbours are bent
upon giving Socialism a trial, and are only delayed by
the discussion of comparative details, may read on in
hopes of some luminous suggestions ; but what is to
be learned or hoped from a man who speaks con-
temptuously of all the highest practical achievements
of the nineteenth century ? For him is not its science
either of mere mechanism or evolutionary nonsense ;
its physics and mathematics mere aids to railroad
and telegraph making ; its chemistry and biology mere
disgusting curiosity about stinks and bones ; — its
splendid development of modern commerce and
fmance is little better than complex thieving ; the
steam engine is a filthy nuisance, never to set wheel
on St. George's lands ; our vast and prosperous

yohn Ruskiii. 3

industrial cities are so many working models of hell ;
nay, even our hard -won system of education with its
clear practical aims is to make way for schools with a
curriculum of Latin, and botany, and the history of
Florence ! Here, surely, we have a clue to the right
critical estimate. Our would-be economist is but an
artist born out of his proper mediaeval time ; his mourn-
ful jeremiads, nay, whole books of lamentations, with
their wailing retrospects of the good old times, and
their bitterly pessimist prophecies, far out-Carlyling
Carlyle, are perhaps natural for him, but clearly useless
for us ; so let us either take what amuses us in the
art books, say the scenery in " Modern Painters,"
to which considerable merit of style is undeniable,
or if we find even that as well done in novels now-a-
days, let him alone altogether.

Such is, probably, a fair statement of the opinions to
which a very large number of the reading public have
steadily settled down : a minority, however, still dissent
more or less completely from this estimate, and appeal
for a new reading, apparently in confident hope of
ultimately obtaining a less unfavourable judgment.
Deceived though the latter class may be by mere
rhetorical finish and sentimental glow, we cannot, in
the interest of fair play, refuse to give them a new
hearing, or to briefly re-examine for ourselves the
economic position of Mr. Ruskin, and that of the
orthodox English economist, who is the more especial
object of his attacks. But let it be clearly understood
that the writer is no grateful art-student, if such there
be ; still less any enthusiastic Guildsman of St. George,
eager to do battle for his master ; but a quiet student
of science and economics, one of those scholars of
Huxley and Darwin, of Spencer and Comte, of whom

4 y oJui Rusk in.

Mr. Ruskin has so often spoken other than smooth
things. One aim, however, is clearly avowed — an aim
characteristic of all the essays of the present series —
that of attempting to substitute the scientific for the
literary method of criticism. The ordinary journalistic
method of criticising a book like Mr. Ruskin's " Fors
Clavigera," namely, that of quoting only some web of
paradox or burst of passion, is at once dishonest to the
author and misleading to the reader. The scientific
attitude should be the precise reverse of this. The
student, if genuinely trained at all, soon lays aside the
slim text-book which incompletely summarizes the
facts of his science from one author's own narrow
standpoint, and learns to work his way dispassionately
through the vast literature which lies behind it ; often
wearily wading through shallow seas of verbiage, or
toiling patiently through deserts of details, useless and
numberless as the sand ; now silently evading some
dismal swamp of error, often crushing a whole stony
volume for a few grains of genuine gold. Nuggets
indeed there are, but never gold-beds nor Aladdin
palaces, and even the traveller's own hard-won
treasure will need refining and re-refining by his
intellectual heirs. So then if we agree to take up the
scientific attitude, if, instead of collecting curiosities
of apparent or real error leaving the truth behind, we
seek to gather out of these masses of new and strange
thought whatever we find, on fair analysis, to be true
metal, we are ready to begin gold washing.

But, before making any further analysis of our
heretical economist, we must obtain some basis of
comparison and ascertain something of the orthodox
ones, whom (disregarding of course their many minor
differences), we may take as fairly represented in the

Jo Jul Ruskin. 5

domain of practical life by statesmen like Lord
Sherbrooke, John Bright, or the Duke of Argyll ; or
again, by the majority of the economic professoriate
of Britain, among whom it is hardly necessary to
recall such distinguished names as Stanley Jevons or
Sidgwick, Bonamy Price or Hodgson, Fawcett or Levi,
Here, surely, is a school of thinkers of whom our
country may be justly proud, men of high education
and honourable aims, who have not only brought to
the investigation of their subject an intellectual subtlety
and force unsurpassed by the students of any science,
and to its exposition a calm logical clearness and
precision which their colleagues in university or
senate might, for the most part, well envy, but, when
opportunity for practical action has been given them,
have often seemed to unite the best qualities of indus-
trialist and theorician, of statesman and philanthropist.

This, then, we may surely regard as an ideal
scientific school, that may well claim to take rank
with those of geology or biology, medicine or en-
gineering, which have been doing such splendid work
during the last generation. Many fully allow this
claim, many perhaps ignore ; yet to its full recognition
one difficulty alone arises, which, though seemingly of
small importance alike to the economist and to the
public, is serious enough from our present scientific
standpoint to need brief examination.

Without going over all the stages by which the
place of economics among the sciences has been
defined by philosophers, the reader may be reminded I
that loo^ic and mathematics, dealingf with the abstract
relations of quality and quantity, underlie and precede
the physical, natural, and social sciences ; that of these
physics and chemistry are antecedent to the strictly

6 JoJni Riiskin.

biological group (which incUidcs zoology, botany,
physiology, etc), while the social sciences, having for
their subject the phenomena presented by those
organisms, which, like bees and ants, beavers and
men, live in communities, are obviously founded upon
tlie whole preceding mass of knowledge,- which is
accordingly grouped under the convenient title of
" Preliminary Sciences." In other words, the success-
ful treatment of the social science requires not merely
a discipline in mathematics, as some suppose, still less
mere training in academic metaphysic and dialectic —
which is all that so many bring to the task — but some
sound knowledge of living beings and of the physical
laws to which they are subject.

While the details of this classification of the sciences
are, among philosophers, the subject of a dispute —
happily of no consequence here, — it is accepted for all
essential practical purposes, alike in the organisation
of learned societies and in the scientific curriculum of
universities, that is to say, in the actual teaching and
learning of the world. Now the difficulty in fully
recoQi'nisinQ:" the British economists as scientific lies in
the existence, during the past generation, if not indeed
during the entire century, of the most complete state
of war between the economists on the one hand, and
the cultivators of the preliminary sciences on the
other. This is evidenced not merely by the almost
complete suspension of relations between the two
camps, or by the fact that only here and there a
scientific society accepts economic communications,
but also by the frequent occurrence of positive battle.
A convenient recent instance of this is afforded by the
history of what is after all our most representative
scientific parliament— the British Association. This

John Ruskin. 7

body divides its labours broadly in accordance with
the classification of the sciences above referred to into
sections, respectively entitled — {a) Mathematics and
physics ; {b) chemistry ; {c) geology ; {d) biology
(including anthropology) ; {c) economics and statistics,
together with (/") geography, and {g) mechanical
science ; the former being separated from geology for
convenience sake, and the latter being exclusively
concerned with the practical applications of science.

The scientific sections of the British Association
are well known to be much less sternly scientific than
the respective special societies, while the economic
section, on the other hand, bears a decidedly more
serious and thorough character than kindred bodies,
such as the Social Science Congress. Yet so little
have the students of the preliminary sciences respected
the discussions of their economic brethren, that their
dissatisfaction culminated, in 1876, in an active
attempt to excommunicate the latter, to cut off the
Economic Section, root and branch, as no better than
a disgrace to a scientific association. (This almost
total failure of the section to accomplish any scientific
work was avowed with the most startling frankness by
its president, Mr. Grant Duff, in an opening address
at the jubilee meeting of the Association in 1881,
which is worth reading, as being pretty certainly the
least jubilant historical retrospect ever made by any
learned body whatever). To avert an expulsion, which
would have so grievously discredited political economy
in the public eye, the section sought an apologist, and
wisely selected Mr. Ingram of Dublin as its president
for 1878. Mr. Ingram delivered a masterly address,
which, in Mr. Grant Duff's retrospect, is rightly
described as " the most elaborate and brilliant to

8 John Riiskin.

which the section had ever h'stened." In this essay,
soon widely circulated throughout Europe, " On the
Present Position and Prospects of Political Economy,"
although appointed to bless his economic brethren, he
well-nigh cursed them altogether, at once pleading
guilty for them to all the accusations of their scientific
assailants, and delivering a destructive criticism of the
past and present of British economics — a criticism
exceeding anything of that kind ever attempted by
Mr. Ruskin, as much in completeness as in calm. By
as ably vindicating, however, the claims of sociology
to its supreme place among the sciences, as by pro-
posing complete reforms, the attack upon the Economic
Section was skilfully averted, and it remains yet
awhile in hope of better fruit. Finally, three years
later, at the mournful jubilee above referred to, Mr.
Grant Duff, from the presidential chair, repeated,
extended, and enforced, all the criticisms and proposals
of Ingram, without a word of protest or even depreca-
tion. If, then, we can ascertain precisely what the
defects of our orthodox economists, as now exposed
and admitted, really are, we shall immediately be able
to examine not only Mr. Ruskin's heresies, but all
other cases of dissent, from a new stand-point, and by
Jt clearer light.

Political economy has often been popularly nicknamed
" the dismal science," but nothing can really be more
striking tlian the cheerful optimism of our orthodox
economist, who often gives, as Cairnes puts it, "a hand-
some ratification of the existing state of society as ap-
proximately perfect," for is it not determined by " im-
mutable law " ? and has not Adam Smith established
the harmony of a community under "enlightened self-
interest?" What could be more modern and scientific

yohn Riiskin. 9

than this conception of harmonious law ? Yet not so ;
German economists have clearly shewn how the ,
" Wealth of Nations " is no pure economic treatise, but /
subtly permeated, though the matter-of-fact British
reader may not notice it, with all the philosophy of its
author's day. This beautiful harmony of interests, in
short, has nothing in common with our grim modern
doctrine of the "Struggle for Existence;" it is identical
with the early teleological view which Darwin has ex-
pelled from biology ; it is the modern survival of Leib-
nitz's " Pre-established Harmony," and the exponent
of this as the "best of all possible worlds" turns out
to be the Dr. Pangloss, of " Candide." But the worthy
theologian has suffered so sorely at the hands of all his
critics that he dares only venture to assert " this is the
best of all possible worlds" from the economic rostrum.

This certainly is not encouraging, but we must not
let a trifling criticism of this sort prejudice us against
the economist ; we shall surely find him sound and
scientific in the main points of his science. What,
then, is its fundamental conception ? " Utility,"
answers Mr. Jevons; "wealth," says Mr. Mill; and
these two definitions come to the same thing, for
wealth consists of " utilities fixed and embodied in
permanent objects." What surely can seem more
practical and more scientific than this conception of
utility ? What trace of obsolete philosophy can linger
here ? Alas ! strange as it may seem, the whole spirit
of mediaeval metaphysics. This utility, this central idea
of the economic " science," has nothing whatever to do
with science, and, whether in the hands of Bentham or
Mill, Jevons or Sherbrooke, it matters not, is essen-
tially a figment of antique scholasticism for all !

For, observe, the conception of utility corresponds

lo John Ruskin.

exactly to that of vitality in biology ; just as wealth is
utility fixed or embodied in permanent objects, so of
course oro^anisms were lono^ defined as vitalities fixed
and embodied in permanent objects. But the biologist
without any more doubting that organisms are alive
than that wealth is useful has long utterly scorned,
and, what is better, utterly abandoned the attempt to
make his science the study of vitality. While his
grandfather, the last century physician, commenced
with definitions of vitality, and talked much of animal
spirits, of humours and the like, he observes each
organism in its past and present relations in actual
space and time, analyses its structures, and inquires
how they work, generalises his observations, and then
is done. The old apothecary, too, explained that opium
made one sleep in virtue of its inherent dormitiveness
{^''virtus donnitiva''), but, thanks to Moliere, the pro-
fession has since learned that the fixture and embodi-
ment of an entity called dormitiveness into the
permanent object opium does not explain anything,
much less form the basis of a science of therapeutics :
the physician now simply observes and applies the
fact, and when asked why application of this curious
mixture of alkaloids should have this particular effect
frankly avows his ignorance, and sets about experi-
mentin£[.

So, too, the physicist, when he observes that water
only rises thirty-two feet in his pump, no longer appeals
to the " natural law " by which " nature abhors a
vacuum ;" he no longer explains the regular move-
ments of a watch by reference to its "horologity" or of
a jack by help of "an inherent meat-roasting
principle." The physicist and naturalist may well be
surprised to learn that the dormitiveness of opium and

yohn Rtiskin. 1 1

the horologity of clocks, so far from having wholly
disappeared from modern thought into the history
of its emancipation, have actually been generalised into
a new entity — ''titility,'' and thus form the subject of
an inquiry, which its cultivators, indeed, describe as a
"hypothetical" or as an "abstract science," but which,
we see, requires the addition of the prefix " pseudo — ,"
or the affix " falsely so called," for its more accurate
definition.

If space allowed, it would be easy to show how this
vicious tendency to invent abstractions instead of
workino- out o-eneralisations, runs throucrh the whole
subject. Thus the quantity of anything which happens
to be demanded, and the supply which happens to be
forthcoming, at a given place and time, are legitimate
and profitable objects for statistical and historical
research. These, the two real aspects of the subject,
however, are generally neglected, and by the simpler
process of spelling with capitals, "Supply and Demand "
become raised into the mysterious regulators of society
by means of "inexorable laws," and are thus, since
things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one
another, practically identical with the "Fate," "Kismet,"
and " Providence " of Pagan, Mohammedan, and
Christian philosophers. Nor is the logic less quaintly
interesting than the metaphysics. The endless initial
squabbles about definitions, the old disputes whether
the inductive or deductive method alone is to be used,
as reasonable as if naturalists were to quarrel at the
outset of their studies whether eyes were to be bandaged
or hands tied, might all detain us. One favourite
practice we may conveniently describe as "generalis-
ation of the incongruous." The absurdity of the
jumbling of material things ABC, with immaterial

1 2 yohn Riiskm.

things X y z, — intentional in such well-known lines as
" Brimful of wrath and cabbage," " They sought it
with forks and hope," — is concealed alike from author
and readers, by first uniting them under some vague
general term of common language, such as Capital, and
then subjecting this to an elaborate analysis, setting up
a new series of abstract entities L M N, such as fixed
capital, circulating capital, and what not, in which the
original realities are all hopelessly confused ; finally
treating this by an apparatus of metaphor, which,
because far more elaborate and recondite — but, it must
be confessed, considerably less imaginative — than that
of poetry, requires a deceptive resemblance to scientific
comparison in sober prose. The quaint and compara-
tively intelligible phrases of the newspapers, such as
"tallow is firm," "pig iron lively," are not taken for
anything more than the poetry of 'Change : Mr.
Fawcett, however, apparently supposes himself to have
enunciated a scientific conception, when he explains
that "the remuneration of capital is the reward of
abstinence." The expression "clotted nonsense " has
been thought scarcely admissible in literary criticism,
but the definition of capital as " thickly curdled work-
ing time," has appeared to some economists profoundly
scientific.

If we now enter upon the actual examination of
economic literature, we find our apparently homo-
geneous science breaking up into innumerable dis-
cordant schools. While the legal and literary econo-
mists, like those of the school of Ricardo, imagine that
by adroitly spinning and weaving definitions and
syllogisms in their logic mills, they manufacture a
body of " natural laws " thereafter rigid and universal
as those of mathematics, the economist of mathematical

yo/m RiLskm. 13

turn, like Gabaglio or Jevons, proclaims the potency
of the " statistical method," or maintains that algebra
and the calculus furnish the true means of economic
investigation. To such minds, the theory of exchange
seems of course fundamental, but the economist of
more practical and physical turn devotes himself
especially to the study of " material wealth, its pro-
duction, distribution, and consumption," while both
classes often stoutly refuse consideration to the nature
and wants of the community for and by whom this
wealth is produced and consumed. The majority
of economists, however, having had their attention
drawn to the rate of reproduction in organic beings
by Malthus, become in so far biologists. Yet nothing
more effectually demonstrates the extraordinary slen-
derness of their scientific pretensions than that their
physical discussions are heedless of the very existence
of the modern doctrine of energy (if indeed they
do not involve some contradiction of its fundamental
law), or that "competition" and the "laws of popula-
tion " are discussed without an apparent suspicion that
Malthus' own clue has led, in the hands of Darwin, to
the construction of a vast theory which has revolution-
ised not only modern biology, and with it our views
of the origin, nature, and destiny of man, but shed
brilliant light on all the other sciences which concern
him. Lawyer and theologian, even poet and romancer,
have been carried far by this tidal wave of thought,
strong as that of the Revolution or the Renaissance ;
the economist alone remains behind, and though here,
by exception, provided with some genuine though
fragmentary scientific conceptions of evolution and the
struggle for existence, he delays to modernise them
by the aid of the new learning, supposing, doubtless,

14 John Rusk in.

that even these — "progress," "competition," "co-
operation," and the hke, are sacred metaphysical
abstractions too.

Tt is needless for the economist to reply with Mr.
Fawcett, that "these do not come within his province,"
or with Mr. Bonamy Price, that " he cannot hope to
become a specialist." The naturalist has long ago
discerned and proclaimed that the phenomena of human
society are as dependent upon biology as those of ant
or bee society, and the orthodox economist must either
straightway follow the example of the students of mind
and language, whose (then unreformed) studies not so
long ago seemed equally remote from those humble
microscopic inquiries to which they likewise supposed
the biologist to be confined, and either adopt and apply
the conceptions of modern physics and biology, or
disappear in the unavailing struggle for existence
a^rainst them. For ever since the constitution of
sociology upon the preliminary sciences by Comte half
a century ago, the result has been certain. Spencer
and his school have continued the siege, and signs of
all kinds from both sides that the war is well nigh over
are not wanting. On the side of the besieged econo-
mists, the more far-sighted leaders, like Mr. Ingram
and Mr. Grant Duff, are unconditionally surrendering
the citadel, and indeed taking arms on the side of the
invaders; while among the latter, Huxley or Haeckel
or Vogt can hardly write a zoological text-book with-
out some jubilant prediction of the speedy conquest of
the social sciences.

Is it attempted to stop the breach by appeal to
mental or moral science ? Archaic psychological and
ethical conceptions — frequently of course of funda-
mental importance — are dragged up from the dusty

John Ruskin. 15

academic crypts, where they have escaped contact with
the ideas of the century, to be hurled at us, for have
they not supported the temple of economic orthodoxy
ever since Adam Smith (who had of course to work
with the crude notions of human nature and conduct
current in his day) sought to found economic and
moral sciences upon the irreconcilable and mutually
destructive assumptions of pure egoism and pure
altruism respectively, saying, let us found economics
on the notion of unrestrained self-interest, morals on
that of universal sympathy. In such "hypothetical
sciences," the hypothetical element is more evident
than the scientific ; and these illusory simplifications of
the problem by denying the unity of nature and of
science need not detain us here, save that they are of
interest in accounting for those moving appeals against
emotion, and contemptuous dismissals of "sentiment"^ —
themselves choice examples of emotion and sentiment,
of course of the strictly egoistic or economic sort —
with which every reader of orthodox economic literature
is familiar. Nor, passing to the conceptions which
have so long done duty for social science, need even
the central myth of " Freedom of Contract," unrelated
as it is to anything known in modern sociology, detain
us farther than as it enables us to congratulate the pro-
jectors of the approaching centenary celebration of the
French Revolution, that five years hence some orthodox
economist will probably still survive to acknowledge
his indebtedness for the all important social assump-
tion of his hypothetical science, the " Contrat Social,"
to its illustrious author, that ingenious metaphysician
whom economists have never yet sufficiently honoured,
M, Jean Jacques Rousseau,

Enough, then, has probably been said to shew that

i6 John Ruskin.

these economists, even in so far as they claim to apply
scientific conceptions at all, are unfortunately provided
with curiously archaic and erroneous ones, and that their
intellectual apparatus consists largely of broken down
heirlooms, with which the attempt to work is what
anthropologists call a "survival in culture."

If space allowed, it would be interesting to trace
how, along with this preservation of false conceptions
destroyed by science, and ignorance of true concep-
tions established by science, there is associated a
inarked scarcity of scientific observation and classifica-
'tion of phenomena, and a presence of that confusion
of fact and hypothesis, of opinion and anecdote, of
controversial trifling, and practical recipes of doubtful
efficacy, which one only finds elsewhere in equal
abundance in the scientific library of the middle ages.
But the reader can easily go on tracing the close
analogy between an orthodox "system of political
economy" and a mediseval work on natural history,
astrology, or alchemy, into its curious details ; we
have given perhaps too much time to this pursuit of
intellectual palaeontology. It would appear, then,
that Mr. Ruskin (however he has come by it), has
really had some considerable insight into this state of
things, but unfortunately denounces it with the heat of
an eager reformer instead of appreciating its high
scientific interest, and describing it with the minute-
ness it deserves. For when every year are swarming
down these hungry and all-devouring hordes of
scientific invaders, whom neither spiritual nor tem-
poral resistance can repel, whom neither the flapping
of theologian's robes nor the wagging of lawyer's
wigs can frighten from beginning to meddle with
even their special business, and to whom the medical

yolin Rusk in. 1 7

profession has deserted in a bod)-, what is to becomo
of the poor defenceless handful of metaphysicians who
have so long had economics in their keeping ? What
is to become of optimism and pre-established harmony ?
The new-comers believe in what is a good deal like
the reverse. What will become of the sacred enti-
ties ? Providence - Supply - and - Demand will be
blasphemed ; utility and what not will go the way of
virtus dormitiva and vitality ; the " elementary con-
ceptions of wealth, capital, labour," will be analysed
as ruthlessly as the elements fire, air, earth, and water ;
that historic keystone of social order, the " Contrat
Social " itself, will be exploded ; every chapter of the
hypothetical science wall be punctured, — who — who
will save us ?

An as yet unknown aspect of " inexorable law "
providentially interferes, which among the invaders
will one day be known as Natural Selection. This
goddess, more powerful and more beneficent than
Supply-and-Demand, says : —

Alas, my children, against the theologians you could indeed
survive, and among the lawyers, the politicians, and the journalists,
you were in the very camp of brethren, but these scientists are too
strong for you ; your doctrines and yourselves are doomed to inevi-
table extinction ! Yet take courage, I will prolong your days many
years : here is the secret I Acquire as fast as you can a deceptive
external resemblance to the invaders ; do not name your sacred
dogmas as of old, but conceal the old matter under their newer
manner ; its aridity and difficulty will at once keep off the public,
and impress them with profound reverence, while its superficial
resemblance to science will long satisfy even the scientists, who have
plenty to do yet awhile among their telescopes and balances, their
fossils and their flowers. This do and live ; you and your children
shall go in and out under their very noses in safety ; nay, you shall
have ' scientific ' societies of your own, even a whole department of
the British Association all to yourselves, and though here and there

B

1 8 yohn Ruskin.

some impassioned socialist or quick-eyed art-critic may detect your
true nature, nobody will believe them, it will be 1878 before you
are properly dissected and classified, and I know not how long
before you are finally extirpated. Fear not, therefore, this all-
devouring march of science, become mimetic organisms in its ranks,
and all shall long be well.

Now, behold, all these things have come to pass ;
and should any non-biological reader, or any orthodox
economist, hitherto all unconscious of his ancient
pedigree and modern family fortunes, desire to learn
more of this gentle dispensation by which merciful
nature often works such marvellous outward transfor-
mations, so softening the swift and stern extermination "
of an ancient species into its slow and painless euthan-
asia, is it not written by the naturalist Grant Allen,
in the article " Mimicry" of the Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, vol. xvi., Edinburgh, 1883 ?

But the reader must by this time be objecting,
does not the preceding criticism overshoot its aim ?
Is it not too destructive and intolerant ? Even if
economists be unscientific, surely this comparison of
political economy to alchemy is undeserved, else why
were so many merits granted at the beginning ? Now,
however, our qualifications must be made. It would
ill become the student of modern science to forget
that to Roger Bacon the alchemist, and Kepler the
astrologer, we owe priceless discoveries ; it is only the
persistence of alchemy or astrology as modern systems
of doctrine that he would deprecate. So the scientific
invaders of political economy must never forget in the
excitement of victory that, while of its orthodox
system hardly one stone can be left upon another, for
new foundations have to be laid, the materials of the
edifice and the treasures which its multifarious store-

yohn Ruskin. 19

houses contained are abundant and precious enough
to ransom the economists from any risk of disgrace or
obHvion. Even in the ranks of the prehminary
sciences advance is never simultaneous ; one subject
starts forward while another is lagging far behind ;
the mineralogist and chemist, the botanist and zoologist
can never keep fairly abreast, even the new sociological
economists are no whit exempt from the risk of fossil-
izing like their predecessors. What has been said,
however, will clear the reader's mind of the error still
common in Eno^land that our economists of Glasgow
and Manchester, Edinburgh and London, have been
erecting during the past century a vast scientific system
of infallible dogma, around whose impregnable walls
only our single " Oxford Graduate " wastes his arrows.

We have seen how the fortress is being stormed
from a quite different side, nay, is already being
sacked, for the scientific invaders are not respecters
of persons, and' will treat all who are not members
of their own army with but scanty reverence, un-
ceremoniously looting everything that will serve
as materials for their new construction, whether
they belonged to skilful financier or subtle logician,
popular tribune or patrician senator, nay, will pay as
little regard to the professor of political economy,
robed in the spotless orthodoxy of the intellectual
pharisee, as for his heterodox and despised publican
of a colleague, the professor of fine art. The question
for all is simply — What ideas have you that will serve
as material for our purpose ?

We saw at the outset how unfavourable a first
impression of Mr. Ruskin's economic writings one was
apt to acquire. The collapse of our plausible orthodox
friends on closer examination, however, may warn us to

20 yohn R 71 skin.

be cautious In adhering- to a prejudice which they or
rather their exponents in the newspapers have done
most to diffuse, and which he naturally Incurred by loudly
proclaiming, for so many years past, in season and out
of season, the hollowness of their pseudo-science ; so
that whatever may turn out to be the value of the new
doctrines he may offer us, his destructive criticisms,
which have so long anticipated any scientific ones, such
as that of Mr. Ingram or the present one, must accord-
ingly on the whole be straightway transferred from
the debit to the credit side of his account. Can an)'
similar value be given to his criticisms of society ? An
explanation on the one side and a reservation on the
other, both important, are first needed. Let us then
read a complete typical passage : —

" What may be the real dignity of mechanical art itself? I cannot
express the amazed awe, the crushed humility, with which I some-
times watch a locomotive take its breath at a railway station, and
think what work there is in its bars and wheels, and what manner of
men they must be who dig brown ironstone out of the ground, and
forge it into that. What assemblage of accurate and mighty faculties
in tliem, more than fleshly power over melting crag and coiling fire,
fettered and finessed at last into the precision of watchmaking ;
'] itanian hammer-strokes beating out of lava these glittering cylinders
and timely respondent valves, and fine ribbed rods, which touch each
other as a serpent writhes in noiseless gliding, and omnipotence of
grasp; infinitely complex anatomy of active steel, compared with
which the skeleton of a living creature would seem, to the careless
observer, clumsy and vile. AVhat would the men who thought out
this, who beat it out, who touched it with its polished calm of power,
who set it to its appointed task, and triumphantly saw it fulfil the
task to the utmost of their will, feel or think about this weak hand
of mine, timidly leading a little stain of water colour which I cannot
manage, into an imperfect shadow of something else — mere failure
in every motion and endless disappointment ; what I repeat, would
these iron-dominant genii think of me? and what ought I to think
of them ?

JoJin Ruskin. 21

" But as I reach this point of reverence, the unreasonable thing is
sure to give a shriek as of a thousand unanimous vultures, which
leaves me shuddering in real physical pain for some half minute follow-
ing ; and assures me during slow recovery, that a people which can
endure such fluting and piping among them is not likely soon to have
its modest ear pleased by aught of oaten stop or pastoral song."

The requisite correction, then, as afforded by the
first paragraph of the present passage, is that the
popular impression that our author abhors all machinery
and recommends its disuse, and that he criticises all
the material results and appliances of our modern
civilisation in a similar spirit, is simply the reverse of
true. For it will not be easy to find any panegyric of
machines and their makers, though the aee is rich in
such literature, to match this, combining, as it does, the
scientific appreciation of Babbage's classic '^ Economy
of Machines and Manufactures," with the artistic appre-
ciation which we find in the Surfaceman's "Songs of
the Rail." In the second half of the passage, however,
we find the grounds for the needful reservation ; we
discover that our prose poet of Utilitarianism suffers
from acute hypersesthesia, is, in other words, a man of
excessively nervous organisation and evidently fragile
health, upon whom those minor blessings of peculiar
sights and sounds and smells, which do undoubtedly
accompany and flow from our advanced mechanical
civilisation, produce an effect serious in the extreme —
he cannot become case-hardened to them like most of us.

Thus then arises the popular impression of Ruskin,
quite analogous to that of the enraged musician in
Hogarth's famous engraving. The young schoolboy
in the picture naturally thinks " what fun to see the
old boy so wild !" the disturbing crowd, offended at
such interference, and all following their lawful callings,

22 yohn Ruskiii.

are equally astonished and naturally reply to all
remonstrances with an indignant " what's your busi-
ness !" and similarly the able editor, who has of course
comfortably grown up in the orthodox economic
faith, makes the most of this opportunity to damage
its opponent, neatly snips out the proper fragment of
a passage, exhibits our author in some attitude more
passionate than dignified, and expounds the combined
opinions of schoolboy and populace with due accustomed
diluteness and detail.

Without in the least denying a certain justice to
these criticisms, on the contrary bearing the personal
equation with its results of misunderstanding, im-
patience, sometimes even positive ill-nature, henceforth
in mind, may we not get beyond them ? When we
have had our laugh at the enraged musician, may we
not stand quiet for a litde to hear him play ? All these
noisy callings are lawful indeed, yet not perhaps
expedient : some of them have disappeared since
Hogarth's day, and we call it progress; in any case
the musician's bitter outcry is not without its pathos
and its truth. What worker in our dull towns, whether
of country birth and breeding, or only accustomed to
rare glimpses of hill and sea, is so completely acclima-
tised, so wholly dulled in vision, as never to suffer
anything from the noise and darkness, the filth and
grime around him ? Surely, too, we must in the same
measure feel how this sadness of ours over the eclipse
of beauty may rise to literally maddening sorrow in
this man, whose pre-eminence in art and literature has
been chiefly gained by his expression of that passion
for the external aspects of nature, which is one of the
most marked movements of our age.

Whether in rhythmic language like our splendid

yvhn RiisJcin. 23

succession of naturalistic poets, or in colour like the
landscape painters, the fundamental idea is the same,
and not in art only but in science — it is not by hazard
that Darwin is countryman and contemporary of
Wordsworth and Turner, and Lyell of Scott, their
differences in product are determined by details of
character or circumstances of youth — all naturalism is
akin.

Yet this is more than an age of naturalism, a change
is in progress upon this at first almost exclusively
dominant purpose. The pre-Raphaelites commence
indeed with exquisite delineation of fern and pool, but
one soon passes into sacred art, or the next into
modern portraiture ; and in the life and works of the
poets we find the same transformation. For Scott
the historic drama, for Wordsworth the problems of
individual life, for Byron or Victor Hugo political
aspirations more and more supersede the enthusiasm
for nature with which all alike commenced in youth.
The scientists have done absolutely the same.
Darwin's " Naturalist's Voyage " in youth, his " Origin
of Species " in middle life, and his " Descent of Man "
in later years, mark the stages of a similar evolution in
which his lesser contemporaries, Lyell and Virchow,
Huxley and Hseckel, all alike fully share. This, too,
explains the passage from natural science to economics,
which is the main idea of the present essay ; it is
identical too with the passage from biology^ to
sociology, proclaimed and investigated by Comte or
Spencer; in all cases minds opened and disciplined by
contact with this or that aspect of nature are betaking
themselves to some kindred aspect of the supreme
study of man. And thus the two economic reformers
we have been discussing, Mr. Ingram and Mr. Ruskin,

24 yohn Rusk in.

widely different though they may at first seem to us
and to each other, are both closely akin. Both may
well be unintelligible and useless to minds like those of
the orthodox economist, the average journalist, and the
" practical man," a trio wont to suppose themselves in
permanent possession of the science. These latter are,
as we have seen, provided with metaphysical concep-
tions of nature, of man, and of society, inherited from
the Revolutionary and earlier periods, and " modern "
by mere misadventure ; the two former (the one con-
sciously, the other perhaps in many respects uncon-
sciously) having rid themselves of these, and possessed
themselves of some scientific ones, are in a state to
attempt genuine construction.

In our search for ideas, which will serve towards
the construction of scientific economics, we have to
ask, and with greater scepticism, what ideas can Mr.
Ruskin offer ? Destructive criticisms are not enough ;
can this man of art and letters really have any science,
any genuine knowledge of fact and nature whereon to
build ? However much the quiet evangelical London
home, and the antique university where our author
spent his early years, may have prepared him for
work in literature and art, it is evident that they did
not furnish much training in science ; it is indeed not
unlikely that poor Thomas Edward in Banff, with
many shoes indeed to make and mend, but with a
museum to keep and fill, is, so far as pure science is
concerned, no more of " a self-made man " than our
author ; for even now one sometimes feels tempted to
say to an Oxford graduate of much newer brand :
" Thou wast altogether born in sin, and dost thou teach
us ? " Yet evidencing some mathematical discipline,
we have a text-book of perspective ; in geology some

yohn Rjiskiii. 25

research, and in mineralogy the only English attempt
at its popularisation ; in botany and zoology several
books, disappointing indeed, yet with exquisite figures
and flashes of observation, keen, loving, and reflective
as that of the naturalist of Selborne. As concerns the
needful preliminary science, then, our author, consider-
ing drawbacks, has done wonders ; so much grasp of
facts and of their order in nature, such consummate
power of observation and description, together with
wide knowledge of literature and language, history and
art, constitute more preparation alike in preliminary
and social sciences than most of us can show. Often,
indeed, in some perplexing mixture of commentary
with text, the complex sentences come thick and fast
like snow-flakes, broken and soiled by the storm-
beaten and soot-stained atmosphere where they have
had to form, too often only to melt and disappear in
turbid rivulets amid the labyrinthine crevices of mind,
yet still we need no lens of loving critic, but only open
eyes, to find many a thought, clear and perfect as an
ice-crystal.

But to our long-delayed construction. Logic we shall
not chop, and definitions we shall not concoct at start-
ing ; of mathematics even we need little, for statistics
is only a highly-developed counting of fingers, and the
" laws of supply and demand," derived as they must be
from the observed fact that vi units of the commodity
A are, at given place and time, exchanging for 11 units
of the commodity B, are expressed only by the scanty
changes which can be rung on the very simple equation
in A =11 B. These well diluted, the orthodox economist
is wont to skip across to what does duty with him for
psychology ; to the hypothetical, self-interested, purely
egoistic, economic " man," and his simple wants and

26 Jo Jin Rusk in.

desires — all of "wealth"; prefacing;' this with copious
explanations that " there is no such thing as intrinsic
value," that "value does not reside in commodities
themselves, and is no more to be found in a loaf of
bread than in a diamond, in water, or in air," and so
on. Mr. Ruskin, on the other hand, claims it as the
highest merit of his leadincj treatise that it " o-ives at
the outset, and maintains as the foundation of all
subsequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value
and intrinsic Contrary-of- Value."

How are we to reconcile this discrepancy ? As in
the world-old dispute of the gold and silver shield
both interpretations are partially true. To say that
no value exists in loaf or diamond by itself is to
state for particular phenomena the idealistic aspect of
phenomena in general ; it is a mere commonplace of
idealism which neither Mr. Ruskin nor anybody else
can dispute. But the economist, continuing to explain
that things have no other value, i.e., that phenomena
have no other aspect, merely expresses the indisput-
able fact that they have no other aspect for him ; that
the question of what loaf and diamond may mean to
physicist and physiologist has not occurred to him :
these studies, being alike extra-academic and extra-
commercial, have indeed " not come within his pro-
vince ;" and assuredly, without much preparation, "he
cannot hope to become a specialist." Let us however
leave the inmates of the academic cloister ; walk out'
into the world, look about us, try to express loaf and
diamond from the objective side in terms of actual
fact, and we find that physical and physiological pro-
perties or " values" can indeed indefinitely be assigned :
the one is so much fuel, its heat-giving power measur-
able in calorimeter, or in actual units of work, the

yohn Ruskin. 27

other a definite sensory stimulus, varying- according to
Fechner's law. This is precisely what our author
means in such a passage as the following, which
however absurd to the orthodox, is now intelligible
enough to us : —

" Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to support
life. A sheaf of wheat of given quality and weight has in it a
measurable power of sustaining the substance of the body ; a cubic
foot of pure air, a fixed power of sustaining its warmth ; and a
cluster of flowers of given beauty, a fixed power of enlivening or
animating the senses. and heart."

It is among the chief claims to honourable memory
of the late Mr. Stanley Jevons, whose intellectual
stature, head and shoulders above most of his con-
temporaries and survivors, gave him many a glimpse
of fact denied to them, that he called attention to the
wasting coal supplies of Britain, and demanded their
economization, thus gripping the essential fact that
our coal is not merely an object of subjective value and
therefore exchange, but the fixture and embodiment
of a definite quantity of stored energy, within which our
modern industrial activities find a stern and calculable
limit. The question of coal economy is then not in
any wise the maximising of the wealth of individual
coal masters and coal percentagers as Mr. Ricardo
would have explained ; neither the increasing of
miners' wages, as their official economists (not so
common certainly in this country) would say ; but in
the relation of actual supply to existing and future
demand : in detailed criticism of the nature and
purposes of such demand, and the taking definite
action against that waste (of ninety-nine per cent, or
so) in diffused heat, and still better diffused soot,
amid which the economist of market-place and academe

28 John Ruskin.

complacently preaches '^laissez-faire" and Mr. Ruskin
the reverse.

Again, since the activities of a community are the sum
of the separate activities of its units, and since produc-
tion exists for and is determined by consumption, poli-
tical economy is from the present physical point of view,
the generalised aspect of domestic economy, a proposi-
tion which Mr. Ruskin, following the Greek economists,
has traced into valuable detail, but which ordinary
writers are wont comparatively to ignore.

But let us work out our physical economics more
closely. From the point of view of matter and energy
our society is a vast clock being wound up and running
down ; the mechanical equivalent of heat holds every-
where ; between machines and the automata who mind
them there is no physical difference. The ideal of prac-
tice must be expressed not in terms of the process or the
automata which take part in it, but in that of the
result ; evidently then it is of maximum production
per unit time. Thus machines, men, women and
children alike arc to be worked to the full : " Wages
are what maintain the labourer," says Mr. Ricardo, for
once no metaphysician, but a physicist — since they are
all mechanisms alike, no fuel is to be wasted upon
them. To maximise production we need simply
" Bastilles for Labour built by Capital," and of course
freedom of contract, so that the worker may be free to
contract between work there and starvation anywhere
else. As well interfere with a man's machinery as
between him and the women and children he employs.
Factory acts have no justification here, no ground but
"sentiment," and so even Mr. Bright, kindly-hearted,
but orthodox and logical, must stoutly oppose them.
Vo\- once then the orthodox economist appears to

yohu Ruskin. 29

have science on his side, but let us pass to the con-
sideration not only of the quantity but of the quality
of production. What is production for ? Even from
our present point of view the only possible answer is
for consumption, that is for the maintenance of society.
Necessities of life, say the economists, ''are indefin-
able." But the maintenance of organisms, like
machines, is really under perfectly definable physical
conditions ; so much fuel or food, i.e., such and
such proteids, amyloids, fats and water : so much
non-conductino- coverinQf and shelter from climate,
and all is done. These requirements vary only with
latitude; why, then, as Mr. Mulhall's " Balance-Sheet
of the World " tells us, do Russian, Norseman and
Scot, living on the same latitude, consume per head
per annum in round numbers to the extent of ^7,
^18, and ^30, respectively.-^ Since the Russian
succeeds in living, he evidently gets his necessaries :
the balance then of the wealth of three Russians is at
the Scotsman's credit; how is this consumed ? In more
complex food, in finer raiment, and in costlier dwelling ;
not in necessities but in plus-necessities, not in the pri-
mary function of mere maintenance, but in the secondary,
yet far vaster function of nervous stimulus : it is spent
in giving every product around us its costly '' (Esthetic
sub-fimction!'' But the reader may object that this is
not obvious in the things around us ? Certainly not.
He will find that even with an art-critic to help him,
little enough is visible : the author, however, prides
himself greatly upon the scientific acumen which has
enabled him to detect it in the articles of ordinary
Edinburgh consumption, such as ashlar housefronts
with iron railings, furniture and " decorations," cookery
and dress. Of course it is not denied that their £esthetic

30 yohn Ruskifi.

element is practically latent, but the requisite three-
fourths of "productive" toil no less remain.

In short, then, production, while primarily for
maintenance is mainly for ccsthesis, and the vulgar cry
for so-called " utility," and the orthodox contempt and
popular indifference to things beautiful, alike usually
mean either a demand for the gratification of the lower
senses in preference to that of the higher, or a mere
habitual adherence to routine consumption without any
sensory gratification at all.

Even then on the most strictly physical hypothesis,
though man-days are only as horse-power, the consump-
tion of "plus-necessaries" is three times more important
than that of necessaries ; a penny saved is as good as
a penny gained ; criticism of the aesthetic consumption
thus becomes the most needful of all conceivable con-
tributions to production ; and it is therefore for the
economist to become an art-critic, or, failing him, the
art-critic must supply his place and become an
economist. Art-criticism, in short, is a special pro-
vince of the practical economics of production and
consumption, — belongs to it, as food-analysis does.

It is true the orthodox economist says this does not
come within his province, but we must remember that
he cannot hope to become a specialist.

This economic character of art-criticism is however
everywhere clearly appreciated by our author. Not
only must a student of the Oxford School of Art learn
by drawing facts from nature or facts from history,
copying of South Kensington "ornament" not being
allowed, but we are constantly told that the function
of art is " either to state a true thing or adorn a
serviceable one," and before even attempting so much
we must " clean our cities, clothe the poor, organise

John Ruskin. 31

the idle, paint and fiddle to them afterwards." This,
at any rate, is not aesthetes' twaddle of "art for art's
sake" but utilitarianism pure and simple; were the solid
Bentham, or the stern and inartistic Carlyle, were any
soldier or engineer our professor of fine art, he could
not say more. And what practical suggestions ?
Not disuse of machinery, as the newspaper hearsay
goes, but, after an emphatic reiteration of Mill's terrible
dictum — that it is doubtful whether the use of
machinery has yet lightened the day's toil of a single
human being, we have not only proposals for the
ordered use of all natural forces, but a veritable Utopia
of engineering like that of Lesseps or Da Vinci- — ■
" suggestions for the use of machinery on a colossal
scale for accomplishing mighty and useful works hither-
to unthought of," proposals for the embankment and
irrigation of Northern Italy and the like, which may
or may not be practicable of course, but to which in
the latter case the exact reverse of the popularly
received criticism has to be applied.

But let us pass to consider what our rival economists
have to offer us from the biological standpoint — what
they think of the actual population. Is not Mr. Ruskin,
like a born romanticist, instead of soberly speaking
of the economic units as labourers and capitalists,
producers and consumers, ever fain to foist mediaeval
notions of rank and nobleness of blood upon us ;
instead of recognising " the equality of all men and
the equal productiveness of all non-criminal work/'
is he not for ever quoting Plato or Xenophon to
enforce his horror of what he is pleased to call base
industry, and especially of those very mechanical and
metallurgical crafts whereby we have our wealth — an
outspoken heresy after which loud outcry is little to

32 yohn Riiskin.

be wondered at. Not only is such work vile and
debasing, not only are such Britons no better than
perpetual slaves, but that unexampled progress of our
modern cities which we owe to these very industries
and their prosecutors, only serves to bring his denun-
ciations to a climax. Their factories, railways, or
dwellings are all alike accursed ; and the revolt against
the nineteenth century culminates in some sardonic
exhortation to the folk of Glasgow to "burn their city,"
or some grim desire to " destroy without rebuilding,
the new town of Edinburgh, and the city of New
York." To indulgent readers this seems merely
hypersesthetic fuss, to graver and more practical
minds it sounds like the scream of an hysterical
petroleuse : both alike will gladly turn to the orthodox
economist. Of laws of population — of the " iron law
of competition " he has much to tell us — and as space
presses he must have full credit for it without scrutiny.
But this is all. What has biology to say ? This
views the community not as productive automata, but
as oro-anisms which have reached ascendency after long
struo-gle for existence, through survival of the fittest,
and in virtue of peculiarly high evolution of nervous
system, and of it alone. This is " man's place in
nature," whether Mr. Ruskin like it or no ; and his
economic positions, like any others, have now to be
judged by this evolutionary standard.

Our labourers first are not the flying shuttlecocks
of a hypothetical abstract science, but the actual con-
crete Homo of natural and civil history : and the
economic unit is no longer "Plato's" but Darwin's man.
To see the result of this mode of study of worker,
work, and surroundings. " organism, function, and
environment," as it is technically termed, we may first

yohn Ruskin. ^iZ

briefly quote from a recent " Analysis of the Principles
of Economics " "''' from this very biological point of
view : —

" Just as the operations of heredity upon man and other organisms
are not merely analogous but identical, so also are those of function.
Division of labour has specialised the polymorphic castes of the ant-
hill ; so the same specialisation of function develops the same
polymorphic changes among men. Every one is more or less
conscious of this : it is never difficult to distinguish a soldier from a
joiner, or a ploughman from a weaver, while the physician reaches
almost incredible skill in reading the finer results of occupation on
bodily structures, normal and pathological aUke. . . . Without the
slightest postulation of morals, it is a biological fact, that as ' function
makes the organ,' it also shapes the organism, and modifies it either
for evolution or for degeneration, moreover other things equal, it
determines its quantity of health, and limits its length of life.
Ploughmen and weavers, joiners or soldiers then are incipient castes ;
as surely as Brahmin and Pariah, queen, worker, and drone are
formed ones ; and the disadvantages of the division of labour,
slowly forced into prominence (as, little to the credit of biologists,
they have been) through the sufferings of the many, and the moral
enthusiasm of the unscientific few, demand study and classification
among the 'Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication.'
The influences of the ordinary environment probably exceed those
of heredity or function in importance. The importance of food and
of the quality of the atmosphere is becoming recognised, so also with
light ; the gardener blanches his celery, the zoologist stops the
development of the tadpole by withdrawing light, the sphygmograph
shows how the pulse bounds at every gleam of sunshine, and the
physiologist and physician are not hesitating to generalise and apply
these results to the development of human life in towns.

It has been assumed by past economists that the ' necessities of
life ' were simply food, shelter, etc., and that these subtler factors of
the environment need not be included. This pre-biological ignor-
ance need not be argued with, for the economic problem of the
maintenance of men is but one special case of the vast problem of the
modification of organism by environment, exactly as the descent of
man is a special case of the origin of species."

* Proceedings of the Roy. Soc. Edin. 18S4.
c

34 yohfi Rtiskin.

The same analysis goes on to the " mode of modifi-
cation of organisms by environment " along its two
main lines of evolution or degeneration, and discusses
the factors of these in some detail. It suffices to note in
the second place, that it is pointed out that " while no
definition of production is possible from the physical
point of view since it involves a knowledge of the
organism to which production is adapted, now, how-
ever, it is definable as the adaptation of the environ-
ment to the functions of the organism, every pro-
ductive action thus tendinof towards evolution or the
reverse," and that practical economics thus involves a
criticism of production and consumption from the
present biological standpoint. Practical economics, in
short, finds its supreme end and aim in the mainten-
ance and evolution of humanity.

Production and occupation, then, are judged, not
by their immediate material result to particular
individuals, whether queens or drones of the social
hive ; but by the aggregate result in better or worse
adapted environment. Again, " not only must the
factors of modification of the organism be observed and
discussed, but their modifiability must be discussed and
acted upon ; thus in the case when any given environ-
ment or function, however apparently productive, is
really fraught with disastrous influence to the organism,
its modification must be attempted, and, failing that,
its abandonment faced."

Without eoinjj: so far as to suo-crest that the writer of
this learned analysis might almost be making his
elaborate biological paper on the somewhat simple
principle of translating Mr. Ruskin into his peculiar
dialect of Scientific, the general correspondence in
principle and detail between biological principles on

yoJin Ruskin.

35

tlie one hand, and Mr. Ruskin s most '' unpractical "
teaching on the other, is most remarkable. For it is
to be observed if these Darwinians are indeed to draw
full consequences from their greatest law — that organism
is made by function and environment, then man, if he is
to remain healthy and become civilised^ must not only
aim at the highest standard of cerebral as well as non-
cerebral excellence, and so at function healthy and
delightful, but must take especial heed of his environ-
ment ; not only at his peril keeping the natural factors
of air, water, and light at their purest, but caring only
for *' production of wealth " at all, in so far as it shapes
the artificial factors, the material surroundings of
domestic and civic life, into forms more completely
serviceable for the Ascent of Man.

And since the belly and members are dominated
by a brain developed and maintained through the
constant and varied stimulus of the senses, the practical
ideal changes wholly. Our community, where some
are so empty and weary, others so idle and full, yet all
alike deo^eneratinof in their dismal cities with their lonq-
unlovely streets, their darkened and fetid air, instead
of merely furnishing themes for hymns of progress
and occasion for laissez-faire, shows clear necessity for
criticism more searching, and action more systematic
than that of Mr. Ruskin. And, moreover, not only do
factory acts and many other "sentimental interferences
with competition and freedom of contract " become at
once scientific and practical, but our theory of produc-
tion culminates in the Rehabilitation of Beauty, and
our productive action for count:)- and city in the
restoration of nature, and the organisation of art.

It is interestinof then to note that the shout of
•'Sentiment versus Science," with which Mr. Ruskin

36 yoliji Ruskin.

has been for so many years turned out of court, did
after all accurately enough describe the controversy :
science and sentiment have assuredly been on opposite
sides. In one respect only the public and the orthodox
defendants have been generally mistaken; the inductive
logic and statistics, the physics and chemistry, the
biology and medicine, the psychology and education,
were all essentially on the side of Mr. Ruskin ; while
on the other were too often sheer blindness to the actual
facts of human and social life — organism, function and
environment alike — concealed by illusory abstractions,
baseless assumptions, and feeble metaphors stuck
tOQfether with scholastic loeic ("science" only in the
metaphysician's sense, well nigh as technical as the
pugilist's), and frozen into dismal and repellent form by
a theory of moral sentiments which assumed moral
temperature at its absolute zero.

But our economist was very much excited, was he,
good practical friends ? You still think he was
incoherent, hyperitsthetic, and even hysterical, that
he seemed only to rave and curse ? That indeed was
a pity ; our new generation of economists and physio-
logists, hygienists and physicians, art-workmen, archi-
tects, and engineers are tame and quiet enough, as a
generation bred in such subduing environment of
light, atmosphere, and civic magnificence, must needs
be ; and none of that unbecoming energy of out-door
exposition in which prophets of the old dispensation
were addicted to indulge, is to be expected from them,
— yet assuredly teaching and practice essentially the
same, towards ideals wholly identical.

For the present state of production is by no means
good enough. A modern city, however stupendous
its wealth — on paper — has after all hardly any ultimate

yohn Rttskin. 37

products to show save a sorry aggregate of ill-con-
structed houses, mean without, and unhealthy within,
and containing but little of permanent value ; for the
rest, hideous dirt and darkness, smoke and sewage
everywhere, as if its inhabitants had absolutely framed
an ideal of a short life and a dismal one, with which
they are dull enough to rest contented. Men are
everywhere awaking to see that this is no longer to be
endured, and it is the central merit of our author to
have at once inaugurated that criticism of production,
and that practical action for its improvement which
has been setting in so hopefully of recent years. The
so-called "aesthetic revival," with its outcomes like the
Kyrle and other "Environment Societies," represent in
fact the small beginnings of the Industrial Reformation,
of that re-orgamsaiion of production — of products and
processes, of environment and function, which is the
nearest task of the united art and science of the
immediate future.

Asrain, a demand for commodities is a command of
labour ; it determines function, and therefore quality of
oro-anism. Hence Mr. Ruskin's continued insistance
upon the jDrimary duty of regulating expenditure with
studied reference to its effect upon the mind and body
of the labourer, so at once seeking the minimum
service from the lower occupations, and maximising
that from the higher ones ; and his criticism of " the
kinds of work which are severally best accomplished
by hand or by machine ; together with the effect of
machinery in gathering and multiplying population
and its effect upon the minds and bodies of such
population." Such teaching equals or exceeds at once
in clear biological insight and in social wisdom any-
thino- else in the entire literature of practical econ-

3S yoJin Rtiskiii.

omics ; since it clearly indicates the line of evolution
towards the future city of healthy and happy artists,
surrounded by imperishable treasure, from our modern
city of weary and sickly drudges, immersed in dirt for
their pains.

It would be easy to go on gathering such scientific
and practical suggestions, to show, for instance, how
"pieces of sentimental nonsense" about "purity of
race," or that about "bachelors and rosieres" in "Time
and Tide," at once analyse the conditions and attack the
problem of the evolution of society by heredity and
sexual selection. But any reader can follow these out
for himself, see how the "sentimental political economy"
contained at once the germs of systematic science and
of its noblest applications, and find more and more as
he reads that our despised and rejected author, howev^er
noteworthy and memorable for theoretic work in art,
is yet more so for his practical applications of the
knowledge to the art of life ; that our disciple of Plato
and scholar of Turner has also become the hisfhest
practical exponent of Darwin,

But the St. George's Company ? The writer has no
personal knowledge of them (save that they do at least
succeed in making sterling cloth, which not only bears
scrutiny by experts, but — archaic spinning-wheel and
loom notwithstanding — is among the cheapest in the
market) ; but so far as he can make out, their main
ideas may be simply stated thus, — seeing, they say,
that some occupations are pleasanter and healthier
than others, and notably agricultural rather than
mechanical ones, we intend having these ; you, if you
will, "fill your lungs with cotton-fur, your hearts with
rage and mutiny, become gnomes of Europe, slaves of
the lamp!" We mean to have the best environment

y ohn R lis km. 39

that is going, and the healthiest functions we can find ;
and not sacrificing ourselves to production, but sub-
ordinating it to us, we shall produce an increasing store
of real wealth, of permanent ultimate products. Finally,
paying much attention to the quality of the organism,
its good breeding and education, we and our children
shall accordingly survive in the struggle for existence,
while you mechanical townsfolk and your economists
become extinct. Hence, as the latter are nothing if
not "practical," the St. George's Guild must be hope-
lessly " unpractical," in the technical sense in which we
have uniformly been finding the terms employed.

But the Sheffield museum : who ever heard of such
a place ? At the top of a hill, and almost in the
country — so that with such trouble, pulse must quicken
and breath freshen and brain awaken before one sees
the strange new sights — how much better the spacious,
easily accessible galleries of Kensington, how much
more inviting, how much more suitable — for loafers !
And, after all, only a few objects to compare with the
multifarious wealth of the endless cases of a great
museum. Merely the teaching by a series of carefully
selected types — exactly parallel to the small and
compact selections which are now replacing for
teaching purposes, the vast museums (henceforth store-
houses for reference) in every modern scientific school.
No wonder, again, some "common-sense" people
cannot cease to deplore the old-fashioned impracti-
cability of Mr. Ruskin !

But let us pass to education. What is to be said
of a teacher who speaks lightly of the three R's, and
who threatens to make even the first of them
optional ? Here surely is reaction to ignorance with
a venofeance.

40 Jo Jin Riiskin.

Let the reader make what deduction he pleases for
personal idiosyncracy, for passion and paradox ; but let
him also take some note of existing facts, and consider
whether he would not do well also to place his protest
— if forceful and stormy, perhaps all the better — against
the miserable mixture of pseudo-literary and pseudo-
commercial cram, "classical " and "modern" by cour-
tesy or irony, miscalled "education:" that jumbled
compromise into which academic fossil and commercial
Philistine everywhere settle down for the supposed
maintenance of their supposed interests, and the actual
stupefaction of their children's lives. But what would
he give us instead ? Of this twice clerkly lore there
would perhaps not be enough ? The craft of parsing
would indeed be in danger ; the names of French
departments and the tables of obsolete weights and
measures might come less pat upon the tongue ; yet
for all we should be immeasurably nearer in method and
result that noble discipline of complete soul in per-
fected body, which the wise men of all ages have had
for their noblest ideal, calling it Education.

For two distinct tendencies are at work in our modern
universities and schools, the dominant one deliberately
preferring memory of mere words for observation of
facts and reasoning therefrom, which should be supplied
by discipline in science, and more memory of words for
that co-ordination of hand and eye which is supplied
by practice in the arts, and substituting verbal test of
competitive examination for practical test in life. One
is the school of Cram, evolving towards a Chinese, the
other th(; school of Culture, evolving towards a Greek
ideal, or more accurately towards Tartarean and
Olympian ideals respectively. Between the repre-
sentatives of the former, portly word -fog -giants,

John Ruskm. 41

bearing the awful names of Professor, Head-master,
Inspector, and what not, swinging the mighty mace of
authority, crusted in triple mail of hood and gown,
and bearing many a magic amulet of diplomas, and
the scattered knight-errants like Comte or Spencer,
like Pestalozzi or Ruskin, who now and then attack
them, the battle must indeed be long : yet when each
colossus of intellectual fat has fallen before the strokes
of intellectual muscle, when our orthodox educationists
have gone the way of the orthodox economists, and when
schools at once really classical and modern have arisen
to eive that Qrenuine knowledge of nature and of
literature which make alike scientist and scholar, that
genuine discipline in arts coarse and fine which makes
the worker, and that factual grip of history and society
which makes the citizen, we shall after all only be
having in more systematic form the essential curri-
culum of a St. Georo^e's School.

Leaving the reader to continue such defensive
criticisms, it is time, briefly to summarise. We have
found that while on one hand the stronghold of
orthodox political economy tu'rns out to be little better
than an air-castle of mediaeval metaphysics, collapsing
at the slightest breath of scientific criticism, Mr. Ruskin
furnishes much solid material to the required new
construction. Little attempt can however yet be made
at assigning his place in economic literature and
history. His destructive criticisms have undoubtedly
been of considerable service to many readers in this
country, but it must be remembered that these were
mainly necessary because of the popular ignorance of
Germany. For there the defects of the Manchester
school had long ago been exposed by the historical and
socialistic schools alike, in France its lingering survivors

42 yohn Ruskin.

have lately been receiving the coup dc grace from M. de
Laveleye, while the criticisms of Cliffe Leslie, Ingram,
and even Jevons, were in this country producing the
same result. His chief services then are constructive.
Exceeding all other economists in clear vision of
physical realities, in insight and criticism of the quality
of production and of life, he is more than any other
writer the legitimate continuator of the Physiocratic
school, and the forerunner of its complete re-systema-
tisation by the aid of physical and biological science ;
while his statement of the aims of practical economics
in terms of quality of life, his treatment of criticism of
art and other aspects of production from this point of
view, and his clear enunciation of the essential unity of
economics and morals in opposition to the discord
assumed as a deductive artifice, will remain especially
and permanently classic.

His filiation to Carlyle and others might have been
traced, while some of the results of his teaching,
not only in modern art-criticism, and consequently
improved production, but upon more strictly economic
studies and practical effort might have been outlined.
Yet even if space allowed, this would be premature ;
for his influence cannot be measured until the younger
generation whom he has educated to active social
sympathy, has brought forth its manifold results of
economic research and practical application. Every-
where, too, organic filaments are spinning ; reform in
the production of wealth, and economy in its consump-
tion are alike in progress ; more slowly indeed, yet
surely, views of its distribution at once more rational
and more generous are gaining ground : the health
and culture of the worker, the ennoblement of function,
the purification of environment have at last won clear

yohn Ritskin. 43

recognition as truly practical. Nor is the corres-
ponding effort far off.

For as once men's hearts burned within them as
they went forth under antique priestly guidance to win
back the Holy City, and again, in dim philosophic light,
at the Revolution to win their freedom, so once again
throughout Europe a new enthusiasm is arising, deeper
and wider than of old. Though foreseen with varying
clearness, and sought with yet more varying success,
the ideal has ever been fundamentally the same ; the
kingdom of God upon earth, the achievement of
fraternity, the evolution of humanity are but the
changing names for the unending struggle after that
union of material and moral order which is the task
and problem of life. In our day, both task and pro-
blem are far vaster than of old ; and though a corre-
sponding wealth of material resource has been in our
hands, there has been little light to guide its application,
and that mainly from dying lamps, llie coming time
is more hopeful ; the sorely needed knowledge, both of
the natural and the social order, is approaching matu-
rity ; the long-delayed renaissance of art has begun,
and the prolonged discord of these is changing into
harmony : so, with these for guidance, men shall no
longer grind on in slavery to a false image of their
lowest selves, miscalled Self-interest, but at length, as
freemen, live in the Sympathy and labour in the
Synergy of the Race.

And for this, the last Crusade, herald, knight, and
preacher are not wanting, yet in our land and day
there has been no clearer herald, nobler preacher, nor
truer knight than Jolin Ruskin, Economist.

I'ATRICK GEDDES.

" /^^^IVE to barrows^ trays, a /id pans
\^^ Grace and glimmer of romance ;

Bring the moonlight into noon
J lid in gleaming piles of s to tie ;
On the city's pavM street
Plant gardens lined 7C'ith lilacs sweet ;
Let spouting fountains cool the air,
Singing in the sun-baked square ;
Let statue, picture, park, afid hall.
Ballad, flag, and festival,
The past restore, the day adorn.
And make to-morrow a new ?norn.
So shall the drudge in dusty frock
Spy behind the city clock
Retinues of airy kings.
Skirts of angels, starry wings,
Li is fathers shining in bright fables.
His children fed at heavenly tables.
' Tis the privilege of Art
Thus to play its cheerful part,
Man on earth to acclimate,
And bend the exile to his fate.
And moulded of one element
With the days and firmament,
Teach him on these as stairs to climb.
And live on even terms with Time ;
Whilst upper life the slender rill
Of human sense doth overfill y

Emerson.

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