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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:27 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:27 -0700 |
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diff --git a/12641-h/12641-h.htm b/12641-h/12641-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f99a8e --- /dev/null +++ b/12641-h/12641-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4876 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" name="linkgenerator" /> + <title> + The Queen of the Air, by John Ruskin + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} + .x-small {font-size: 75%;} + .small {font-size: 85%;} + .large {font-size: 115%;} + .x-large {font-size: 130%;} + .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} + .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} + .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} + .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} + .indent25 { margin-left: 25%;} + .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} + .indent35 { margin-left: 35%;} + .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; + font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; + text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; + border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} + .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} + span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} +</style> + </head> + <body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12641 ***</div> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + THE QUEEN OF THE AIR + </h1> + <h3> + Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm + </h3> + <h2> + BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D. + </h2> + <hr /> + <p> + <b>CONTENTS</b> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_TOC"> TABLE OF CONTENTS </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> I. — ATHENA CHALINITIS. (Athena in the + Heavens.) </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> II. — ATHENA KERAMITIS. (Athena in the + Earth.) </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> III. — ATHENA ERGANE. (Athena in the + Heart.) </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_TOC" id="link2H_TOC"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + TABLE OF CONTENTS + </h2> + <p> + PREFACE <br /><br /> I. ATHENA CHALINITIS. <br /> (Athena in the Heavens.) + <br /> Lecture on the Greek myths of Storm, given (partly) in University + <br /> College, London, March 9, 1869. <br /><br /> II. ATHENA KERAMITIS. + <br /> (Athena in the Earth.) <br /> Study, supplementary to the preceding + lecture, of the supposed and actual <br /> relations of Athena to the vital + force in material organism. <br /><br /> III. ATHENA ERGANE. <br /> (Athena + in the Heart.) <br /> Various notes relating to the Conception of Athena as + the Directress of <br /> the Imagination and Will. <br /> <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + PREFACE + </h2> + <p> + My days and strength have lately been much broken; and I never more felt + the insufficiency of both than in preparing for the press the following + desultory memoranda on a most noble subject. But I leave them now as they + stand, for no time nor labor would be enough to complete them to my + contentment; and I believe that they contain suggestions which may be + followed with safety, by persons who are beginning to take interest in the + aspects of mythology, which only recent investigation has removed from the + region of conjecture into that of rational inquiry. I have some advantage, + also, from my field work, in the interpretation of myths relating to + natural phenomena; and I have had always near me, since we were at college + together, a sure, and unweariedly kind, guide, in my friend Charles + Newton, to whom we owe the finding of more treasure in mines of marble + than, were it rightly estimated, all California could buy. I must not, + however, permit the chance of his name being in any wise associated with + my errors. Much of my work as been done obstinately in my own way; and he + is never responsible for me, though he has often kept me right, or at + least enabled me to advance in a new direction. Absolutely right no one + can be in such matters; nor does a day pass without convincing every + honest student of antiquity of some partial error, and showing him better + how to think, and where to look. But I knew that there was no hope of my + being able to enter with advantage on the fields of history opened by the + splendid investigation of recent philologists, though I could qualify + myself, by attention and sympathy, to understand, here and there, a verse + of Homer's or Hesiod's, as the simple people did for whom they sang. + </p> + <p> + Even while I correct these sheets for press, a lecture by Professor + Tyndall has been put into my hands, which I ought to have heard last 16th + January, but was hindered by mischance; and which, I now find, completes, + in two important particulars, the evidence of an instinctive truth in + ancient symbolism; showing, first, that the Greek conception of an + ætherial element pervading space is justified by the closest reasoning of + modern physicists; and, secondly, that the blue of the sky, hitherto + thought to be caused by watery vapour, is, indeed, reflected from the + divided air itself; so that the bright blue of the eyes of Athena, and the + deep blue of her ægis, prove to be accurate mythic expressions of natural + phenomena which it is an uttermost triumph of recent science to have + revealed. + </p> + <p> + Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine triumph more complete. To form, + "within an experimental tube, a bit of more perfect sky than the sky + itself!" here is magic of the finest sort! singularly reversed from that + of old time, which only asserted its competency to enclose in bottles + elemental forces that were—not of the sky. + </p> + <p> + Let me, in thanking Professor Tyndall for the true wonder of this piece of + work, ask his pardon, and that of all masters in physical science, for any + words of mine, either in the following pages or elsewhere, that may ever + seem to fail in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in + the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery. But I will be + judged by themselves, if I have not bitter reason to ask them to teach us + more than yet they have taught. + </p> + <p> + This first day of May, 1869, I am writing where my work was begun + thirty-five years ago, within sight of the snows of the higher Alps. In + that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought + upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. + The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and + purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the + clefts of all their golden crags with azure is now defiled with languid + coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier + waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if hell had breathed on them; + the waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline rest are now + dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore. These are no + careless words—they are accurately, horribly, true. I know what the + Swiss lakes were; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was clearer. + This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I + could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep. + </p> + <p> + The light, the air, the waters, all defiled! How of the earth itself? Take + this one fact for type of honour done by the modern Swiss to the earth of + his native land. There used to be a little rock at the end of the avenue + by the port of Neuchâtel; there, the last marble of the foot of Jura, + sloping to the blue water, and (at this time of year) covered with bright + pink tufts of Saponaria. I went, three days since, to gather a blossom at + the place. The goodly native rock and its flowers were covered with the + dust and refuse of the town; but, in the middle of the avenue, was a + newly-constructed artificial rockery, with a fountain twisted through a + spinning spout, and an inscription on one of its loose-tumbled stones,— + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Aux Botanistes, + Le club Jurassique," +</pre> + <p> + Ah, masters of modern science, give me back my Athena out of your vials, + and seal, if it may be, once more, Asmodeus therein. You have divided the + elements, and united them; enslaved them upon the earth, and discerned + them in the stars. Teach us now, but this of them, which is all that man + need know,—that the Air is given to him for his life; and the Rain + to his thirst, and for his baptism; and the Fire for warmth; and the Sun + for sight; and the Earth for his Meat—and his Rest. + </p> + <p> + VEVAY, May 1, 1869. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE QUEEN OF THE AIR. + </h2> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. ATHENA CHALINITIS.* (Athena in the Heavens.) + </h2> + <p> + * "Athena the Restrainer." The name is given to her as having helped + Bellerophon to bridle Pegasus, the flying cloud. + </p> + <h3> + LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN (PARTLY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, + LONDON, MARCH 9, 1869. + </h3> + <p> + 1. I will not ask your pardon for endeavoring to interest you in the + subject of Greek Mythology; but I must ask your permission to approach it + in a temper differing from that in which it is frequently treated. We + cannot justly interpret the religion of any people, unless we are prepared + to admit that we ourselves, as well as they, are liable to error in + matters of faith; and that the convictions of others, however singular, + may in some points have been well founded, while our own, however + reasonable, may be in some particulars mistaken. You must forgive me, + therefore, for not always distinctively calling the creeds of the past + "superstition," and the creeds of the present day "religion;" as well as + for assuming that a faith now confessed may sometimes be superficial, and + that a faith long forgotten may once have been sincere. It is the task of + the Divine to condemn the errors of antiquity, and of the philologists to + account for them; I will only pray you to read, with patience, and human + sympathy, the thoughts of men who lived without blame in a darkness they + could not dispel; and to remember that, whatever charge of folly may + justly attach to the saying, "There is no God," the folly is prouder, + deeper, and less pardonable, in saying, "There is no God but for me." + </p> + <p> + 2. A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached + to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such + a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being + extraordinary, or, in the common use of the word, unnatural. Thus if I + tell you that Hercules killed a water-serpent in the lake of Lerna, and if + I mean, and you understand, nothing more than that fact, the story, + whether true or false, is not a myth. But if by telling you this, I mean + that Hercules purified the stagnation of many streams from deadly + miasmata, my story, however simple, is a true myth; only, as, if I leftit + in that simplicity, you would probably look for nothing beyond, it will be + wise in me to surprise your attention by adding some singular + circumstance; for instance, that the water-snake had several heads, which + revived as fast as they were killed, and which poisoned even the foot that + trod upon them as they slept. And in proportion to the fulness of intended + meaning I shall probably multiply and refine upon these improbabilities; + as, suppose, if, instead of desiring only to tell you that Hercules + purified a marsh, I wished you to understand that he contended with the + venom and vapor of envy and evil ambition, whether in other men's souls or + in his own, and choked that malaria only by supreme toil,—I might + tell you that this serpent was formed by the goddess whose pride was in + the trial of Hercules; and that its place of abode as by a palm-tree; and + that for every head of it that was cut off, two rose up with renewed life; + and that the hero found at last that he could not kill the creature at all + by cutting its heads off or crushing them, but only by burning them down; + and that the midmost of them could not be killed even that way, but had to + be buried alive. Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly + appear more absurd in my statement; and at last when I get unendurably + significant, all practical persons will agree that I was talking mere + nonsense from the beginning, and never meant anything at all. + </p> + <p> + 3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story-teller may all along + have meant nothing but what he said; and that, incredible as the events + may appear, he himself literally believed—and expected you also to + believe—all this about Hercules, without any latent moral or history + whatever. And it is very necessary, in reading traditions of this kind, to + determine, first of all, whether you are listening to a simple person, who + is relating what, at all events, he believes to be true, (and may, + therefore, possibly have been so to some extent), or to a reserved + philosopher, who is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque + of a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first supposition + should be the right one: simple and credulous persons are, perhaps + fortunately, more common than philosophers; and it is of the highest + importance that you should take their innocent testimony as it was meant, + and not efface, under the graceful explanation which your cultivated + ingenuity may suggest, either the evidence their story may contain (such + as it is worth) of an extraordinary event having really taken place, or + the unquestionable light which it will cast upon the character of the + person by whom it was frankly believed. And to deal with Greek religion + honestly, you must at once understand that this literal belief was, in the + mind of the general people, as deeply rooted as ours in the legends of our + own sacred book; and that a basis of unmiraculous event was as little + suspected, and an explanatory symbolism as rarely traced, by them, as by + us. + </p> + <p> + You must, therefore, observe that I deeply degrade the position which such + a myth as that just referred to occupied in the Greek mind, by comparing + it (for fear of offending you) to our story of St. George and the Dragon. + Still, the analogy is perfect in minor respects; and though it fails to + give you any notion of the Greek faith, it will exactly illustrate the + manner in which faith laid hold of its objects. + </p> + <p> + 4. This story of Hercules and the Hydra, then, was to the general Greek + mind, in its best days, a tale about a real hero and a real monster. Not + one in a thousand knew anything of the way in which the story had arisen, + any more than the English peasant generally is aware of the plebeian + original of St. George; or supposes that there were once alive in the + world, with sharp teeth and claws, real, and very ugly, flying dragons. On + the other hand, few persons traced any moral or symbolical meaning in the + story, and the average Greek was as far from imagining any interpretation + like that I have just given you, as an average Englishman is from seeing + is St. George the Red Cross Knight of Spenser, or in the Dragon the Spirit + of Infidelity. But, for all that, there was a certain undercurrent of + consciousness in all minds that the figures meant more than they at first + showed; and, according to each man's own faculties of sentiment, he judged + and read them; just as a Knight of the Garter reads more in the jewel on + his collar than the George and Dragon of a public-house expresses to the + host or to his customers. Thus, to the mean person the myth always meant + little; to the noble person, much; and the greater their familiarity with + it, the more contemptible it became to one, and the more sacred to the + other; until vulgar commentators explained it entirely away, while Virgil + made the crowning glory of his choral hymn to Hercules. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, + Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm." + + "Non te rationis egentem + Lernæus turbâ capitum circumstetit anguis." +</pre> + <p> + And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the moral + interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached to the event, yet in + the whole course of the life, not only for a symbolical meaning, but the + warrant for the existence of a real spiritual power, was apprehended of + all men. Hercules was no dead hero, to be remembered only as a victor over + monsters of the past—harmless now as slain. He was the perpetual + type and mirror of heroism, and its present and living aid against every + ravenous form of human trial and pain. + </p> + <p> + 5. But, if we seek to know more than this and to ascertain the manner in + which the story first crystallized into its shape, we shall find ourselves + led back generally to one or other of two sources—either to actual + historical events, represented by the fancy under figures personifying + them; or else to natural phenomena similarly endowed with life by the + imaginative power usually more or less under the influence of terror. The + historical myths we must leave the masters of history to follow; they, and + the events they record, being yet involved in great, though attractive and + penetrable, mystery. But the stars, and hills, and storms are with us now, + as they were with others of old; and it only needs that we look at them + with the earnestness of those childish eyes to understand the first words + spoken of them by the children of men, and then, in all the most beautiful + and enduring myths, we shall find, not only a literal story of a real + person, not only a parallel imagery of moral principle, but an underlying + worship of natural phenomena, out of which both have sprung, and in which + both forever remain rooted. Thus, from the real sun, rising and setting,—from + the real atmosphere, calm in its dominion of unfading blue, and fierce in + its descent of tempest,—the Greek forms first the idea of two + entirely personal and corporal gods, whose limbs are clothes in divine + flesh, and whose brows are crowned with divine beauty; yet so real that + the quiver rattles at their shoulder, and the chariot bends beneath their + weight. And, on the other hand, collaterally with these corporeal images, + and never for one instant separated from them, he conceives also two + omnipresent spiritual influences, as the sun, with a constant fire, + whatever in humanity is skilful and wise; and the other, like the living + air, breathes the calm of heavenly fortitude, and strength of righteous + anger, into every human breast that is pure and brave. + </p> + <p> + 6. Now, therefore, in nearly every myth of importance, and certainly in + every one of those which I shall speak to-night, you have to discern these + three structural parts,—the root and the two branches: the root, in + physical existence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea; then the personal + incarnation of that, becoming a trusted and companionable deity, with whom + you may walk hand in hand, as a child with its brother or its sister; and, + lastly, the moral significance of the image, which is in all the great + myths eternally and beneficently true. + </p> + <p> + 7. The great myths; that is to say, myths made by great people. For the + first plain fact about myth-making is one which has been most strangely + lost sight of,—that you cannot make a myth unless you have something + to make it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't know. If the myth + is about the sky, it must have been made by somebody who has looked at the + sky. If the myth is about justice and fortitude, it must have been made by + someone who knew what it was to be just or patient. According to the + quantity of understanding in the person will be the quantity of + significance in his fable; and the myth of a simple and ignorant race must + necessarily mean little, because a simple and ignorant race have little to + mean. So the great question in reading a story is always, not what wild + hunter dreamed, or what childish race first dreaded it; but what wise man + first perfectly told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it. + And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at the noblest age + of the nation among whom it is current. The farther back you pierce, the + less significance you will find, until you come to the first narrow + thought, which, indeed, contains the germ of the accomplished tradition; + but only as the seed contains the flower. As the intelligence and passion + of the race develop, they cling to and nourish their beloved and sacred + legend; leaf by leaf it expands under the touch of more pure affections, + and more delicate imagination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons + out into symmetry of milky stem and honied bell. + </p> + <p> + 8. But through whatever changes it may pass, remember that our right + reading of it is wholly dependent on the materials we have in our own + minds for an intelligent answering sympathy. If it first arose among a + people who dwelt under stainless skies, and measures their journeys by + ascending and declining stars, we certainly cannot read their story, if we + have never seen anything above us in the day but smoke, nor anything + around us in the night but candles. If the tale goes on to change clouds + or planets into living creatures,—to invest them with fair forms and + inflame them with mighty passions,—we can only understand the story + of the human-hearted things, in so far as we ourselves take pleasure in + the perfectness of visible form, or can sympathize, by an effort of + imagination, with the strange people who had other loves than those of + wealth, and other interests than those of commerce. And, lastly, if the + myth complete itself to the fulfilled thoughts of the nation, by + attributing to the gods, whom they have carved out of their fantasy, + continual presence with their own souls; and their every effort for good + is finally guided by the sense of the companionship, the praise, and the + pure will of immortals, we shall be able to follow them into this last + circle of their faith only in the degree in which the better parts of our + own beings have been also stirred by the aspects of nature, or + strengthened by her laws. It may be easy to prove that the ascent of + Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the sun. But + what does the sunrise itself signify to us? If only languid return to + frivolous amusement, or fruitless labor, it will, indeed, not be easy for + us to conceive the power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if, fir + us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restoration to the + sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life—if it means the + thrilling of new strength through every nerve,—the shedding over us + of a better peace than the peace of night, in the power of the dawn,—and + the purging of evil vision and fear by the baptism of its dew;—if + the sun itself is an influence, to us also, of spiritual good—and + becomes thus in reality, not in imagination, to us also, a spiritual + power,—we may then soon over-pass the narrow limit of conception + which kept that power impersonal, and rise with the Greek to the thought + of an angel who rejoiced as a strong man to run his course, whose voice + calling to life and to labor rang round the earth, and whose going forth + was to the ends of heaven. + </p> + <p> + 9. The time, then, at which I shall take up for you, as well as I can + decipher it, the traditions of the gods of Greece, shall be near the + beginning of its central and formed faith,—about 500 B.C.,—a + faith of which the character is perfectly represented by Pindar and + Æschylus, who are both of them outspokenly religious, and entirely sincere + men; while we may always look back to find the less developed thought of + the preceding epoch given by Homer, in a more occult, subtle, + half-instinctive, and involuntary way. + </p> + <p> + 10. Now, at that culminating period of the Greek religion, we find, under + one governing Lord of all things, four subordinate elemental forces, and + four spiritual powers living in them and commanding them. The elements are + of course the well-known four of the ancient world,— the earth, the + waters, the fire, and the air; and the living powers of them are Demeter, + the Latin Ceres; Poseidon, the Latin Neptune; Apollo, who has retained + always his Greek name; and Athena, the Latin Minerva. Each of these are + descended from, or changed from, more ancient, and therefore more mystic, + deities of the earth and heaven, and of a finer element of æther supposed + to be beyond the heavens;* but at this time we find the four quite + definite, both in their kingdoms and in their personalities. They are the + rulers of the earth that we tread upon, and the air that we breathe; and + are with us closely, in their vivid humanity, as the dust that they + animate, and the winds that they bridle. I shall briefly define for you + the range of their separate dominions, and then follow, as far as we have + time, the most interesting of the legends which relate to the queen of the + air. + </p> + <p> + * And by modern science now also asserted, and with probability argued, to + exist. + </p> + <p> + 11. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the earth mother, is over the + earth, first, as the origin of all life,—the dust from whence we + were taken; secondly, as the receiver of all things back at last into + silence —"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." And, + therefore, as the most tender image of this appearing and fading life, in + the birth and fall of flowers, her daughter Proserpine plays in the fields + of Sicily, and thence is torn away into darkness, and becomes the Queen of + Fate—not merely of death, but of the gloom which closes over and + ends, not beauty only, but sin, and chiefly of sins the sin against the + life she gave; so that she is, in her highest power, Persephone, the + avenger and purifier of blood—"The voice of thy brother's blood + cries to me out of the ground." Then, side by side with this queen of the + earth, we find a demigod of agriculture by the plough—the lord of + grain, or of the thing ground by the mill. And it is a singular proof of + the simplicity of Greek character at this noble time, that of all + representations left to us of their deities by their art, few are so + frequent, and none perhaps so beautiful, as the symbol of this spirit of + agriculture. + </p> + <p> + 12. Then the dominant spirit of the element water is Neptune, but + subordinate to him are myriads of other water spirits, of whom Nereus is + the chief, with Palæmon, and Leucothea, the "white lady" of the sea; and + Thetis, and nymphs innumerable who, like her, could "suffer a sea change," + while the river deities had each independent power, according to the + preciousness of their streams to the cities fed by them,—the + "fountain Arethuse, and thou, honoured flood, smooth sliding Mincius, + crowned with vocal reeds." And, spiritually, this king of the waters is + lord of the strength and daily flow of human life—he gives it + material force and victory; which as the meaning of the dedication of the + hair, as the sign of the strength of life, to the river or the native + land. + </p> + <p> + 13. Demeter, then, over the earth, and its giving and receiving of life. + Neptune over the waters, and the flow and force of life,—always + among the Greeks typified by the horse, which was to them as a crested + sea-wave, animated and bridled. Then the third element, fire, has set over + it two powers: over earthly fire, the assistant of human labor, is set + Hephæstus, lord of all labor in which is the flush and the sweat of the + brow; and over heavenly fire, the source of day, is set Apollo, the spirit + of all kindling, purifying, and illuminating intellectual wisdom, each of + these gods having also their subordinate or associated powers,— + servant, or sister, or companion muse. + </p> + <p> + 14. Then, lastly, we come to the myth which is to be our subject of closer + inquiry,—the story of Athena and of the deities subordinate to her. + This great goddess, the Neith of the Egyptians, the Athena or Athenaia of + the Greeks, and, with broken power, half usurped by Mars, the Minerva of + the Latins, is, physically, the queen of the air; having supreme power + both over its blessing of calm, and wrath of storm; and, spiritually, she + is the queen of the breath of man, first of the bodily breathing which is + life to his blood, and strength to his arm in battle; and then of the + mental breathing, or inspiration, which is his moral health and habitual + wisdom; wisdom of conduct and of the heart, as opposed to the wisdom of + imagination and the brain; moral, as distinct from intellectual; inspired, + as distinct from illuminated. + </p> + <p> + 15. By a singular and fortunate, though I believe wholly accidental, + coincidence, the heart-virtue, of which she is the spirit, was separated + by the ancients into four divisions, which have since obtained acceptance + from all men as rightly discerned, and have received, as if from the + quarters of the four winds of which Athena is the natural queen, the name + of "Cardinal" virtues: namely, Prudence (the right seeing, and foreseeing, + of events through darkness); Justice (the righteous bestowal of favor and + of indignation); Fortitude (patience under trial by pain); and Temperance + (patience under trial by pleasure). With respect to these four virtues, + the attributes of Athena are all distinct. In her prudence, or sight in + darkness, she is "Glaukopis," "owl-eyed."* In her justice, which is the + dominant virtue, she wears two robes, one of light, and one of darkness; + the robe of light, saffron color, or the color of the daybreak, falls to + her feet, covering her wholly with favor and love,—the calm of the + sky in blessing; it is embroidered along its edge with her victory over + the giants (the troublous powers of the earth), and the likeness of it was + woven yearly by the Athenian maidens and carried to the temple of their + own Athena, not to the Parthenon, that was the temple of all the world's + Athena,—but this they carried to the temple of their own only one + who loved them, and stayed with them always. Then her robe of indignation + is worn on her breast and left arm only, fringed with fatal serpents, and + fastened with Gorgonian cold, turning men to stone; physically, the + lightning and hail of chastisement by storm. Then in her fortitude she + wears the crested and unstooping hemlet;** and lastly, in her temperance, + she is the queen of maidenhood—stainless as the air of heaven. + </p> + <p> + * There are many other meanings in the epithet; see farther on, §91, pp. + 133, 134. ** I am compelled, for clearness' sake, to mark only one meaning + at a time. Athena's helmet is sometimes a mask, sometimes a sign of anger, + sometimes of the highest light of æther; but I cannot speak of all this at + once. + </p> + <p> + 16. But all these virtues mass themselves in the Greek mind into the two + main ones,—of Justice, or noble passion, and Fortitude, or noble + patience; and of these, the chief powers of Athena, the Greeks have + divinely written for them, and for all men after them, two mighty songs, + —one, of the Menis,* Mens, passion, or zeal, of Athena, breathed + into a mortal whose name is "Ache of heart," and whose short life is only + the incarnate brooding and burst of storm; and the other is of the + foresight and fortitude of Athena, maintained by her in the heart of a + mortal whose name is given to him from a longer grief, Odysseus, the full + of sorrow, the much enduring, and the long-suffering. + </p> + <p> + * This first word of the Iliad, Menis, afterwards passes into the Latin + Mens; is the root of the Latin name for Athena, "Minerva," and so the root + of the English "mind." + </p> + <p> + 17. The minor expressions by the Greeks in word, in symbol, and in + religious service, of this faith, are so many and so beautiful, that I + hope some day to gather at least a few of them into a separate body of + evidence respecting the power of Athena, and of its relations to the + ethical conception of the Homeric poems, or, rather, to their ethical + nature; for they are not conceived didactically, but are didactic in their + essence, as all good art is. There is an increasing insensibility to this + character, and even an open denial of it, among us now which is one of the + most curious errors of modernism,—the peculiar and judicial + blindness of an age which, having long practised art and poetry for the + sake of pleasure only, has become incapable of reading their language when + they were both didactic; and also, having been itself accustomed to a + professedly didactic teaching, which yet, for private interests, + studiously avoids collision with every prevalent vice of its day (and + especially with avarice), has become equally dead to the intensely ethical + conceptions of a race which habitually divided all men into two broad + classes of worthy or worthless,—good, and good for nothing. And even + the celebrated passage of Horace about the Iliad is now misread or + disbelieved, as if it were impossible that the Iliad could be instructive + because it is not like a sermon. Horce does not say that it is like a + sermon, and would have been still less likely to say so if he ever had had + the advantage of hearing a sermon. "I have been reading that story of Troy + again" (thus he writes to a noble youth of Rome whom he cared for), + "quietly at Præneste, while you have been busy at Rome; and truly I think + that what is base and what is noble, and what useful and useless, may be + better learned from that, than from all Chrysippus' and Crantor's talk put + together."* Which is profoundly true, not of the Iliad only, but of all + other great art whatsoever; for all pieces of such art are didactic in the + purest way, indirectly and occultly, so that, first, you shall only be + bettered by them if you are already hard at work in bettering yourself; + and when you are bettered by them, it shall be partly with a general + acceptance of their influence, so constant and subtile that you shall be + no more conscious of it than of the healthy digestion of food; and partly + by a gift of unexpected truth, which you shall only find by slow mining + for it,—which is withheld on purpose, and close-locked, that you may + not get it till you have forged the key of it in a furnace of your own + heating. And this withholding of their meaning is continual, and + confessed, in the great poets. Thus Pindar says of himself: "There is many + an arrow in my quiver, full of speech to the wise, but, for the many, they + need interpreters." And neither Pindar, nor Æschylus, nor Hesiod, nor + Homer, nor any of the greater poets or teachers of any nation or time, + ever spoke but with intentional reservation; nay, beyond this, there is + often a meaning which they themselves cannot interpert [sic],—which + it may be for ages long after them to intrepert [sic],—in what they + said, so far as it recorded true imaginative vision. For all the greatest + myths have been seen by the men who tell them, involuntarily and + passively,—seen by them with as great distinctness (and in some + respects, though not in all, under conditions as far beyond the control of + their will) as a dream sent to any of us by night when we dream clearest; + and it is this veracity of vision that could not be refused, and of moral + that could not be foreseen, which in modern historical inquiry has been + left wholly out of account; being indeed the thing which no merely + historical investigator can understand, or even believe; for it belongs + exclusively to the creative or artistic group of men, and can only be + interpreted by those of their race, who themselves in some measure also + see visions and dream dreams. + </p> + <p> + * Note, once for all, that unless when there is question about some + particular expression, I never translate literally, but give the real + force of what is said, as I best can, freely. + </p> + <p> + So that you may obtain a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek + religion and legend from the poems of Keats, and the nearly as beautiful, + and, in general grasp of subject, far more powerful, recent work of + Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. Not that the + poet's impressions or renderings of things are wholly true, but their + truth is vital, not formal. They are like sketches from the life by + Reynolds or Gainsborough, which may be demonstrably inaccurate or + imaginary in many traits, and indistinct in others, yet will be in the + deepest sense like, and true; while the work of historical analysis is too + often weak with loss, through the very labor of its miniature touches, or + useless in clumsy and vapid veracity of externals, and complacent security + of having done all that is required for the portrait, when it has measured + the breadth of the forehead and the length of the nose. + </p> + <p> + 18. The first of requirements, then, for the right reading of myths, is + the understanding of the nature of all true vision by noble persons; + namely, that it is founded on constant laws common to all human nature; + that it perceives, however darkly, things which are for all ages true; + that we can only understand it so far as we have some perception of the + same truth; and that its fulness is developed and manifested more and more + by the reverberation of it from minds of the same mirror-temper, in + succeeding ages. You will understand Homer better by seeing his reflection + in Dante, as you may trace new forms and softer colors in a hillside, + redoubled by a lake. + </p> + <p> + I shall be able partly to show you, even to-night, how much, in the + Homeric vision of Athena, has been made clearer by the advance of time, + being thus essentially and eternally true; but I must in the outset + indicate the relation to that central thought of the imagery of the + inferior deities of storm. + </p> + <p> + 19. And first I will take the myth of Æolus (the "sage Hippotades" of + Milton), as it is delivered pure by Homer from the early times. + </p> + <p> + Why do you suppose Milton calls him "sage"? One does not usually think of + the winds as very thoughtful or deliberate powers. But hear Homer: "Then + we came to the Æolian island, and there dwelt Æolus Hippotades, dear to + the deathless gods; there he dwelt in a floating island, and round it was + a wall of brass that could not be broken; and the smooth rock of it ran up + sheer. To whom twelve children were born in the sacred chambers,—six + daughters and six strong sons; and they dwell foreer with their beloved + father and their mother, strict in duty; and with them are laid up a + thousand benefits; and the misty house around them rings with fluting all + the day long." Now, you are to note first, in this description, the wall + of brass and the sheer rock. You will find, throughout the fables of the + tempest-group, that the brazen wall and the precipice (occurring in + another myth as the brazen tower of Danaë) are always connected with the + idea of the towering cloud lighted by the sun, here truly described as a + floating island. Secondly, you hear that all treasures were laid up in + them; therefore, you know this Æolus is lord of the beneficent winds ("he + bringeth the wind out of his treasuries"); and presently afterwards Homer + calls him the "steward" of the winds, the master of the store-house of + them. And this idea of gifts and preciousness in the winds of heaven is + carried out in the well-known sequel of the fable: Æolus gives them to + Ulysses, all but one, bound in leathern bags, with a glittering cord of + silver; and so like bags of treasure that the sailors think they are so, + and open them to see. And when Ulysses is thus driven back to Æolus, and + prays him again to help him, note the deliberate words of the king's + refusal,—"Did I not," says he, "send thee on thy way heartily, that + thou mightest reach thy country, thy home, and whatever is dear to thee? + It is not lawful for me again to send forth favorably on his journey a man + hated by the happy gods." This idea of the beneficence of Æolus remains to + the latest times, though Virgil, by adopting the vulgar change of the + cloud island into Lipari, has lost it a little; but even when it is + finally explained away by Diodorus, Æolus is still a kind-hearted monarch, + who lived on the coast of Sorrento, invented the use of sails, and + established a system of storm signals. + </p> + <p> + 20. Another beneficent storm-power, Boreas, occupies an important place in + early legend, and a singularly principal one in art; and I wish I could + read to you a passage of Plato about the legend of Boreas and Oreithyia,* + and the breeze and shade of the Ilissus—notwithstannding its severe + reflection upon persons who waste their time on mythological studies; but + I must go on at once to the fable with which you are all generally + familiar, that of the Harpies. + </p> + <p> + * Translated by Max Müller in the opening of his essay on "Comparative + Mythology."—Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii. + </p> + <p> + This is always connected with that of Boreas or the north wind, because + the two sons of Boreas are enemies of the Harpies, and drive them away + into frantic flight. The myth in its first literal form means only the + battle between the fair north wind and the foul south one: the two + Harpies, "Stormswift" and "Swiftfoot," are the sisters of the rainbow; + that is to say, they are the broken drifts of the showery south wind, and + the clear north wind drives them back; but they quickly take a deeper and + more malignant significance. You know the short, violent, spiral gusts + that lift the dust before coming rain: the Harpies get identified first + with these, and then with more violent whirlwinds, and so they are called + "Harpies," "the Snatchers," and are thought of as entirely destructive; + their manner of destroying being twofold,—by snatching away, and by + defiling and polluting. This is a month in which you may really see a + small Harpy at her work almost whenever you choose. The first time that + there is threatening of rain after two or three days of fine weather, + leave your window well open to the street, and some books or papers on the + table; and if you do not, in a little while, know what the Harpies mean, + and how they snatch, and how they defile, I'll give up my Greek myths. + </p> + <p> + 21. That is the physical meaning. It is now easy to find the mental one. + You must all have felt the expression of ignoble anger in those fitful + gusts of storm. There is a sense of provocation in their thin and + senseless fury, wholly different from the nobler anger of the greater + tempests. Also, they seem useless and unnatural, and the Greek thinks of + them always as vile in malice, and opposed, therefore, to the Sons of + Boreas, who are kindly winds, that fill sails, and wave harvests,—full + of bracing health and happy impulses. From this lower and merely greater + terror, always associated with their whirling motion, which is indeed + indicative of the most destructive winds; and they are thus related to the + nobler tempests, as Charybdis to the sea; they are devouring and + desolating, making all things disappear that come in their grasp; and so, + spiritually, they are the gusts of vexatious, fretful, lawless passion, + vain and overshadowing, discontented and lamenting, meager and insane,— + spirits of wasted energy, and wandering disease, and unappeased famine, + and unsatisfied hope. So you have, on the one side, the winds of + prosperity and health, on the other, of ruin and sickness. Understand + that, once, deeply,—any who have ever known the weariness of vain + desires, the pitiful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling famine and + thirst of heart,—and you will know what was in the sound of the + Harpy Celæno's shriek from her rock; and why, in the seventh circle of the + "Inferno," the Harpies make their nests in the warped branches of the + trees that are the souls of suicides. + </p> + <p> + 22. Now you must always be prepared to read Greek legends as you trace + threads through figures on a silken damask: the same thread runs through + the web, but it makes part of different figures. Joined with other colors + you hardly recognize it, and in different lights it is dark or light. Thus + the Greek fables blend and cross curiously in different directions, till + they knit themselves into an arabesque where sometimes you cannot tell + black from purple, nor blue from emerald—they being all the truer + for this, because the truths of emotion they represent are interwoven in + the same way, but all the more difficult to read, and to explain in any + order. Thus the Harpies, as they represent vain desire, are connected with + the Sirens, who are the spirits of constant desire; so that it is + difficult sometimes in early art to know which are meant, both being + represented alike as birds with women's heads; only the Sirens are the + great constant desires—the infinite sicknesses of heart—which, + rightly placed, give life, and wrongly placed, waste it away; so that + there are two groups of Sirens, one noble and saving, as the other is + fatal. But there are no animating or saving Harpies; their nature is + always vexing and full of weariness, and thus they are curiously connected + with the whole group of legends about Tantalus. + </p> + <p> + 33.* We all know what it is to be tantalized; but we do not often think of + asking what Tantalus was tantalized for—what he had done, to be + forever kept hungry in sight of food. Well; he had not been condemned to + this merely for being a glutton. By Dante the same punishment is assigned + to simple gluttony, to purge it away; but the sins of Tantalus were of a + much wider and more mysterious kind. There are four great sins attributed + to him: one, stealing the food of the gods to give it to men; another, + sacrificing his son to feed the gods themselves (it may remind you for a + moment of what I was telling you of the earthly character of Demeter, + that, while the other gods all refuse, she, dreaming about her lost + daughter, eats part of the shoulder of Pelops before she knows what she is + doing); another sin is, telling the secrets of the gods; and only the + fourth—stealing the golden dog of Pandareos—is connected with + gluttony. The special sense of this myth is marked by Pandareos receiving + the happy privilege of never being troubled with indigestion; the dog, in + general, however mythically represents all utter senseless and carnal + desires; mainly that of gluttony; and in the mythic sense of Hades—that + is to say, so far as it represents spiritual ruin in this life, and not a + literal hell—the dog Cerberus as its gatekeeper—with this + special marking of his character of sensual passion, that he fawns on all + those who descend, but rages against all who would return (the Virgilian + "facilis descendus" being a later recognition of this mythic character of + Hades); the last labor of Hercules is the dragging him up to the light; + and in some sort he represents the voracity or devouring of Hades itself; + and the mediæval representation of the mouth of hell perpetuates the same + thought. Then, also, the power of evil passion is partly associated with + the red and scorching light of Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the + sun: he is the dog-star of ruin; and hence the continual Homeric dwelling + upon him, and comparison of the flame of anger to his swarthy light; only, + in his scorching, it is thirst, not hunger, over which he rules + physically; so that the fable of Icarius, his first master, corresponds, + among the Greeks, to the legend of the drunkenness of Noah. + </p> + <p> + * Printer's error: should be 23. + </p> + <p> + The story of Actæon, the raging death of Hecuba, and the tradition of the + white dog which ate part of Hercules' first sacrifice, and so gave name to + the Cynosarges, are all various phases of the same thought,—the + Greek notion of the dog being throughout confused between its serviceable + fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul voracity, shamelessness, and deadly + madness, while with the curious reversal or recoil of the meaning which + attaches itself to nearly every great myth,—and which we shall + presently see notably exemplified in the relations of the serpent to + Athena,—the dog becomes in philosophy a type of severity and + abstinence. + </p> + <p> + 24. It would carry us too far aside were I to tell you the story of + Pandareos' dog—or rather of Jupiter's dog, for Pandareos was its + guardian only; all that bears on our present purpose is that the guardian + of this golden dog had three daughters, one of whom was subject to the + power of the Sirens, and is turned into a nightingale; and the other two + were subject to the power of the Harpies, and this was what happened to + them: They were very beautiful, and they were beloved by the gods in their + youth, and all the great goddesses were anxious to bring them up rightly. + Of all types of young ladies' education, there is nothing so splendid as + that of the younger daughters of Pandareos. They have literally the four + greatest goddesses for their governesses. Athena teaches them domestic + accomplishments, how to weave, and sew, and the like; Artemis teaches them + to hold themselves up straight; Hera, how to behave proudly and + oppressively to company; and Aphrodite, delightful governess, feeds them + with cakes and honey all day long. All goes well, until just the time when + they are going to be brought out; then there is a great dispute whom they + are to marry, and in the midst of it they are carried off by the Harpies, + given by them to be slaves to the Furies, and never seen more. But of + course there is nothing in Greek myths; and one never heard of such things + as vain desires, and empty hopes, and clouded passions, defiling and + snatching away the souls of maidens, in a London season. + </p> + <p> + I have no time to trace for you any more harpy legends, though they are + full of the most curious interest; but I may confirm for you my + interpretation of this one, and prove its importance in the Greek mind, by + noting that Polygnotus painted these maidens, in his great religious + series of paintings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; + and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, just before + the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at + once into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' daughters, rather + than be tormented longer by her deferred hope, and anguish of disappointed + love. + </p> + <p> + 25. I have hitherto spoken only of deities of the winds. We pass now to a + far more important group, the deities of cloud. Both of these are + subordinate to the ruling power of the air, as the demigods of the + fountains and minor seas are to the great deep; but, as the + cloud-firmament detaches itself more from the air, and has a wider range + of ministry than the minor streams and seas, the highest cloud deity, + Hermes, has a rank more equal with Athena than Nereus or Proteus with + Neptune; and there is greater difficulty in tracing his character, because + his physical dominion over the clouds can, of course, be asserted only + where clouds are; and, therefore, scarcely at all in Egypt;* so that the + changes which Hermes undergoes in becoming a Greek from an Egyptian and + Phnician god, are greater than in any other case of adopted tradition In + Egypt Hermes is a deity of historical record, and a conductor of the dead + to judgment; the Greeks take away much of this historical function, + assigning it to the Muses; but, in investing him with the physical power + over clouds, they give him that which the Muses disdain,—the power + of concealment and of theft. The snatching away by the Harpies is with + brute force; but the snatching away by the clouds is connected with the + thought of hiding, and of making things seem to be what they are not; so + that Hermes is the god of lying, as he is of mist; and yet with this + ignoble function of making things vanish and disappear is connected the + remnant of his grand Egyptian authority of leading away souls in the cloud + of death (the actual dimness of sight caused by mortal wounds physically + suggesting the darkness and descent of clouds, and continually being so + described in the Iliad); while the sense of the need of guidance on the + untrodden road follows necessarily. You cannot but remember how this + thought of cloud guidance, and cloud receiving souls at death, has been + elsewhere ratified. + </p> + <p> + * I believe that the conclusions of recent scholarship are generally + opposed to the Herodotean ideas of any direct acceptance by the Greeks of + Egyptian myths: and very certainly, Greek art is developed by giving the + veracity and simplicity of real life to Eastern savage grotesque; and not + by softening the severity of pure Egyptian design. But it is of no + consequence whether one conception was, or was not, in this case, derived + from the other; my object is only to mark the essential difference between + them. + </p> + <p> + 26. Without following that higher clue, I will pass to the lovely group of + myths connected with the birth of Hermes on the Greek mountains. You know + that the valley of Sparta is one of the noblest mountain ravines in the + world, and that the western flank of it is formed by an unbroken chain of + crags, forty miles long, rising, opposite Sparta, to a height of 8,000 + feet, and known as the chain of Taygetus. Now, the nymph from whom that + mountain ridge is named was the mother of Lacedæmon; therefore the mythic + ancestress of the Spartan race. She is the nymph Taygeta, and one of the + seven stars of spring; one of those Pleiades of whom is the question to + Job,—"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the + bands of Orion?" "The sweet influences of Pleiades," of the stars of + spring,—nowhere sweeter than among the pine-clad slopes of the hills + of Sparta and Arcadia, when he snows of their higher summits, beneath the + sunshine of April, fell into fountains, and rose into clouds; and in every + ravine was a newly awakened voice of waters,—soft increase of + whisper among its sacred stones; and on every crag its forming and fading + veil of radiant cloud; temple above temple, of the divine marble that no + tool can pollute, nor ruin undermine. And, therefore, beyond this central + valley, this great Greek vase of Arcadia, on the "hollow" mountain, + Cyllene, or "pregnant" mountain, called also "cold," because there the + vapors rest,* and born of the eldest of those stars of spring, that Maia, + from whom your own month of May has its name, bringing to you, in the + green of her garlands, and the white of her hawthorn, the unrecognized + symbols of the pastures and the wreathed snows of Arcadia, where long ago + she was queen of stars: there, first cradled and wrapt in + swaddling-clothes; then raised, in a moment of surprise, into his + wandering power,—is born the shepherd of the clouds, winged-footed + and deceiving,—blinding the eyes of Argus,—escaping from the + grasp of Apollo—restless messenger between the highest sky and + topmost earth— "the herald Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing + hill." + </p> + <p> + * On the altar of Hermes on its summit, as on that of the Lacinian Hera, + no wind ever stirred the ashes. By those altars, the Gods of Heaven were + appeased, and all their storms at rest. + </p> + <p> + 27. Now, it will be wholly impossible, at present, to trace for you any of + the minor Greek expressions of this thought, except only that Mercury, as + the cloud shepherd, is especially called Eriophoros, the wool-bearer. You + will recollect the name from the common woolly rush "eriophorum" which has + a cloud of silky seed; and note also that he wears distinctively the flap + cap, petasos, named from a word meaning "to expand;" which shaded from the + sun, and is worn on journeys. You have the epithet of mountains + "cloud-capped" as an established form with every poet, and the Mont Pilate + of Lucerne is named from a Latin word signifying specially a woollen cap; + but Mercury has, besides, a general Homeric epithet, curiously and + intensely concentrated in meaning, "the profitable or serviceable by + wool,"* that is to say, by shepherd wealth; hence, "pecuniarily," rich or + serviceable, and so he passes at last into a general mercantile deity; + while yet the cloud sense of the wool is retained by Homer always, so that + he gives him this epithet when it would otherwise have been quite + meaningless (in Iliad, xxiv. 440), when he drives Priam's chariot, and + breathes force into his horses, precisely as we shall find Athena drive + Diomed; and yet the serviceable and profitable sense—and something + also of gentle and soothing character in the mere wool-softness, as used + for dress, and religious rites—is retained also in the epithet, and + thus the gentle and serviceable Hermes is opposed to the deceitful one. + </p> + <p> + * I am convinced that the 'eri' in 'eriounios' is not intensitive, but + retained from 'erion'; but even if I am wrong in thinking this, the + mistake is of no consequence with respect to the general force of the term + as meaning the profitableness of Hermes. Athena's epithet of 'ageleia' has + a parallel significance. [Transcriber's note: words inside single + apostrophes are Greek, and use the Greek alphabet.] + </p> + <p> + 28. In connection with this driving of Priam's chariot, remember that as + Autolycus is the son of Hermes the Deceiver, Myrtilus (the Auriga of the + Stars) is the son of Hermes the Guide. The name Hermes itself means + impulse; and he is especially the shepherd of the flocks of the sky, in + driving, or guiding, or stealing them; and yet his great name, + Argeiphontes, not only—as in different passages of the olden poets—means + "Shining White," which is said of him as being himself the silver cloud + lighted by the sun; but "Argus-killer," the killer of rightness, which is + said of him as he veils the sky, and especially the stars, which are the + eyes of Argus; or, literally, eyes of brightness, which Juno, who is, with + Jupiter, part of the type of highest heaven, keeps in her peacock's train. + We know that this interpretation is right, from a passage in which + Euripides describes the shield of Hippomedon, which bore for his sign, + "Argus the all-seeing, covered with eyes; open towards the rising of the + stars and closed towards their setting." + </p> + <p> + And thus Hermes becomes the spirit of the movement of the sky or + firmament; not merely the fast flying of the transitory cloud, but the + great motion of the heavens and stars themselves. Thus, in his highest + power, he corresponds to the "primo mobile" of the later Italian + philosophy, and, in his simplest, is the guide of all mysterious and + cloudy movement, and of all successful subtleties. Perhaps the prettiest + minor recognition of his character is when, on the night foray of Ulysses + and Diomed, Ulysses wear the helmet stolen by Autolycus, the son of + Hermes. + </p> + <p> + 29. The position in the Greek mind of Hermes as the lord of cloud is, + however, more mystic and ideal than that of any other deity, just on + account of the constant and real presence of the cloud itself under + different forms, giving rise to all kinds of minor fables. The play of the + Greek imagination in this direction is so wide and complex, that I cannot + give you an outline of its range in my present limits. There is first a + great series of storm-legends connected with the family of the historic + Æolus centralized by the story of Athamas, with his two wives, "the + Cloud," and the "White Goddess," ending in that of Phrixus and Helle, and + of the golden fleece (which is only the cloud-burden of Hermes + Eriophoros). With this, there is the fate of Salmoneus, and the + destruction of the Glaucus by his own horses; all these minor myths of + storm concentrating themselves darkly into the legend of Bellerophon and + the Chimæra, in which there is an under story about the vain subduing of + passion and treachery, and the end of life in fading melancholy,—which, + I hope, not many of you could understand even were I to show it you (the + merely physical meaning of the Chimæra is the cloud of volcanic lightning + connected wholly with earth-fire, but resembling the heavenly cloud in its + height and its thunder). Finally, in the Æolic group, there is the legend + of Sisypus, which I mean to work out thoroughly by itself; its root is in + the position of Corinth as ruling the isthmus and the two seas —the + Corinthean Acropolis, two thousand feet high, being the centre of the + crossing currents of the winds, and of the commerce of Greece. Therefore, + Athena, and the fountain-cloud Pegasus, are more closely connected with + Corinth than even with Athens in their material, though not in their + moral, power; and Sisyphus founds the Isthmian games in connection with a + melancholy story about the sea gods; but he himself is 'kerdotos andron', + the most "gaining" and subtle of men; who having the key of the Isthmus, + becomes the type of transit, transfer, or trade, as such; and of the + apparent gain from it, which is not gain; and this is the real meaning of + his punishment in hell—eternal toil and recoil (the modern idol of + capital being, indeed, the stone of Sisyphus with a vengeance, crushing in + its recoil). But, throughout, the old ideas of the cloud power and cloud + feebleness,—the deceit of its hiding,—and the emptiness of its + banishing,—the Autolycus enchantment of making black seem white,—and + the disappointed fury of Ixion (taking shadow for power), mingle in the + moral meaning of this and its collateral legends; and give an aspect, at + last, not only of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal "idolatry," + "imagination worship," to the dreams of avarice and injustice, until this + notion of atheism and insolent blindness becomes principal; and the + "Clouds" of Aristophanes, with the personified "just" and "unjust" sayings + in the latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost feature by feature, in + all that they were written to mock and to chastise, the worst elements of + the impious "'dinos'" and tumult in men's thoughts, which have followed on + their avarice in the present day, making them alike forsake the laws of + their ancient gods, and misapprehended or reject the true words of their + existing teachers. + </p> + <p> + 30. All this we have from the legends of the historic Æolus only; but, + besides these, there is the beautiful story of Semele, the mother of + Bacchus. She is the cloud with the strength of the vine in its bosom, + consumed by the light which matures the fruit; the melting away of the + cloud into the clean air at the fringe of its edges being exquisitely + rendered by Pindar's epithet for her, Semele, "with the stretched-out + hair" ('tauuetheira'.) Then there is the entire tradition of the Danaides, + and of the tower of Danaë and golden shower; the birth of Perseus + connecting this legend with that of the Gorgons and Graiæ, who are the + true clouds of thunderous ruin and tempest. I must, in passing, mark for + you that the form of the sword or sickle of Perseus, with which he kills + Medusa, is another image of the whirling harpy vortex, and belongs + especially to the sword of destruction or annihilation; whence it is given + to the two angels who gather for destruction the evil harvest and evil + vintage of the earth (Rev. xiv. 15). I will collect afterwards and + complete what I have already written respecting the Pegasean and Gorgonian + legends, noting here only what is necessary to explain the central myth of + Athena herself, who represents the ambient air, which included all cloud, + and rain, and dew, and darkness, and peace, and wrath of heaven. Let me + now try to give you, however briefly, some distinct idea of the several + agencies of this great goddess. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +31. I. She is the air giving life and health to all animals. + II. She is the air giving vegetative power to the earth. + III. She is the air giving motion to the sea, and rendering + navigation possible. + IV. She is the air nourishing artificial light, torch or lamplight; + as opposed to that of the sun, on one hand, and of consuming* + fire on the other. + V. She is the air conveying vibration of sound. +</pre> + <p> + * Not a scientific, but a very practical and expressive distinction. + </p> + <p> + I will give you instances of her agency in all these functions. + </p> + <p> + 32. First, and chiefly, she is air as the spirit of life, giving vitality + to the blood. Her psychic relation to the vital force in matter lies + deeper, and we will examine it afterwards; but a great number of the most + interesting passages in Homer regard her as flying over the earth in local + and transitory strength, simply and merely the goddess of fresh air. + </p> + <p> + It is curious that the British city which has somewhat saucily styled + itself the Modern Athens is indeed more under her especial tutelage and + favor in this respect than perhaps any other town in the island. Athena is + first simply what in the Modern Athens you practically find her, the + breeze of the mountain and the sea; and wherever she comes, there is + purification, and health, and power. The sea-beach round this isle of ours + is the frieze of our Parthenon; every wave that breaks on it thunders with + Athena's voice; nay, wherever you throw your window wide open in the + morning, you let in Athena, as wisdom and fresh air at the same instant; + and whenever you draw a pure, long, full breath of right heaven, you take + Athena into your heart, through your blood; and, with the blood, into the + thoughts of your brain. + </p> + <p> + Now, this giving of strength by the air, observe, is mechanical as well as + chemical. You cannot strike a good blow but with your chest full; and, in + hand to hand fighting, it is not the muscle that fails first, it is the + breath; the longest-breathed will, on the average, be the victor, —not + the strongest. Note how Shakespeare always leans on this. Of Mortimer, in + "changing hardiment with great Glendower": + </p> + <p> + "Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, Upon + agreement, of swift Severn's flood." + </p> + <p> + And again, Hotspur, sending challenge to Prince Harry: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "That none might draw short breath to-day + But I and Harry Monmouth." +</pre> + <p> + Again, of Hamlet, before he receives his wound: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "He's fat, and scant of breath." +</pre> + <p> + Again, Orlando in the wrestling: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Yes; I beseech your grace + I am not yet well breathed." +</pre> + <p> + Now, of all the people that ever lived, the Greeks knew best what breath + meant, both in exercise and in battle, and therefore the queen of the air + becomes to them at once the queen of bodily strength in war; not mere + brutal muscular strength,—that belongs to Ares,—but the + strength of young lives passed in pure air and swift exercise,—Camilla's + virginal force, that "flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the + main." + </p> + <p> + 33. Now I will rapidly give you two or three instances of her direct + agency in this function. First, when she wants to make Penelope bright and + beautiful; and to do away with the signs of her waiting and her grief. + "Then Athena thought of another thing; she laid her into a deep sleep, and + loosed all her limbs, and made her taller, and made her smoother, and + fatter, and whiter than sawn ivory; and breathed ambrosial brightness over + her face; and so she left her and went up to heaven." Fresh air and sound + sleep at night, young ladies! You see you may have Athena for lady's maid + whenever you choose. Next, hark how she gives strength to Achilles when he + is broken with fasting and grief. Jupiter pities him and says to her, + "'Daughter mine, are you forsaking your own soldier, and don't you care + for Achilles any more? See how hungry and weak he is,—go and feed + him with ambrosia.' So he urged the eager Athena; and she leaped down out + of heaven like a harpy falcon, shrill-voiced; and she poured nectar and + ambrosia, full of delight, into the breast of Achilles, that his limbs + might not fail with famine; then she returned to the solid dome of her + strong father." And then comes the great passage about Achilles arming—for + which we have no time. But here is again Athena giving strength to the + whole Greek army. She came as a falcon to Achilles, straight at him, a + sudden drift of breeze; but to the army she must come widely, she sweeps + around them all. "As when Jupiter spreads the purple rainbow over heaven, + portending battle or cold storm, so Athena, wrapping herself round with a + purple cloud, stooped to the Greek soldiers, and raised up each of them." + Note that purple, in Homer's use of it, nearly always means "fiery," "full + of light." It is the light of the rainbow, not the color of it, which + Homer means you to think of. + </p> + <p> + 34. But the most curious passage of all, and fullest of meaning, is when + she gives strength to Menelaus, that he may stand unwearied against + Hector. He prays to her: "And blue-eyed Athena was glad that he prayed to + her, first; and she gave him strength in his shoulders, and in his limbs, + an she gave him the courage"—of what animal, do you suppose? Had it + been Neptune or Mars, they would have given him the courage of a bull, or + a lion; but Athena gives him the courage of the most fearless in attack of + all creatures, small or great, and very small it is, but wholly incapable + of terror,—she gives him the courage of a fly. + </p> + <p> + 35. Now this simile of Homer's is one of the best instances I can give you + of the way in which great writers seize truths unconsciously which are for + all time. It is only recent science which has completely shown the + perfectness of this minute symbol of the power of Athena; proving that the + insect's flight and breath are co-ordinated; that its wings are actually + forcing-pumps, of which the stroke compels the thoracic respiration; and + that it thus breathes and flies simultaneously by the action of the same + muscles, so that respiration is carried on most vigorously during flight, + "while the air-vessels, supplied by many pairs of lungs instead of one, + traverse the organs of flight in far greater numbers than the capillary + blood-vessels of our own system, and give enormous and untiring muscular + power, a rapidity of action measured by thousands of strokes in the + minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours of flight."* + </p> + <p> + * Ormerod: "Natural History of Wasps." + </p> + <p> + Homer could not have known this; neither that the buzzing of the fly was + produced, as in a wind instrument, by a constant current of air through + the trachea. But he had seen, and, doubtless, meant us to remember, the + marvellous strength and swiftness of the insect's flight (the glance of + the swallow itself is clumsy and slow compared to the darting of common + house-flies at play); he probably attributed its murmur to the wings, but + in this also there was a type of what we shall presently find recognized + in the name of Pallas,—the vibratory power of the air to convey + sound, while, as a purifying creature, the fly holds its place beside the + old symbol of Athena in Egypt, the vulture; and as a venomous and + tormenting creature has more than the strength of the serpent in + proportion to its size, being thus entirely representative of the + influence of the air both in purification and pestilence; and its courage + is so notable that, strangely enough, forgetting Homer's simile, I + happened to take the fly for an expression of the audacity of freedom in + speaking of quite another subject.* Whether it should be called courage, + or mere mechanical instinct, may be questioned, but assuredly no other + animal, exposed to continual danger, is so absolutely without sign of + fear. + </p> + <p> + * See farther on, §148, pp. 154-156. + </p> + <p> + 36. You will, perhaps, have still patience to hear two instances, not of + the communication as strength, but of the personal agency of Athena as the + air. When she comes down to help Diomed against Ares, she does not come to + fight instead of him, but she takes his charioteer's place. + </p> + <p> + "She snatched the reins, she lashed with all her force, And full on Mars + impelled the foaming horse." + </p> + <p> + Ares is the first to cast his spear; then—note this—Pope says: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance, + Far from the car, the strong immortal lance." +</pre> + <p> + She does not oppose her hand in the Greek—the wind could not meet + the lance straight—she catches it in her hand, and throws it off. + There is no instance in which a lance is so parried by a mortal hand in + all the Iliad, and it is exactly the way the wind would parry it, catching + it, and turning it aside. If there are any good rifleshots here, they know + something about Athena's parrying; and in old times the English masters of + feathered artillery knew more yet. Compare also the turning of Hector's + lance from Achilles: Iliad, xx. 439. + </p> + <p> + 37. The last instance I will give you is as lovely as it is subtile. + Throughout the Iliad, Athena is herself the will or Menis of Achilles. If + he is to be calmed, it is she who calms him; if angered, it is she who + inflames him. In the first quarrel with Atreides, when he stands at pause, + with the great sword half drawn, "Athena came from heaven, and stood + behind him and caught him by the yellow hair." Another god would have + stayed his hand upon the hilt, but Athena only lifts his hair. "And he + turned and knew her, and her dreadful eyes shone upon him." There is an + exquisite tenderness in this laying her hand upon his hair, for it is the + talisman of his life, vowed to his own Thessalian river if he ever + returned to its shore, and cast upon Patroclus' pile, so ordaining that + there should be no return. + </p> + <p> + 38. Secondly, Athena is the air giving vegetative impulse to the earth. + She is the wind and the rain, and yet more the pure air itself, getting at + the earth fresh turned by spade or plough, and, above all, feeding the + fresh leaves; for though the Greeks knew nothing about carbonic acid, they + did know that trees fed on the air. + </p> + <p> + Now, note first in this, the myth of the air getting at ploughed land. You + know I told you the Lord of all labor by which man lived was Hephæstus; + therefore Athena adopts a child of his, and of the Earth,— + Erichthonius,—literally, "the tearer up of the ground," who is the + head (though not in direct line) of the kings of Attica; and, having + adopted him, she gives him to be brought up by the three nymphs of the + dew. Of these, Aglauros, the dweller in the fields, is the envy or malice + of the earth; she answers nearly to the envy of Cain, the tiller of the + ground, against his shepherd brother, in her own envy against her two + sisters, Herse, the cloud dew, who is the beloved of the shepherd Mercury; + and Pandrosos, the diffused dew, or dew of heaven. Literally, you have in + this myth the words of the blessing of Esau: "Thy dwelling shall be of the + fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Aglauros is + for her envy turned into a black stone; and hers is one of the voices + —the other being that of Cain—which haunts the circle of envy + in the Purgatory: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Io sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso." +</pre> + <p> + But to her two sisters, with Erichthonius (or the hero Erectheus), is + built the most sacred temple of Athena in Athens; the temple to their own + dearest Athena—to her, and to the dew together; so that it was + divided into two parts: one, the temple of Athena of the city, and the + other that of the dew. And this expression of her power, as the air + bringing the dew to the hill pastures, in the central temple of the + central city of the heathen, dominant over the future intellectual world, + is, of all the facts connected with her worship as the spirit of life, + perhaps the most important. I have no time now to trace for you the + hundredth part of the different ways in which it bears both upon natural + beauty, and on the best order and happiness of men's lives. I hope to + follow out some of these trains of thought in gathering together what I + have to say about field herbage; but I must say briefly here that the + great sign, to the Greeks, of the coming of spring in the pastures, was + not, as with us, in the primrose, but in the various flowers of the + asphodel tribe (of which I will give you some separate account presently); + therefore it is that the earth answers with crocus flame to the cloud on + Ida; and the power of Athena in eternal life is written by the light of + the asphodel on the Elysian fields. + </p> + <p> + But further, Athena is the air, not only to the lilies of the field, but + to the leaves of the forest. We saw before the reason why Hermes is said + to be the son of Maia, the eldest of the sister stars of spring. Those + stars are called not only Pleiades, but Vergiliæ, from a word mingling the + ideas of the turning or returning of springtime with the outpouring of + rain. The mother of Vergil bearing the name of Maia, Vergil himself + received his name from the seven stars; and he, forming first the mind of + Dante, and through him that of Chaucer (besides whatever special minor + influence came from the Pastorals and Georgics) became the fountainhead of + all the best literary power connected with the love of vegetative nature + among civilized races of men. Take the fact for what it is worth; still it + is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and in reality, upon the Greek + dream of the power over human life, and its purest thoughts, in the stars + of spring. But the first syllable of the name of Vergil has relation also + to another group of words, of which the English ones, virtue and virgin, + bring down the force to modern days. It is a group containing mainly the + idea of "spring," or increase of life in vegetation—the rising of + the new branch of the tree out of the bud, and of the new leaf out of the + ground. It involves, secondarily, the idea of greenness and of strength, + but, primarily, that of living increase of a new rod from a stock, stem, + or root ("There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse"); and + chiefly the stem of certain plants—either of the rose tribe, as in + the budding of the almond rod of Aaron; or of the olive tribe, which has + triple significance in this symbolism, from 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 thenceforward gives the Olympic crown of + consummate honor 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. Then to express its propagation by slips, + the trees from which the oil was to be taken were called "Moriai," trees + of division (being all descendents of the sacred one in the Erechtheum). + And thus, in one direction, we get to the "children like olive plants + round about thy table" and the olive grafting of St. Paul; while the use + of the oil for anointing gives chief name to the rod itself of the stem of + Jesse, and to all those who were by that name signed for his disciples + first in Antioch. Remember, further, since that name was first given the + influence of the symbol, both in extreme unction and in consecration of + priests and kings to their "divine right;" and thing, if you can reach + with any grasp of thought, what the influence on the earth has been, of + those twisted branches whose leaves give gray bloom to the hillsides under + every breeze that blows from the midland sea. But, above and beyond all, + think how strange it is that the chief Agonia of humanity, and the chief + giving of strength from heaven for its fulfilment, should have been under + its night shadow in Palestine. + </p> + <p> + 39. Thirdly, Athena is the air in its power over the sea. + </p> + <p> + On the earliest Panathenaic vase known—the "Burgon" vase in the + British museum—Athena has a dolphin on her shield. The dolphin has + two principal meanings in Greek symbolism. It means, first, the sea; + secondarily, the ascending and descending course of any of the heavenly + bodies from one sea horizon to another—the dolphins' arching rise + and replunge (in a summer evening, out of calm sea, their black backs roll + round with exactly the slow motion of a water-wheel; but I do not know how + far Aristotle's exaggerated account of their leaping or their swiftness + has any foundation) being taken as a type of the emergence of the sun or + stars from the sea in the east, and plunging beneath in the west. Hence, + Apollo, when in his personal power he crosses the sea, leading his Cretan + colonists to Pytho, takes the form of a dolphin, becomes Apollo + Delphinius, and names the founded colony "Delphi." The lovely drawing of + the Delphic Apollo on the hydria of the Vatican (Le Normand and De Witte, + vol. ii. p. 6) gives the entire conception of this myth. Again, the + beautiful coins of Tarentum represent Taras coming to found the city, + riding on a dolphin, whose leaps and plunges have partly the rage of the + sea in them, and partly the spring of the horse, because the splendid + riding of the Tarentines had made their name proverbial in Magna Græca. + The story of Arion is a collateral fragment of the same thought; and, + again, the plunge, before their transformation, of the ships of Æneas. + Then, this idea of career upon, or conquest of, or by dolphin-like ships + (compare the Merlin prophecy, + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "They shall ride + Over ocean wide + With hempen bridle, ad horse of tree,") +</pre> + <p> + connects itself with the thought of undulation, and of the wave-power in + the sea itself, which is always expressed by the serpentine bodies either + of the sea-gods or of the sea-horse; and when Athena carries, as she does + often in later work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is not so much the + repetition of her own ægis-snakes as the further expression of her power + over the sea-wave; which, finally, Vergil gives in its perfect unity with + her own anger, in the approach of the serpents against Laocoön from the + sea; and then, finally, when her own storm-power is fully put forth on the + ocean also, and the madness of the ægis-snake is give to the wave-snake, + the sea-wave becomes the devouring hound at the waist of Scylla, and + Athena takes Scylla for her helmet-crest; while yet her beneficent and + essential power on the ocean, in making navigation possible, is + commemorated in the Panathenaic festival by her peplus being carried to + the Erechtheum suspended from the mast of a ship. + </p> + <p> + In Plate cxv. of vol. ii, Le Normand, are given two sides of a vase, + which, in rude and childish ways, assembles most of the principal thoughts + regarding Athena in this relation. In the first, the sunrise is + represented by the ascending chariot of Apollo, foreshortened; the light + is supposed to blind the eyes, and no face of the god is seen (Turner, in + the Ulysses and Polyphemus sunrise, loses the form of the god in light, + giving the chariot-horses only; rendering in his own manner, after 2,200 + years of various fall and revival of the arts, precisely the same thought + as the old Greek potter). He ascends out of the sea; but the sea itself + has not yet caught the light. In the second design, Athena as the morning + breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, fly over the sea before the sun. + Hermes turns back his head; his face is unseen in the cloud, as Apollo's + in the light; the grotesque appearance of an animal's face is only the + cloud-phantasm modifying a frequent form of the hair of Hermes beneath the + back of his cap. Under the morning breeze, the dolphins leap from the + rippled sea, and their sides catch the light. + </p> + <p> + The coins of the Lucanian Heracleia give a fair representation of the + helmed Athena, as imagined in later Greek art, with the embossed Scylla. + </p> + <p> + 40. Fourthly, Athena is the air nourishing artificial light—unconsuming + fire. Therefore, a lamp was always kept burning in the Erechtheum; and the + torch-race belongs chiefly to her festival, of which the meaning is to + show the danger of the perishing of the light even by excess of the air + that nourishes it; and so that the race is not to the swift, but to the + wise. The household use of her constant light is symbolized in the lovely + passage in the Odyssey, where Ulysses and his son move the armor while the + servants are shut in their chambers, and there is no one to hold the + torches for them; but Athena herself, "having a golden lamp," fills all + the rooms with light. Her presence in war-strength with her favorite + heroes is always shown by the "unwearied" fire hovering on their helmets + and shields; and the image gradually becomes constant and accepted, both + for the maintenance of household watchfulness, as in the parable of the + ten virgins, or as the symbol of direct inspiration, in the rushing wind + and divided flames of Pentecost; but together with this thought of + unconsuming and constant fire, there is always mingled in the Greek mind + the sense of the consuming by excess, as of the flame by the air, so also + of the inspired creature by its own fire (thus, again, "the zeal of thine + house hath eaten me up"—"my zeal hath consumed me, because of thine + enemies," and the like); and especially Athena has this aspect towards the + truly sensual and bodily strength; so that to Ares, who is himself insane + and consuming, the opposite wisdom seems to be insane and consuming: "All + we the other gods have thee against us, O Jove! when we would give grace + to men; for thou hast begotten the maid without a mind— the + mischievous creature, the doer of unseemly evil. All we obey thee, and are + ruled by thee. Her only thou wilt not resist in anything she says or does, + because thou didst bear her—consuming child as she is." + </p> + <p> + 41. Lastly, Athena is the air conveying vibration of sound. + </p> + <p> + In all the loveliest representations in central Greek art of the birth of + Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting Jupiter, singing, with a deep, + quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. The sun is always thought of as the master + of time and rhythm, and as the origin of the composing and inventive + discovery of melody; but the air, as the actual element and substance of + the voice, the prolonging and sustaining power of it, and the symbol of + its moral passion. Whatever in music is measured and designed belongs + therefore to Apollo and the Muses; whatever is impulsive and passionate, + to Athena; hence her constant strength a voice or cry (as when she aids + the shout of Achilles) curiously opposed to the dumbness of Demeter. The + Apolline lyre, therefore, is not so much the instrument producing sound, + as its measurer and divider by length or tension of string into given + notes; and I believe it is, in a double connection with its office as a + measurer of time or motion and its relation to the transit of the sun in + the sky, that Hermes forms it from the tortoise-shell, which is the image + of the dappled concave of the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all the limiting + or restraining modes of music belong to the Muses; but the more passionate + music is wind music, as in the Doric flute. Then, when this inspired music + becomes degraded in its passion, it sinks into the pipe of Pan, and the + double pipe of Marsyas, and is then rejected by Athena. The myth which + represents her doing so is that she invented the double pipe from hearing + the hiss of the Gorgonian serpents; but when she played upon it, chancing + to see her face reflected in water, she saw that it was distorted, + whereupon she threw down the flute which Marsyas found. Then, the strife + of Apollo and Marsyas represents the enduring contest between music in + which the words and thought lead, and the lyre measures or melodizes them + (which Pindar means when he calls his hymns "kings over the lyre"), and + music in which the words are lost and the wind or impulse leads,—generally, + therefore, between intellectual, and brutal, or meaningless, music. + Therefore, when Apollo prevails, he flays Marsyas, taking the limit and + external bond of his shape from him, which is death, without touching the + mere muscular strength, yet shameful and dreadful in dissolution. + </p> + <p> + 42. And the opposition of these two kinds of sound is continually dwelt + upon by the Greek philosophers, the real fact at the root of all music is + the natural expression of a lofty passion for a right cause; that in + proportion to the kingliness and force of any personality, the expression + either of its joy or suffering becomes measured, chastened, calm, and + capable of interpretation only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, and + worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the degree in which we become + narrow in the cause and conception of our passions, incontinent in the + utterance of them, feeble of perseverance in them, sullied or shameful in + the indulgence of them, their expression by musical sound becomes broken, + mean, fatuitous, and at last impossible; the measured waves of the air of + heaven will not lend themselves to expression of ultimate vice, it must be + forever sunk into discordance or silence. And since, as before stated, + every work of right art has a tendency to reproduce the ethical state + which first developed it, this, which of all the arts is most directly in + power of discipline; the first, the simplest, the most effective of all + instruments of moral instruction; while in the failure and betrayal of its + functions, it becomes the subtlest aid of moral degradation. Music is + thus, in her health, the teacher of perfect order, and is the voice of the + obedience of angels, and the companion of the course of the spheres of + heaven; and in her depravity she is also the teacher of perfect disorder + and disobedience, and the Gloria in Excelsis becomes the Marseillaise. In + the third section of this volume, I reprint two chapters from another + essay of mine ("The Cestus of Aglaia"), on modesty or measure, and on + liberty, containing further reference to music in her two powers; and I do + this now, because, among the many monstrous and misbegotten fantasies + which are the spawn of modern license, perhaps the most impishly opposite + to the truth is the conception of music which has rendered possible the + writing, by educated persons, and, more strangely yet, the tolerant + criticism, of such words as these: "This so persuasive art is the only one + that has no didactic efficacy, that engenders no emotions save such as are + without issue on the side of moral truth, that expresses nothing of God, + nothing of reason, nothing of human liberty." I will not give the author's + name; the passage is quoted in the "Westminster Review" for last January + 1869. + </p> + <p> + 43. I must also anticipate something of what I have to say respecting the + relation of the power of Athena to organic life, so far as to note that + her name, Pallas, probably refers to the quivering or vibration of the + air; and to its power, whether as vital force, or communicated wave, over + every kind of matter, in giving it vibratory movement; first, and most + intense, in the voice and throat of the bird, which is the air incarnate; + and so descending through the various orders of animal life to the + vibrating and semi-voluntary murmur of the insect; and, lower still, to + the hiss or quiver of the tail of the half-lunged snake and deaf adder; + all these, nevertheless, being wholly under the rule of Athena as + representing either breath or vital nervous power; and, therefore, also, + in their simplicity, the "oaten pipe and pastoral song," which belong to + her dominion over the asphodel meadows, and breathe on their banks of + violets. + </p> + <p> + Finally, is it not strange to think of the influence of this one power of + Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular mechanical energy of it + presently in the serpent's motion), in the voices of war and peace? How + much of the repose, how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has + literally depended on this one power of the air; on the sound of the + trumpet and of the bell, on the lark's song, and the bee's murmur! + </p> + <p> + 44. Such is the general conception in the Greek mind of the physical power + of Athena. The spiritual power associated with it is of two kinds: first, + she is the Spirit of Life in material organism; not strength in the blood + only, but formative energy in the clay; and, secondly, she is inspired and + impulsive wisdom in human conduct and human art, giving the instinct of + infallible decision, and of faultless invention. + </p> + <p> + It is quite beyond the scope of my present purpose—and, indeed, will + only be possible for me at all after marking the relative intention of the + Apolline myths—to trace for you the Greek conception of Athena as + the guide of moral passion. But I will at least endeavor, on some near + occasion,* to define some of the actual truths respecting the vital force + in created organism, and inventive fancy in the works of man, which are + more or less expressed by the Greeks, under the personality of Athena. You + would, perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endeavored further to show you—what + is nevertheless perfectly true—the analogy between the spiritual + power of Athena in her gentle ministry, yet irresistible anger, with the + ministry of anther Spirit whom we also, holding for the universal power of + life, are forbidden, at our worst peril, to quench or to grieve. + </p> + <p> + * I have tried to do this in mere outline in the two following sections of + this volume. + </p> + <p> + 45. But, I think, to-night, you should not let me close without requiring + of me an answer on one vital point, namely, how far these imaginations of + gods—which are vain to us—were vain to those who had no better + trust? and what real belief the Greek had in these creations of his own + spirit, practical and helpful to him in the sorrow of earth? I am able to + answer you explicitly in this. The origin of his thoughts is often + obscure, and we may err in endeavoring to account or their form of + realization; but the effect of that realization on his life is not obscure + at all. The Greek creed was, of course, different in its character, as our + own creed is, according to the class of persons who held it. The common + people's was quite literal, simple, and happy; their idea of Athena was as + clear as a good Roman Catholic peasant's idea of the Madonna. In Athens + itself, the centre of thought and refinement, Pisistratus obtained the + reins of government through the ready belief of the populace that a + beautiful woman, armed like Athena, was the goddess herself. Even at the + close of the last century some of this simplicity remained among the + inhabitants of the Greek islands; and when a pretty English lady first + made her way into the grotto of Antiparos, she was surrounded, on her + return, by all the women of the neighboring village, believing her to be + divine, and praying her to heal them of their sicknesses. + </p> + <p> + 46. Then, secondly, the creed of the upper classes was more refined and + spiritual, but quite as honest, and even more forcible in its effect on + the life. You might imagine that the employment of the artifice just + referred to implied utter unbelief in the persons contriving it; but it + really meant only that the more worldly of them would play with a popular + faith of their own purposes, as doubly-minded persons have often done + since, all the while sincerely holding the same ideas themselves in a more + abstract form; while the good and unworldly men, the true Greek heroes, + lived by their faith as firmly as St. Louis, or the Cid, or the Chevalier + Bayard. + </p> + <p> + 47. Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, necessarily, + less definite, being continually modified by the involuntary action of + their own fancies; and by the necessity of presenting, in clear verbal or + material form, things of which they had no authoritative knowledge. Their + faith was, in some respects like Dante's or Milton's: firm in general + conception, but not able to vouch for every detail in the forms they gave + it; but they went considerably farther, even in that minor sincerity, than + subsequent poets; and strove with all their might to be as near the truth + as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot think so-and-so of the + gods. It must have been this way—it cannot have been that way—that + the thing was done." And as late among the Latins as the days of Horace, + this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and simple in his religion + as Wordsworth; but all power of understanding any of the honest classic + poets has been taken away from most English gentlemen by the mechanical + drill in verse-writing at school. Throughout the whole of their lives + afterwards, they never can get themselves quit of the notion that all + verses were written as an exercise, and that Minerva was only a convenient + word for the last of a hexameter, and Jupiter for the last but one. + </p> + <p> + 48. It is impossible that any notion can be more fallacious or more + misleading in its consequences. All great song, from the first day when + human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate + didactic purpose the tragedians—with pure and native passion the + lyrists —fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. + "Operosa parvus carmina fingo." "I, little thing that I am, weave my + laborious songs" as earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the + Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he + chants his autumnal hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides + the noble youth and maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells + the farmer's little girl that the gods will love her, though she has only + a handful of salt and meal to give them—just as earnestly as ever + English gentleman taught Christian faith to English youth in England's + truest days. + </p> + <p> + 49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers of sages varied according + to the character and knowledge of each; their relative acquaintance with + the secrets of natural science, their intellectual and sectarian egotism, + and their mystic or monastic tendencies, for there is a classic as well as + a mediæval monasticism. They end in losing the life of Greece in play upon + words; but we owe to their early thought some of the soundest ethics, and + the foundation of the best practical laws, yet known to mankind. + </p> + <p> + 50. Such was the general vitality of the heathen creed in its strength. Of + its direct influence on conduct, it is, as I said, impossible for me to + speak now; only, remember always, in endeavoring to form a judgment of it, + that what of good or right the heathens did, they did looking for no + reward. The purest forms of our own religion have always consisted in + sacrificing less things to win greater, time to win eternity, the world to + win the skies. The order, "Sell that thou hast," is not given without the + promise, "Thou shalt have treasure in heaven;" and well for the modern + Christian if he accepts the alternative as his Master left it, and does + not practically read the command and promise thus: "Sell that thou hast in + the best market, and thou shalt have treasure in eternity also." But the + poor Greeks of the great ages expected no reward from heaven but honor, + and no reward from earth but rest; though, when, on those conditions, they + patiently, and proudly, fulfilled their task of the granted day, an + unreasoning instinct of an immortal benediction broke from their lips in + song; and they, even they, had sometimes a prophet to tell them of a land + "where there is sun alike by day and alike by night, where they shall need + no more to trouble the earth by strength of hands for daily bread; but the + ocean breezes blow around the blessed islands, and golden flowers burn on + their bright trees for evermore." + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. — ATHENA KERAMITIS.* (Athena in the Earth.) + </h2> + <p> + * "Athena, fit for being made into pottery." I coin the expression as a + counterpart of 'ge parthenia', "Clay intact." + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +STUDY, SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE PRECEDING LECTURE, OF THE SUPPOSED AND + ACTUAL RELATIONS OF ATHENA TO THE VITAL FORCE IN MATERIAL ORGANISM +</pre> + <p> + 51. It has been easy to decipher approximately the Greek conception of the + physical power of Athena in cloud and sky, because we know ourselves what + clouds and skies are, and what the force of the wind is in forming them. + But it is not at all easy to trace the Greek thoughts about the power of + Athena in giving life, because we do not ourselves know clearly what life + is, or in what way the air is necessary to it, or what there is, besides + the air, shaping the forms that it is put into. And it is comparatively of + small consequence to find out what the Greeks thought or meant, until we + have determined what we ourselves think, or mean, when we translate the + Greek word for "breathing" into the Latin-English word "spirit." + </p> + <p> + 52. But it is of great consequence that you should fix in your minds— + and hold, against the baseness of mere materialism on the one hand, and + against the fallacies of controversial speculation on the other—the + certain and practical sense of this word "spirit;" the sense in which you + all know that its reality exists, as the power which shaped you into your + shape, and by which you love and hate when you have received that shape. + You need not fear, on the one hand, that either the sculpturing or the + loving power can ever be beaten down by the philosophers into a metal, or + evolved by them into a gas; but on the other hand, take care that you + yourself, in trying to elevate your conception of it, do not lose its + truth in a dream, or even in a word. Beware always of contending for + words: you will find them not easy to grasp, if you know them in several + languages. This very word, which is so solemn in your mouths, is one of + the most doubtful. In Latin it means little more than breathing, and may + mean merely accent; in French it is not breath, but wit, and our neighbors + are therefore obliged, even in their most solemn expressions, to say "wit" + when we say "ghost." In Greek, "pneuma," the word we translate "ghost," + means either wind or breath, and the relative word "psyche" has, perhaps, + a more subtle power; yet St. Paul's words "pneumatic body" and "psychic + body" involve a difference in his mind which no words will explain. But in + Greek and in English, and in Saxon and in Hebrew, and in every articulate + tongue of humanity the "spirit of man" truly means his passion and virtue, + and is stately according to the height of his conception, and stable + according to the measure of his endurance. + </p> + <p> + 53. Endurance, or patience, that is the central sign of spirit; a + constancy against the cold and agony of death; and as, physically, it is + by the burning power of the air that the heat of the flesh is sustained, + so this Athena, spiritually, is the queen of all glowing virtue, the + unconsuming fire and inner lamp of life. And thus, as Hephæstus is lord of + the fire of the hand, and Apollo of the fire of the brain, so Athena of + the fire of the heart; and as Hercules wears for his chief armor the skin + of the Nemean lion, his chief enemy, whom he slew; and Apollo has for his + highest name "the Pythian," from his chief enemy, the Python slain; so + Athena bears always on her breast the deadly face of her chief enemy + slain, the Gorgonian cold, and venomous agony, that turns living men to + stone. + </p> + <p> + 54. And so long as you have the fire of the heart within you, and know the + reality of it, you need to be under no alarm as to the possibility of its + chemical or mechanical analysis. The philosophers are very humorous in + their ecstasy of hope about it; but the real interest of their discoveries + in this direction is very small to humankind. It is quite true that the + tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the + water in a ditch vibrates too; but the ditch hears nothing for all that; + and my hearing is still to me as blessed a mystery as ever, and the + interval between the ditch and me quite as great. If the trembling sound + in my ears was once of the marriage-bell which began my happiness, and is + now of the passing-bell which ends it, the difference between those two + sounds to me cannot be counted by the number of concussions. There have + been some curious speculations lately as to the conveyance of mental + consciousness by "brain-waves." What does it matter how it is conveyed? + The consciousness itself is not a wave. It may be accompanied here or + there by any quantity of quivers and shakes, up or down, of anything you + can find in the universe that is shakable— what is that to me? My + friend is dead, and my—according to modern views —vibratory + sorrow is not one whit less, or less mysterious, to me, than my old quiet + one. + </p> + <p> + 55. Beyond, and entirely unaffected by, any questionings of this kind, + there are, therefore, two plain facts which we should all know: first, + that there is a power which gives their several shapes to things, or + capacities of feeling; and that we can increase or destroy both of these + at our will. By care and tenderness, we can extend the range of lovely + life in plants and animals; by our neglect and cruelty, we can arrest it, + and bring pestilence in its stead. Again, by right discipline we can + increase our strength of noble will and passion or destroy both. And + whether these two forces are local conditions of the elements in which + they appear, or are part of a great force in the universe, out of which + they are taken, and to which they must be restored, is not of the + slightest importance to us in dealing with them; neither is the manner of + their connection with light and air. What precise meaning we ought to + attach to expressions such as that of the prophecy to the four winds that + the dry bones might be breathed upon, and might live, or why the presence + of the vital power should be dependent on the chemical action of air, and + its awful passing away materially signified by the rendering up of that + breath or ghost, we cannot at present know, and need not at any time + dispute. What we assuredly know is that the states of life and death are + different, and the first more desirable than the other, and by effort + attainable, whether we understand being "born of the spirit" to signify + having the breath of heaven in our flesh, or its power in our hearts. + </p> + <p> + 56. As to its power on the body, I will endeavor to tell you, having been + myself much led into studies involving necessary reference both to natural + science and mental phenomena, what, at least, remains to us after science + has done its worst; what the myth of Athena, as a formative and decisive + power, a spirit of creation and volition, must eternally mean for all of + us. + </p> + <p> + 57. It is now (I believe I may use the strong word) "ascertained" that + heat and motion are fixed in quantity, and measurable in the portions that + we deal with. We can measure portions of power, as we can measure portions + of space; while yet, as far as we know, space may be infinite, and force + infinite. There may be heat as much greater than the sun's, as the sun's + heat is greater than a candle's: and force as much greater than the force + by which the world swings, as that is greater than the force by which a + cobweb trembles. Now, on hear and force, life is inseparably dependent; + and I believe, also, on a form of substance, which the philosophers call + "protoplasm." I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I + want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is colored by + "chlorophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would + only say plainly that a leaf is colored green by a thing which is called + "green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had got. However, it + is a curious fact that life is connected with a cellular structure called + protoplasm, or in English, "first stuck together;" whence, conceivably + through deuteroplasms, or second stickings, and tritoplasms, or third + stickings,* we reach the highest plastic phase in the human pottery, which + differs from common chinaware, primarily, by a measurable degree of heat, + developed in breathing, which it borrows from the rest of the universe + while it lives, and which it as certainly returns to the rest of the + universe, when it dies. + </p> + <p> + 58. Again, with this heat certain assimilative powers are connected, which + the tendency of recent discovery is to simplify more and more into modes + of one force; or finally into mere motion, communicable in various states, + but not destructible. We will assume that science has done its utmost; and + that every chemical or animal force is demonstrably resolvable into heat + or motion, reciprocally changing into each other. I would myself like + better, in order of thought, to consider motion as a mode of heat than + heat as a mode of motion; still, granting that we have got thus far, we + have yet to ask, What is heat? or what is motion? What is this "primo + mobile," this transitional power, in which all things live, and move, and + have their being? It is by definition something different from matter, and + we may call it as we choose, "first cause," or "first light," or "first + heat;" but we can show no scientific proof of its not being personal, and + coinciding with the ordinary conception of a supporting spirit in all + things. + </p> + <p> + 59. Still, it is not advisable to apply the word "spirit" or "breathing" + to it, while it is only enforcing chemical affinities; but, when the + chemical affinities are brought under the influence of the air, and of the + sun's heat, the formative force enters and entirely different phase. It + does not now merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to limited + portions of matter the power of gathering, selectively, other elements + proper to them, and binding those elements into their own peculiar and + adopted form. + </p> + <p> + This force, now properly called life, or breathing, or spirit, is + continually creating its own shell of definite shape out of the wreck + around it; and this is what I meant by saying, in the "Ethics of the + Dust," "you may always stand by form against force." For the mere force of + junction is not spirit; but the power that catches out of chaos charcoal, + water, lime, or what not, and fastens them down into a given form, is + properly called "spirit;" and we shall not diminish, but strengthen our + conception of this creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower + states of matter than our own; such recognition being enforced upon us by + delight we instinctively receive from all the forms of matter which + manifest it; and yet more, by the glorifying of those forms, in the parts + of them that are most animated, with the colors that are pleasantest to + our senses. The most familiar instance of this is the best, and also the + most wonderful: the blossoming of plants. + </p> + <p> + 60. The spirit in the plant—that is to say, its power of gathering + dead matter out of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen + shape—is of course strongest at the moment of its flowering, for it + then not only gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy. + </p> + <p> + And where this life is in at full power, its form becomes invested with + aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own human passions; namely, at + first, with the loveliest outlines of shape; and, secondly, with the most + brilliant phases of the primary colors, blue, yellow, and red or white, + the unison of all; and, to make it all more strange, this time of peculiar + and perfect glory is associated with relations of the plants or blossoms + to each other, correspondent to the joy of love in human creatures, and + having the same object in the continuance of the race. Only, with respect + to plants, as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object of this + strong life were only the bequeathing of itself. The flower is the end or + proper object of the seed, not the seed of the flower. The reason for + seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. + The flower itself is the creature which the spirit makes; only, in + connection with its perfectness is placed the giving birth to its + successor. + </p> + <p> + 61. The main fact then, about a flower is that it is part of the plant's + form developed at the moment of its intensest life; and this inner rapture + is usually marked externally for us by the flush of one or more of the + primary colors. What the character of the flower shall be, depends + entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit + has been put. Sometimes the life is put into its outer sheath, and then + the outer sheath becomes white and pure, and full of strength and grace; + sometimes the life is put into the common leaves, just under the blossom, + and they become scarlet or purple; sometimes the life is put into the + stalks of the flower and they flush blue; sometimes into its outer + enclosure or calyx; mostly into its inner cup; but, in all cases, the + presence of the strongest life is asserted by characters in which the + human sight takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with distinct + reference to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, evidence of having + been produced by the power of the same spirit as our own. + </p> + <p> + 62. And we are led to feel this still more strongly because all the + distinctions of species,* both in plants and animals, appear to have + similar connection with human character. Whatever the origin of species + may be, or however those species, once formed, may be influenced by + external accident, the groups into which birth or accident reduce them + have distinct relation to the spirit of man. It is perfectly possible, and + ultimately conceivable, that the crocodile and the lamb may have descended + from the same ancestral atom of protoplasm; and that the physical laws of + the operation of calcareous slime and of meadow grass, on that protoplasm, + may in time have developed the opposite natures and aspects of the living + frames but the practically important fact for us is the existence of a + power which creates that calcareous earth itself, —which creates, + that separately—and quartz, separately; and gold, separately; and + charcoal, separately; and then so directs the relation of these elements + as that the gold shall destroy the souls of men by being yellow; and the + charcoal destroy their souls by being hard and bright; and the quartz + represent to them an ideal purity; and the calcareous earth, soft, shall + beget crocodiles, and dry and hard, sheep; and that the aspects and + qualities of these two products, crocodiles and lambs, shall be, the one + repellant to the spirit of man, the other attractive to it, in a quite + inevitable way; representing to him states of moral evil and good; and + becoming myths to him of destruction or redemption, and, in the most + literal sense, "words" of God. + </p> + <p> + * The facts on which I am about to dwell are in nowise antagonistic to the + theories which Mr. Darwin's unwearied and unerring investigations are + every day rendering more probable. The æsthetic relations of species are + independent of their origin. Nevertheless, it has always seemed to me in + what little work I have done upon organic forms, as if the species mocked + us by their deliberate imitation of each other when they met; yet did not + pass one into another. + </p> + <p> + 63. And the force of these facts cannot be escaped from by the thought + that there are species innumerable, passing into each other by regular + gradations, out of which we choose what we must love or dread, and say + they were indeed prepared for us. Species are not innumerable; neither are + they now connected by consistent gradation. They touch at certain points + only; and even then are connected, when we examine them deeply, in a kind + of reticulated way, not in chains, but in chequers; also, however + connected, it is but by a touch of the extremities, as it were, and the + characteristic form of the species is entirely individual. The rose nearly + sinks into a grass in the sanguisorba; but the formative spirit does not + the less clearly separate the ear of wheat from the dog-rose, and + oscillate with tremulous constancy round the central forms of both, having + each their due relation to the mind of man. The great animal kingdoms are + connected in the same way. The bird through the penguin drops towards the + fish, and the fish in the cetacean reascends to the mammal, yet there is + no confusion of thought possible between the perfect forms of an eagle, a + trout, and a war-horse, in their relations to the elements, and to man. + </p> + <p> + 64. Now we have two orders of animals to take some note of in connection + with Athena, and one vast order of plants, which will illustrate this + matter very sufficiently for us. + </p> + <p> + The orders of animals are the serpent and the bird: the serpent, in which + the breath or spirit is less than in any other creature, and the + earth-power the greatest; the bird, in which the breath or spirit is more + full than in any other creature, and the earth-power least. + </p> + <p> + 65. We will take the bird first. It is little more than a drift of the air + in all its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and flesh and glows + with air in its flying, like blown flames; it rests upon the air, subdues + it, surpasses it, outraces it,—is the air, conscious of itself, + conquering itself, ruling itself. + </p> + <p> + Also, in the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air. All that in + the wind itself is weak, wild, useless in sweetness, is knit together in + its song. As we may imagine the wild form of the bird's wings, so the wild + voice of the cloud into its ordered and commanded voice; unwearied, + rippling through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all + intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim and + rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs + and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that only make the + cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. + </p> + <p> + 66. Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors of the air; on + these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be gathered by any covetousness; + the rubies of the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are + Athena; the vermillion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud-crest, + and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep + wells of the sky,—all these, seized by the creating spirit, and + woven by Athena herself into films and threads of plume; with wave on wave + following and fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infinite + as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand; even the + white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger plumes,—seen, + but too soft for touch. + </p> + <p> + And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this created form; and + it becomes, through twenty centuries, the symbol of divine help, + descending, as the Fire, to speak but as the Dove, to bless. + </p> + <p> + 67. Next, in the serpent we approach the source of a group of myths, + world-wide, founded on great and common human instincts, respecting which + I must note one or two points which bear intimately on all our subject. + For it seems to me that the scholars who are at present occupied in + interpretation of human myths have most of them forgotten that there are + any such thing as natural myths, and that the dark sayings of men may be + both difficult to read, and not always worth reading. And, indeed, all + guidance to the right sense of the human and variable myths will probably + depend on our first getting at the sense of the natural and invariable + ones. The dead hieroglyph may have meant this or that; the living + hieroglyph means always the same; but remember, it is just as much a + hieroglyph as the other; nay, more,—a "sacred or reserved + sculpture," a thing with an inner language. The serpent crest of the + king's crown, or of the god's, on the pillars of Egypt, is a mystery, but + the serpent itself, gliding past the pillar's foot, is it less a mystery? + Is there, indeed, no tongue, except the mute forked flash from its lips, + in that running brook of horror on the ground? + </p> + <p> + 68. Why that horror? We all feel it, yet how imaginative it is, how + disproportioned to the real strength of the creature! There is more poison + in an ill-kept drain, in a pool of dish-washing at a cottage door, than in + the deadliest asp of Nile. Every back yard which you look down into from + the railway as it carries you out by Vauxhall or Deptford, holds its + coiled serpent; all the walls of those ghastly suburbs are enclosures of + tank temples for serpent worship; yet you feel no horror in looking down + into them as you would if you saw the livid scales, and lifted head. There + is more venom, mortal, inevitable, in a single word, sometimes, or in the + gliding entrance of a wordless thought than ever "vanti Libia con sua + rena." But that horror is of the myth, not of the creature. There are + myriads lower than this, and more loathsome, in the scale of being; the + links between dead matter and animation drift everywhere unseen. But it is + the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in the serpent; it is + the very omnipotence of the earth. That rivulet of smooth silver, how does + it flow, think you? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for + an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it + moves slowly. A wave, but without wind! a current, but with no fall! all + the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to + another, or some forward, and the rest of the coil backwards, but all with + the same calm will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one + soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of + spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. + Startle it, the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; the wave of + poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely + breathes with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is + passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet "it can + outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the + athlete, and crush the tiger."** It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac + power of the earth, of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the + clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust; as the + bird is the symbol of the spirit of life, so this is the grasp and sting + of death. + </p> + <p> + * I cannot understand this swift forward motion of serpents. The seizure + of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is quite simple in + mechanism; it is simply the return to its coil of an opened watch-spring, + and is just as instantaneous. But the steady and continuous motion, + without a visible fulcrum (for the whole body moves at the same instant, + and I have often seen even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk), + seems to involve a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be + conceived. The motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus, + which is one of the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps + gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering turns the + fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs of a bee's sting by + alternate motion, "the teeth of one barb acting as a fulcrum for the + other," must be something like the serpent motion on a small scale. ** + Richard Owen. + </p> + <p> + 69. Hence the continual change in the interpretation put upon it in + various religions. As the worm of corruption, it is the mightiest of all + adversaries of the gods—the special adversary of their light and + creative power—Python against Apollo. As the power of the earth + against the air, the giants are serpent-bodied in the Gigantomachia; but + as the power of the earth upon the seed—consuming it into new life + ("that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die")—serpents + sustain the chariot of the spirit of agriculture. + </p> + <p> + 70. Yet on the other hand, there is a power in the earth to take away + corruption, and to purify (hence the very fact of burial, and many uses of + earth, only lately known): and in this sense the serpent is a healing + spirit,—the representative of Æsculapius, and of Hygieia; and is a + sacred earth-type in the temple of the native earth of Athens; so that its + departure from the temple was a sign to the Athenians that they were to + leave their homes. And then, lastly, as there is a strength and healing in + the earth, no less than the strength of air, so there is conceived to be a + wisdom of earth no less than a wisdom of the spirit; and when its deadly + power is killed, its guiding power becomes true; so that the Python + serpent is killed at Delphi, where yet the oracle is from the breath of + the earth. + </p> + <p> + 71. You must remember, however, that in this, as in every other instance, + I take the myth at its central time. This is only the meaning of the + serpent to the Greek mind which could conceive an Athena. Its first + meaning to the nascent eyes of men, and its continued influence over + degraded races, are subjects of the most fearful mystery. Mr. Fergusson + has just collected the principal evidence bearing on the matter in a work + of very great value, and if you read his opening chapters, they will put + you in possession of the circumstances needing chiefly to be considered. I + cannot touch upon any of them here, except only to point out that, though + the doctrine of the so-called "corruption of human nature," asserting that + there is nothing but evil in humanity, is just as blasphemous and false as + a doctrine of the corruption of physical nature would be, asserting there + was nothing but evil in the earth,— there is yet the clearest + evidence of a disease, plague, or cretinous imperfection of development, + hitherto allowed to prevail against the greater part of the races of men; + and this in monstrous ways, more full of mystery than the serpent-being + itself. I have gathered for you tonight only instances of what is + beautiful in Greek religion; but even in its best time there were deep + corruptions in other phases of it, and degraded forms of many of its + deities, all originating in a misunderstood worship of lower races, little + less than these corrupted forms of devotion can be found, all having a + strange and dreadful consistency with each other, and infecting + Christianity, even at its strongest periods, with fatal terror of + doctrine, and ghastliness of symbolic conception, passing through fear + into frenzied grotesque, and thence into sensuality. + </p> + <p> + In the Psalter of St. Louis itself, half of its letters are twisted + snakes; there is scarcely a wreathed ornament, employed in Christian + dress, or architecture, which cannot be traced back to the serpent's coil; + and there is rarely a piece of monkish decorated writing in the world that + is not tainted with some ill-meant vileness of grotesque,— nay, the + very leaves of the twisted ivy-pattern of the fourteenth century can be + followed back to wreaths for the foreheads of bacchanalian gods. And + truly, it seems to me, as I gather in my mind the evidences of insane + religion, degraded art, merciless war, sullen toil, detestable pleasure, + and vain or vile hope, in which the nations of the world have lived since + first they could bear record of themselves—it seems to me, I say, as + if the race itself were still half-serpent, not extricated yet from its + clay; a lacertine breed of bitterness—the glory of it emaciate with + cruel hunger, and blotted on the leaf a glittering slime, and in the sand + a useless furrow. + </p> + <p> + 72. There are no myths, therefore, by which the moral state and fineness + of intelligence of different races can be so deeply tried or measured, as + by those of the serpent and the bird; both of them having an especial + relation to the kind of remorse for sin, or for the grief in fate, of + which the national minds that spoke by them had been capable. The serpent + and vulture are alike emblems of immortality and purification among races + which desired to be immortal and pure; and as they recognize their own + misery, the serpent becomes to them the scourge of the Furies, and the + vulture finds its eternal prey in their breast. The bird long contests + among the Egyptians with the still received serpent symbol of power. But + the Draconian image of evil is established in the serpent Apap; while the + bird's wings, with the globe, become part of a better symbol of deity, and + the entire form of the vulture, as an emblem of purification, is + associated with the earliest conception of Athena. In the type of the dove + with the olive branch, the conception of the spirit of Athena in renewed + life prevailing over ruin is embodied for the whole of futurity; while the + Greeks, to whom, in a happier climate and higher life than that of Egypt, + the vulture symbol of cleansing became unintelligible, took the eagle + instead for their hieroglyph of supreme spiritual energy, and it + thenceforward retains its hold on the human imagination, till it is + established among Christian myths as the expression of the most exalted + form of evangelistic teaching. The special relation of Athena to her + favorite bird we will trace presently; the peacock of Hera, and dove of + Aphrodite, are comparatively unimportant myths; but the bird power is soon + made entirely human by the Greeks in their flying angel of victory + (partially human, with modified meaning of evil, in the Harpy and Siren); + and thenceforward it associates itself with the Hebrew cherubim, and has + had the most singular influence on the Christian religion by giving its + wings to render the conception of angels mysterious and untenable, and + check rational endeavor to determine the nature of subordinate spiritual + agency; while yet it has given to that agency a vague poetical influence + of the highest value in its own imaginative way. + </p> + <p> + 73. But with the early serpent-worship there was associated another, that + of the groves, of which you will also find the evidence exhaustively + collected in Mr. Fergussen's work. This tree-worship may have taken a dark + form when associated with the Draconian one; or opposed, as in Judea, to a + purer faith; but in itself, I believe, it was always healthy, and though + it retains little definite hieroglyphic power in subsequent religion, it + becomes, instead of symbolic, real; the flowers and trees are themselves + beheld and beloved with a half-worshipping delight, which is always noble + and healthful. + </p> + <p> + And it is among the most notable indications of the volition of the + animating power that we find the ethical signs of good and evil set on + these also, as well as upon animals; the venom of the serpent, and in some + respects its image also, being associated even with the passionless growth + of the leaf out of the ground; while the distinctions of species seem + appointed with more definite ethical address to the intelligence of man as + their material products become more useful to him. + </p> + <p> + 74. I can easily show this, and, at the same time, make clear the relation + to other plants of the flowers which especially belong to Athena, by + examining the natural myths in the groups of the plants which would be + used at any country dinner, over which Athena would, in her simplest + household authority, cheerfully rule here in England. Suppose Horace's + favorite dish of beans, with the bacon; potatoes; some savory stuffing of + onions and herbs, with the meat; celery, and a radish or two, with the + cheese; nuts and apples for desert, and brown bread. + </p> + <p> + 75. The beans are, from earliest time, the most important and interesting + of the seeds of the great tribe of plants from which came the Latin and + French name for all kitchen vegetables,—things that are gathered + with the hand—podded seeds that cannot be reaped, or beaten, or + shaken down, but must be gathered green. "Leguminous" plants, all of them + having flowers like butterflies, seeds in (frequently pendent) pods, + —"lætum siliqua quassante legumen"—smooth and tender leaves, + divided into many minor ones; strange adjuncts of tendril, for climbing + (and sometimes of thorn); exquisitely sweet, yet pure scents of blossom, + and almost always harmless, if not serviceable seeds. It is of all tribes + of plants the most definite, its blossoms being entirely limited in their + parts, and not passing into other forms. It is also the most usefully + extended in range and scale; familiar in the height of the forest— + acacia, laburnum, Judas-tree; familiar in the sown field—bean and + vetch and pea; familiar in the pasture—in every form of clustered + clover and sweet trefoil tracery; the most entirely serviceable and human + of all orders of plants. + </p> + <p> + 76. Next, in the potato, we have the scarcely innocent underground stem of + one of a tribe set aside for evil; having the deadly nightshade for its + queen, and including the henbane, the witch's mandrake, and the worst + natural curse of modern civilization—tobacco.* And the strange thing + about this tribe is, that though thus set aside for evil, they are not a + group distinctly separate from those that are happier in function. There + is nothing in other tribes of plants like the form of the bean blossom; + but there is another family of forms and structure closely connected with + this venomous one. Examine the purple and yellow bloom of the common hedge + nightshade; you will find it constructed exactly like some of the forms of + the cyclamen; and, getting this clue, you will find at last the whole + poisonous and terrible group to be—sisters of the primulas! + </p> + <p> + * It is not easy to estimate the demoralizing effect on the youth of + Europe of the cigar, in enabling them to pass their time happily in + idleness. + </p> + <p> + The nightshades are, in fact, primroses with a curse upon them; and a sign + set in their petals, by which the deadly and condemned flowers may always + be known from the innocent ones,—that the stamens of the nightshades + are between the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite the lobes, of the + corolla. + </p> + <p> + 77. Next, side by side, in the celery and radish, you have the two great + groups of unbelled and cruciferous plants; alike in conditions of rank + among herbs: both flowering in clusters; but the unbelled group, flat, the + crucifers, in spires: both of them mean and poor in the blossom, and + losing what beauty they have by too close crowding; both of them having + the most curious influence on human character in the temperate zones of + the earth, from the days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, and + mocked Euripidean chervil, until now; but chiefly among the northern + nations, being especially plants that are of some humble beauty, and (the + crucifers) of endless use, when they are chosen and cultivated; but that + run to wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in their rank or + ragged leaves and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed clusters. + Capable, even under cultivation, of no perfect beauty, thought reaching + some subdued delightfulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower; for + the most part they have every floral quality meanly, and in vain,—they + are white without purity; golden, without preciousness; redundant, without + richness; divided, without fineness; massive, without strength; and + slender, without grace. Yet think over that useful vulgarity of theirs; + and of the relations of German and English peasant character to its food + of kraut and cabbage (as of Arab character to its food of palm-fruit), and + you will begin to feel what purposes of the forming spirit are in these + distinctions of species. + </p> + <p> + 78. Next we take the nuts and apples,—the nuts representing one of + the groups of catkined trees, whose blossoms are only tufts and dust; and + the other, the rose tribe, in which fruit and flower alike have been the + types to the highest races of men, of all passionate temptation, or pure + delight, from the coveting of Eve to the crowing of the Madonna, above the + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Rosa sempiterna, + Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole + Odor di lode al Sol." +</pre> + <p> + We have no time now for these, we must go on to the humblest group of all, + yet the most wonderful, that of the grass which has given us our bread; + and from that we will go back to the herbs. + </p> + <p> + 79. The vast family of plants which, under rain, make the earth green for + man, and, under sunshine, give him bread, and, in their springing in the + early year, mixed with their native flowers, have given us (far more than + the new leaves of trees) the thought and word of "spring," divide + themselves broadly into three great groups—the grasses, sedges, and + rushes. The grasses are essentially a clothing for healthy and pure + ground, watered by occasional rain, but in itself dry, and fit for all + cultivated pasture and corn. They are distinctively plants with round and + jointed stems, which have long green flexible leaves, and heads of seed, + independently emerging from them. The sedges are essentially the clothing + of waste and more or less poor or uncultivated soils, coarse in their + structure, frequently triangular in stem—hence called "acute" by + Virgil—and with their heads of seed not extricated from their + leaves. Now, in both the sedges and grasses, the blossom has a common + structure, though undeveloped in the sedges, but composed always of groups + of double husks, which have mostly a spinous process in the centre, + sometimes projecting into a long awn or beard; this central process being + characteristic also of the ordinary leaves of mosses, as if a moss were a + kind of ear of corn made permanently green on the ground, and with a new + and distinct fructification. But the rushes differ wholly from the sedge + and grass in their blossom structure. It is not a dual cluster, but a + twice threefold one, so far separate from the grasses, and so closely + connected with a higher order of plants, that I think you will find it + convenient to group the rushes at once with that higher order, to which, + if you will for the present let me give the general name of Drosidæ, or + dew-plants, it will enable me to say what I have to say of them much more + shortly and clearly. + </p> + <p> + 80. These Drosidæ, then, are plants delighting in interrupted moisture— + or at certain seasons—into dry ground. They are not among + water-plants, but the signs of water resting among dry places. Many of the + true water-plants have triple blossoms, with a small triple calyx holding + them; in the Drosidæ the floral spirit passes into the calyx also, and the + entire flower becomes a six-rayed star, bursting out of the stem + laterally, as if it were the first of flowers and had made its way to the + light by force through the unwilling green. They are often required to + retain moisture or nourishment for the future blossom through long times + of drought; and this they do in bulbs under ground, of which some become a + rude and simple, but most wholesome, food for man. + </p> + <p> + 81. So, now, observe, you are to divide the whole family of the herbs of + the field into three great groups,—Drosidæ, Carices,* Gramineæ,— + dew-plants, sedges, and grasses. Then the Drosidæ are divided into five + great orders: lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids, and rushes. No tribes + of flowers have had so great, so varied, or so healthy an influence on man + as this great group of Drosidæ, depending, not so much on the whiteness of + some of their blossoms, or the radiance of others, as on the strength and + delicacy of the substance of their petals; enabling them to take forms of + faultless elastic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, or expanding + bells, as the true lily, or heath-like bells, as the hyacinth, or bright + and perfect stars, like the star of Bethlehem, or, when they are affected + by the strange reflex of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group + of all flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic symmetry in + the gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid sisters, the water-lilies, + and you have them in the origin of the loveliest forms of ornamental + design, and the most powerful floral myths yet recognized among human + spirits, born by the streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno, and Avon. + </p> + <p> + * I think Carex will be found ultimately better than Cyperus for the + generic name, being the Vergilian word, and representing a larger + sub-species. + </p> + <p> + 82. For consider a little what each of those five tribes* has been to the + spirit of man. First, in their nobleness, the lilies gave the lily of the + Annunciation; the asphodels, the flower of the Elysian fields; the irids, + the fleur-de-lys of chivalry; and the amaryllids, Christ's lily of the + field; while the rush, trodden always under foot, became the emblem of + humility. Then take each of the tribes, and consider the extent of their + lower influence. Perdita's "The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds," are + the first tribe, which, giving the type of perfect purity in the Madonna's + lily, have, by their lovely form, influenced the entire decorative design + of Italian sacred art; while ornament design of war was continually + enriched by the curves of the triple petals of the Florentine "giglio," + and French fleur-de-lys; so that it is impossible to count their influence + for good in the middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly character, and + partly of the utmost brightness and refinement of chivalry in the city + which was the flower of cities. + </p> + <p> + * Take this rough distinction of the four tribes: lilies, superior ovary, + white seeds; asphodels, superior ovary, black seeds; irids, inferior + ovary, style (typically) rising into central crest; amaryllids, inferior + ovary, stamens (typically) joined in central cup. Then the rushes are a + dark group, through which they stoop to the grasses. + </p> + <p> + Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips, did some mischief + (their splendid stains having made them the favorite caprice of florists); + but they may be pardoned all such guilt for the pleasure they have given + in cottage gardens, and are yet to give, when lowly life may again be + possible among us; and the crimson bars of the tulips in their trim beds, + with their likeness in crimson bars of morning above them, and its dew + glittering heavy, globed in their glossy cups, may be loved better than + the gray nettles of the ash heap, under gray sky, unveined by vermilion or + by gold. + </p> + <p> + 83. The next great group, of the asphodels, divides itself also into two + principal families: one, in which the flowers are like stars, and + clustered characteristically in balls, though opening sometimes into + looser heads; and the other, in which the flowers are in long bells, + opening suddenly at the lips, and clustered in spires on a long stem, or + drooping from it, when bent by their weight. + </p> + <p> + The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has always caused me + great wonder. I cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceableness, + should have been associated with the rank scent which has been really + among the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and separating it + from that of the higher classes. + </p> + <p> + The belled group, of the hyacinth and convallaria, is as delicate as the + other is coarse; the unspeakable azure light along the ground of the wood + hyacinth in English spring; the grape hyacinth, which is in south France, + as if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and + compressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue; the + lilies of the valley everywhere, in each sweet and wild recess of rocky + lands,—count the influences of these on childish and innocent life; + then measure the mythic power of the hyacinth and asphodel as connected + with Greek thoughts of immortality; finally take their useful and + nourishing power in ancient and modern peasant life, and it will be + strange if you do not feel what fixed relation exists between the agency + of the creating spirit in these, and in us who live by them. + </p> + <p> + 84. It is impossible to bring into any tenable compass for our present + purpose, even hints of the human influence of the two remaining orders of + Amaryllids and Irids; only note this generally, that while these in + northern countries share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems + that in Greece, the primulaceæ are not an extended tribe, while the + crocus, narcissus, and Amaryllis lutea, the "lily of the field" (I suspect + also that the flower whose name we translate "violet" was in truth an + iris) represented to the Greek the first coming of the breath of life on + the renewed herbage; and became in his thoughts the true embroidery of the + saffron robe of Athena. Later in the year, the dianthus (which, though + belonging to an entirely different race of plants, has yet a strange look + of being made out of the grasses by turning the sheath-membrane at the + root of their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, in multitudinous + families, its crimson stars far and wide. But the golden lily and crocus, + together with the asphodel, retain always the old Greek's fondest + thoughts,—they are only "golden" flowers that are to burn on the + trees, and float on the streams of paradise. + </p> + <p> + 85. I have but one tribe of plants more to note at our country feast— + the savory herbs; but must go a little out of my way to come at them + rightly. All flowers whose petals are fastened together, and most of those + whose petals are loose, are best thought of first as a kind of cup or tube + opening at the mouth. Sometimes the opening is gradual, as in the + convolvulus or campanula; oftener there is a distinct change of direction + between the tube and expanding lip, as in the primrose; or even a + contraction under the lip, making the tube into a narrow-necked phial or + vase, as in the heaths; but the general idea of a tube expanding into a + quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, will embrace most of the forms. + </p> + <p> + 86. Now, it is easy to conceive that flowers of this kind, growing in + close clusters, may, in process of time, have extended their outside + petals rather than the interior ones (as the outer flowers of the clusters + of many umbellifers actually do), and thus elongated and variously + distorted forms have established themselves; then if the stalk is attached + to the side instead of the base of the tube, its base becomes a spur, and + thus all the grotesque forms of the mints, violets, and larkspurs, + gradually might be composed. But, however this may be, there is one great + tribe of plants separate from the rest, and of which the influence seems + shed upon the rest, in different degrees; and these would give the + impression, not so much of having been developed by change, as of being + stamped with a character of their own, more or less serpentine or + dragon-like. And I think you will find it convenient to call these + generally Draconidæ; disregarding their present ugly botanical name which + I do not care even to write once—you may take for their principal + types the foxglove, snapdragon, and calceolaria; and you will find they + all agree in a tendency to decorate themselves by spots, and with bosses + or swollen places in their leaves, as if they had been touched by poison. + The spot of the foxglove is especially strange, because it draws the color + out of the tissue all around it, as if it had been stung, and as if the + central color was really an inflamed spot, with paleness round. Then also + they carry to its extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting out the + petal,—often beautifully used by other flowers in a minor degree, + like the beating out of bosses in hollow silver, as in the kalmia, beaten + out apparently in each petal by the stamens instead of a hammer; or the + borage, pouting towards; but the snapdragons and calceolarias carry it to + its extreme. + </p> + <p> + 87. Then the spirit of these Draconidæ seems to pass more or less into + other flowers, whose forms are properly pure vases; but it affects some of + them slightly, others not at all. It never strongly affects the heaths; + never once the roses; but it enters like an evil spirit into the + buttercup, and turns it into a larkspur, with a black, spotted, grotesque + centre, and a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and intense, yet impure, + glittering on the surface as if it were strewn with broken glass, and + stained or darkening irregularly into red. And then at last the serpent + charm changes the ranunculus into monkshood, and makes it poisonous. It + enters into the forget-me-not, and the star of heavenly turquoise is + corrupted into the viper's bugloss, darkened with the same strange red as + the larkspur, and fretted into a fringe of thorn; it enters, together with + a strange insect-spirit, into the asphodels, and (though with a greater + interval between the groups) they change to spotted orchideæ; it touches + the poppy, it becomes a fumaria; the iris, and it pouts into a gladiolus; + the lily, and it chequers itself into a snake's-head, and secretes in the + deep of its bell, drops, not of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it were + a healing serpent. For there is an Æsculapian as well as an evil serpentry + among the Draconidæ, and the fairest of them, the "erba della Madonna" of + Venice (Linaria Cymbalaria), descends from the ruins it delights into the + herbage at their feet, and touches it; and behold, instantly, a vast group + of herbs for healing,—all draconid in form,—spotted and + crested, and from their lip-like corollas named "labiatæ;" full of various + balm, and warm strength for healing, yet all of them without splendid + honor or perfect beauty, "ground ives," richest when crushed under the + foot; the best sweetness and gentle brightness of the robes of the field,—thyme, + and marjoram, and Euphrasy. + </p> + <p> + 88. And observe, again and again, with respect to all these divisions and + powers of plants: it does not matter in the least by what concurrences of + circumstance or necessity they may gradually have been developed; the + concurrence of circumstance is itself the supreme and inexplicable fact. + We always come at last to a formative cause, which directs the + circumstance, and mode of meeting it. If you ask an ordinary botanist the + reason of the form of the leaf, he will tell you that it is a "developed + tubercle," and that its ultimate form "is owing to the directions of its + vascular threads." But what directs its vascular threads? "They are + seeking for something they want," he will probably answer. What made them + want that? What made them seek for it thus? Seek for it, in five fibres or + in three? Seek for it, in serration, or in sweeping curves? Seek for it, + in servile tendrils, or impetuous spray? Seek for it, in woolen wrinkles + rough with stings, or in glossy surfaces, green with pure strength, and + winterless delight? + </p> + <p> + 89. There is no answer. But the sum of all is, that over the entire + surface of the earth, and its waters, as influenced by the power of the + air under solar light, there is developed a series of changing forms, in + clouds, plants, and animals, all of which have reference in their action, + or nature, to the human intelligence that perceives them; and on which, in + their aspects of horror and beauty, and their qualities of good and evil, + there is engraved a series of myths, or words of the forming power, which, + according to the true passion and energy of the human race, they have been + enabled to read into religion. And this forming power has been by all + nations partly confused with the breath or air through which it acts, and + partly understood as a creative wisdom, proceeding from the Supreme Deity; + but entering into and inspiring all intelligences that work in harmony + with Him. And whatever intellectual results may be in modern days obtained + by regarding this effluence only as a motion of vibration, every formative + human art hitherto, and the best states of human happiness and order, may + have depended on the apprehension of its mystery (which is certain,) and + of its personality, which is probable. + </p> + <p> + 90. Of its influence on the formative arts, I have a few words to say + separately: my present business is only to interpret, as we are now + sufficiently enabled to do, the external symbols of the myth under which + it was represented by the Greeks as a goddess of counsel, taken first into + that breast of their supreme Deity, then created out of his thoughts, and + abiding closely beside him; always sharing and consummating his power. + </p> + <p> + 91. And in doing this we have first to note the meaning of the principal + epithet applied to Athena, "Glaukopis," "with eyes full of light," the + first syllable being connected, by its root, with words signifying sight, + not with words signifying color. As far as I can trace the color + perception of the Greeks, I find it all founded primarily on the degree of + connection between color and light; the most important fact to them in the + color of red being its connection with fire and sunshine; so that "purple" + is, in its original sense, "fire-color," and the scarlet or orange, of + dawn, more than any other fire-color. I was long puzzled by Homer's + calling the sea purple; and misled into thinking he meant the color of + cloud shadows on green sea; whereas he really means the gleaming blaze of + the waves under wide light. Aristotle's idea (partly true) is that light, + subdued by blackness, becomes red; and blackness, heated or lighted, also + becomes red. Thus, a color may be called purple because it is light + subdued (and so death is called "purple" or "shadowy" death); or else it + may be called purple as being shade kindled with fire, and thus said of + the lighted sea; or even of the sun itself, when it is thought of as a red + luminary opposed to the whiteness of the moon: "purpureos inter soles, et + candida lunæ sidera;" or of golden hair: "pro purpureo pnam solvens + scelerata capillo;" while both ideas are modified by the influence of an + earlier form of the word, which has nothing to do with fire at all, but + only with mixing or staining; and then, to make the whole group of + thoughts inextricably complex, yet rich and subtle in proportion to their + intricacy, the various rose and crimson colors of the murex dye,—the + crimson and purple of the poppy, and fruit of the palm,— and the + association of all these with the hue of blood,—partly direct, + partly through a confusion between the word signifying "slaughter" and + "palm-fruit color," mingle themselves in, and renew the whole nature of + the old word; so that, in later literature, it means a different color, or + emotion of color, in almost every place where it occurs; and cast forever + around the reflection of all that has been dipped in its dyes. + </p> + <p> + 92. So that the world is really a liquid prism, and stream of opal. And + then, last of all, to keep the whole history of it in the fantastic course + of a dream, warped here and there into wild grotesque, we moderns, who + have preferred to rule over coal-mines instead of the sea (and so have + turned the everlasting lamp of Athena into a Davy's safety-lamp in the + hand of Britannia, and Athenian heavenly lightning into British + subterranean "damp"), have actually got our purple out of coal instead of + the sea! And thus, grotesquely, we have had enforced on us the doubt that + held the old word between blackness and fire, and have completed the + shadow, and the fear of it, by giving it a name from battle, "Magenta." + </p> + <p> + 93. There is precisely a similar confusion between light and color in the + word used for the blue of the eyes of Athena—a noble confusion, + however, brought about by the intensity of the Greek sense that the heaven + is light, more than it is blue. I was not thinking of this when I wrote in + speaking of pictorial chiaroscuro, "The sky is not blue color merely: it + is blue fire and cannot be painted" (Mod. P. iv. p. 36); but it was this + that the Greeks chiefly felt of it, and so "Glaukopis" chiefly means + gray-eyed: gray standing for a pale or luminous blue; but it only means + "owl-eyed" in thought of the roundness and expansion, not from the color; + this breath and brightness being, again, in their moral sense typical of + the breadth, intensity, and singleness of the sight in prudence ("if thine + eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light"). Then the actual + power of the bird to see in twilight enters into the type, and perhaps its + general fineness of sense. "Before the human form was adopted, her + (Athena's) proper symbol was the owl, a bird which seems to surpass all + other creatures in acuteness of organic perception, its eye being + calculated to observe objects which to all others are enveloped in + darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, and its nostrils to + discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic, + from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of + disease."* + </p> + <p> + * Payne Knight in his "Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient + Art," not trustworthy, being little more than a mass of conjectural + memoranda, but the heap is suggestive, if well sifted. + </p> + <p> + I cannot find anywhere an account of the first known occurrence of the + type; but, in the early ones on Attic coins, the wide round eyes are + clearly the principal things to be made manifest. + </p> + <p> + 94. There is yet, however, another color of great importance in the + conception of Athena—the dark blue of her ægis. Just as the blue or + gray of her eyes was conceived more as light than color, so her aegis was + dark blue, because the Greeks thought of this tint more as shade than + color, and, while they used various materials in ornamentation, + lapislazuli, carbonate of copper, or, perhaps, smalt, with real enjoyment + of the blue tint, it was yet in their minds as distinctly representative + of darkness as scarlet was of light, and, therefore, anything dark,* but + especially the color of heavy thunder-cloud, was described by the same + term. The physical power of this darkness of the ægis, fringed with + lightning, is given quite simply when Jupiter himself uses it to + overshadow Ida and the Plain of Troy, and withdraws it at the prayer of + Ajax for light; and again when he grants it to be worn for a time by + Apollo, who is hidden by its cloud when he strikes down Patroclus; but its + spiritual power is chiefly expressed by a word signifying deeper shadow,—the + gloom of Erebus, or of our evening, which, when spoken of the ægis, + signifies, not merely the indignation of Athena, but the entire hiding or + withdrawal of her help, and beyond even this, her deadliest of all + hostility,—the darkness by which she herself deceives and beguiles + to final ruin those to whom she is wholly adverse; this contradiction of + her own glory being the uttermost judgment upon human falsehood. Thus it + is she who provokes Pandarus to the treachery which purposed to fulfil the + rape of Helen by the murder of her husband in time of truce; and then the + Greek king, holding his wounded brother's hand, prophesies against Troy + the darkness of the ægis which shall be over all, and for ever.** + </p> + <p> + * In the breastplate and shield of Atrides the serpents and bosses are all + of this dark color, yet the serpents are said to be like rainbows; but + through all this splendor and opposition of hue, I feel distinctly that + the literal "splendor," with its relative shade, are prevalent in the + conception; and that there is always a tendency to look through the hue to + its cause. And in this feeling about color the Greeks are separated from + the eastern nations, and from the best designers of Christian times. I + cannot find that they take pleasure in color for its own sake; it may be + in something more than color, or better; but it is not in the hue itself. + When Homer describes cloud breaking from a mountain summit, the crags + become visible in light, not color; he feels only their flashing out in + bright edges and trenchant shadows; above, the "infinite," "unspeakable" + æther is torn open—but not the blue of it. He has scarcely any + abstract pleasure in blue, or green, or gold; but only in their shade or + flame. + </p> + <p> + I have yet to trace the causes of this (which will be a long task, + belonging to art questions, not to mythological ones); but it is, I + believe, much connected with the brooding of the shadow of death over the + Greeks without any clear hope of immortality. The restriction of the color + on their vases to dim red (or yellow) with black and white, is greatly + connected with their sepulchral use, and with all the melancholy of Greek + tragic thought; and in this gloom the failure of color-perception is + partly noble, partly base: noble, in its earnestness, which raises the + design of Greek vases as far above the designing of mere colorist nations + like the Chinese, as men's thoughts are above children's; and yet it is + partly base and earthly, and inherently defective in one human faculty; + and I believe it was one cause of the perishing of their art so swiftly, + for indeed there is no decline so sudden, or down to such utter loss and + ludicrous depravity, as the fall of Greek design on its vases from the + fifth to the third century B.C. On the other hand, the pure colored-gift, + when employed for pleasure only, degrades in another direction; so that + among the Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, all intellectual progress in art + has been for ages rendered impossible by the prevalence of that faculty; + and yet it is, as I have said again and again, the spiritual power of art; + and its true brightness is the essential characteristic of all healthy + schools. ** 'eremnen Aigida pasi'.—Il. iv. 166. + </p> + <p> + 95. This, then, finally, was the perfect color-conception of Athena: the + flesh, snow-white (the hands, feet, and face of marble, even when the + statue was hewn roughly in wood); the eyes of keen pale blue, often in + statues represented by jewels; the long robe to the feet, crocus-colored; + and the ægis thrown over it of thunderous purple; the helmet golden (Il. + v. 744.), and I suppose its crest also, as that of Achilles. + </p> + <p> + If you think carefully of the meaning and character which is now enough + illustrated for you in each of these colors, and remember that the + crocus-color and the purple were both of them developments, in opposite + directions, of the great central idea of fire-color, or scarlet, you will + see that this form of the creative spirit of the earth is conceived as + robed in the blue, and purple, and scarlet, the white, and the gold, which + have been recognized for the sacred chords of colors, from the day when + the cloud descended on a Rock more mighty than Ida. + </p> + <p> + 96. I have spoken throughout, hitherto, of the conception of Athena, as it + is traceable in the Greek mind; not as it was rendered by Greek art. It is + matter of extreme difficulty, requiring a sympathy at once affectionate + and cautious, and a knowledge reaching the earliest springs of the + religion of many lands, to discern through the imperfection, and, alas! + more dimly yet, through the triumphs of formative art, what kind of + thoughts they were that appointed for it the tasks of its childhood, and + watched by the awakening of its strength. + </p> + <p> + The religions passion is nearly always vividest when the art is weakest; + and the technical skill only reaches its deliberate splendor when the + ecstacy which gave it birth has passed away forever. It is as vain an + attempt to reason out the visionary power or guiding influence of Athena + in the Greek heart, from anything we now read, or possess, of the work of + Phidias, as it would be for the disciples of some new religion to infer + the spirit of Christianity from Titian's "Assumption." The effective + vitality of the religious conception can be traced only through the + efforts of trembling hands, and strange pleasures of untaught eyes; and + the beauty of the dream can no more be found in the first symbols by which + it is expressed, than a child's idea of fairy-land can be gathered from + its pencil scrawl, or a girl's love for her broken doll explained by the + defaced features. On the other hand, the Athena of Phidias was, in very + fact, not so much the deity, as the darling of the Athenian people. Her + magnificence represented their pride and fondness, more than their piety; + and the great artist, in lavishing upon her dignities which might be ended + abruptly by the pillage they provoked, resigned, apparently without + regret, the awe of her ancient memory; and (with only the careless + remonstrance of a workman too strong to be proud) even the perfectness of + his own art. Rejoicing in the protection of their goddess, and in their + own hour of glory, the people of Athena robed her, at their will, with the + preciousness of ivory and gems; forgot or denied the darkness of the + breastplate of judgment, and vainly bade its unappeasable serpents relax + their coils in gold. + </p> + <p> + 97. It will take me many a day yet—if days, many or few, are given + me— to disentangle in anywise the proud and practised disguises of + religious creeds from the instinctive arts which, grotesquely and + indecorously, yet with sincerity, strove to embody them, or to relate. But + I think the reader, by help even of the imperfect indications already + given to him, will be able to follow, with a continually increasing + security, the vestiges of the Myth of Athena; and to reanimate its almost + evanescent shade, by connecting it with the now recognized facts of + existent nature which it, more or less dimly, reflected and foretold. I + gather these facts together in brief. + </p> + <p> + 98. The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into union with the + earth at its surface, and with its waters, so as to be the apparent cause + of their ascending into life. First, it warms them, and shades, at once, + staying the heat of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their + force with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic of balm + and frost; so that the white wreaths are withdrawn from the field of the + Swiss peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the + sea; forms and fills every cell of its foam; sustains the precipices, and + designs the valleys of its waves; gives the gleam to their moving under + the night, and the white fire to their plains under sunrise; lifts their + voices along the rocks, bears above them the spray of birds, pencils + through them the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a + portion in the hollow of its hand: dyes, with that, the hills into dark + blue, and their glaciers with dying rose; inlays with that, for sapphire, + the dome in which it has to set the cloud; shapes out of that the heavenly + flocks: divides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, calls + them to their journeys, waits by their rest; feeds from them the brooks + that cease not, and strews with them the dews that cease. It spins and + weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, rends it, and renews; and flits + and flames, and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them with a + plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to and fro, and is enclosed + in them like life. + </p> + <p> + It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and falls together + with it into fruitful dust, from which can be moulded flesh; it joins + itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant, and becomes the green leaf + out of the dry ground; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth it + has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of their life, + fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures their existence by its + indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the words by which one soul can + be known to another; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating of + the heart; and, passing away, leaves them to the peace that hears and + moves no more. + </p> + <p> + 99. This was the Athena of the greatest people of the days of old. And + opposite to the temple of this Spirit of the breath, and life-blood, of + man and beast, stood, on the Mount of Justice, and near the chasm which + was haunted by the goddess-Avengers, an altar to a God unknown,— + proclaimed at last to them, as one who, indeed, gave to all men, life, and + breath, and all things; and rain from heaven, filling their hearts with + rain from heaven, filling their hearts with food and gladness; a God who + had made of one blood all nations of men who dwell on the face of all the + earth, and had determined the times of their fate, and the bounds of their + habitation. + </p> + <p> + 100. We ourselves, fretted here in our narrow days, know less, perhaps, in + very deed, than they, what manner of spirit we are of, or what manner of + spirit we ignorantly worship. Have we, indeed, desired the Desire of all + nations? and will the Master whom we meant to seem, and the Messenger in + whom we thought we delighted, confirm, when He comes to His temple,— + or not find in its midst,—the tables heavy with gold for bread, and + the seats that are bought with the price of the dove? Or is our own land + also to be left by its angered Spirit,—left among those, where + sunshine vainly sweet, and passionate folly of storm, waste themselves in + the silent places of knowledge that has passed away, and of tongues that + have ceased? + </p> + <p> + This only we may discern assuredly; this, every true light of science, + every mercifully-granted power, every wisely-restricted thought, teach us + more clearly day by day, that in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, + there is one continual and omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, for + all men who know that they live, and remember that they die. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. — ATHENA ERGANE.* (Athena in the Heart.) + </h2> + <p> + * "Athena the worker, or having rule over work." The name was first give + to her by the Athenians. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +VARIOUS NOTES RELATING TO THE CONCEPTION OF ATHENA AS THE DIRECTRESS OF + THE IMAGINATION AND WILL. +</pre> + <p> + 101. I have now only a few words to say, bearing on what seems to me + present need, respecting the third function of Athena, conceived as the + directress of human passion, resolution, and labor. + </p> + <p> + Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give accurate distinction between + the intellectual rule of Athena and that of the Muses; but, broadly, the + Muses, with their king, preside over meditative, historical, and poetic + arts, whose end is the discovery of light or truth, and the creation of + beauty; but Athena rules over moral passion, and practically useful art. + She does not make men learned, but prudent and subtle; she does not teach + them to make their work beautiful, but to make it right. + </p> + <p> + In different places of my writings, and though many years of endeavor to + define the laws of art, I have insisted on this rightness in work, and on + its connection with virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that the + impression left on the reader's mind—if, indeed, it was ever + impressed at all—has been confused and uncertain. In beginning the + series of my corrected works, I wish this principle (in my own mind the + foundation of every other) to be made plain, if nothing else is; and will + try, therefore, to make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it into + unmistakable words. And, at first, here is a very simple statement of it, + given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of the Somme, + which will be better read in this place than in its incidental connection + with my account of the porches of Abbeville. + </p> + <p> + 102. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the expression, "by + what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus of + works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. + What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the merits of a + piece of stone? + </p> + <p> + The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, and its virtues + his virtues. + </p> + <p> + Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, that + of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds foolishly, and + a wise one, sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and a vicious one, + basely. If stone work is well put together, it means that a thoughtful man + planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it + has too much ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy of + pleasure; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and + the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell these most + precious of all legends,—pictures and buildings,—you may read + the characters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mirror; nay, + as in a microscope, and magnified a hundredfold; for the character becomes + passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or + meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under a + scalpel, and in dissection; for a man may hide himself from you, or + misrepresent himself to you every other way; but he cannot in his work: + there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he + sees,—all that he can do,—his imagination, his affections, his + perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is + there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a + honey-comb, by a bee; a wormcast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest + wreathed by a bird; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, + and ignobly if he is ignoble. + </p> + <p> + And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good or + bad, so is the maker of it. + </p> + <p> + 103. You will use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you + theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable;* you + don't suppose the man who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that + the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge? Do you think an old + Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work? or that Michael + Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and + out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or a brute, or + a pickpocket could have carved it? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the + Dodger, dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no + man could have done it but exactly the man who did it; and by looking + close at it, you may, if you know your letters, read precisely the manner + of man he was. + </p> + <p> + * The elaborate pendiment above the central porch at the west end of Rouen + Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and enriched with a + border of "twisted eglantine." + </p> + <p> + 104. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts + concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, while + manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit + of man; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it; and by whatever power + of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice or virtue it + reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets evil; and that + which is born of valor and honor, teaches valor and honor. All art is + either infection or education. It must be one or other of these. + </p> + <p> + 105. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which + understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. And I + assert it the more, because it has of late been repeatedly, expressly, and + with contumely, denied, and that by high authority; and I hold it one of + the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the arts among us, + that English gentlemen, of high standing as scholars and artists, should + have been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed into the assertion of + a fallacy which only authority such as theirs could have rendered for an + instant credible. For the contrary of it is written in the history of all + great nations; it is the one sentence always inscribed on the steps of + their thrones; the one concordant voice in which they speak to us out of + their dust. + </p> + <p> + All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful animal + race, with intense energy and imagination. They live lives of hardship by + choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline; they become fierce and + irresistible soldiers; the nation is always its own army, and their king, + or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or + David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. + Louis, or Dandalo, or Frederick the Great,—Egyptian, Jew, Greek, + Roman, German, English, French, Venetian,—that is inviolable law for + them all; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in + progressive power. Then, after their great military period, comes the + domestic period; in which, without betraying the discipline of war, they + add to their great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate + and tender home-life; and then, for all nations, is the time of their + perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their + national idea of character, developed by the finished care of the + occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was, + or can be; palpably the history of it,—unmistakably,—written + on the forehead of it in letters of light,—in tongues of fire, by + which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a + convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great + period, has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for + pleasure only. And all has so ended. + </p> + <p> + 106. Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here asserted two things,—first, + the foundation of art in moral character; next, the foundation of moral + character in war. I must make both these assertions clearer, and prove + them. + </p> + <p> + First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of course art-gift and + amiability of disposition are two different things; for a good man is not + necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for color necessarily imply an + honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers; it is the + expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not there, we + can have no art at all; and if the soul—and a right soul too— + is not there, the art is bad, however dexterous. + </p> + <p> + 107. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of + the moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice; + but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That + she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of + music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue and + vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigor and + harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct + renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible; every + sin that clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and persistent vicious + living and following of pleasure render, after a certain number of + generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of + the laws of nature, and mistake, in a nation, the reward of the virtue of + its sires, for the issue of its own sins. The time of their visitation + will come, and that inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the + fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. And + for the individual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I + said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift be + never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a great + race of men, and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own being and + inner soul; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs + on a man or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may not see the + difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn how to look, and + the folds themselves will become transparent, and you shall see through + them the death's shape, or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a + cloud of right, or as a winding-sheet. + </p> + <p> + 108. Then further, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and + that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it + bares fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is often + didactic also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael + Angelo's, Dürer's, and hundreds more; but that is not its special + function; it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful; but beautiful with + haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of myths that can be + read only with the heart. + </p> + <p> + For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a page of + Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and gold, and soft green, + and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It + is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight them; and the man + who did it assuredly had eyes in his head; but not much more. It is not + didactic art, but its author was happy; and it will do the good, and the + harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an early Turner + drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken about two miles from Geneva, on the + Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the distance. The old city is seen lying + beyond the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's + weaving; a faint light of morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost + colorless, shed from behind the Voirons, increases into soft amber along + the slope of the Salëve, and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm + fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon + the grass, but rises, high and tower-like, into the zenith of dawn above. + </p> + <p> + 109. There is not as much color in that low amber light upon the hillside + as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but gray in + mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Voirons' pines; a few dark + clusters of leaves, a single white flower—scarcely seen—are + all the gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of + the eastern manuscript would give color enough for all the red that is in + Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not so + much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in + half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made him take pleasure in + the low color that is only like the brown of a dead leaf? in the cold gray + of dawn—in the one white flower among the rocks—in these—and + no more than these? + </p> + <p> + 110. He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English + fields and hills; because the gentleness of a great race was in his heart, + and its powers of thought in his brain; because he knew the stories of the + Alps, and of the cities at their feet; because he had read the Homeric + legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the givers of dew + to the fields; because he knew the faces of the crags, and the imagery of + the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face of his friend; because + he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and death, which are + the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days of its first sea kings; + and also the compassion and the joy that are woven into the innermost + fabric of every great imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have + lived by the Christian faith with any courage or truth. And the picture + contains also, for us, just this which its maker had in him to give; and + can convey it to us, just so far as we are of the temper in which it must + be received. It is didactic if we are worthy to be taught, not otherwise. + The pure heart, it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. + It has in it no words for the reckless or the base. + </p> + <p> + 111. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of my life—and + both have been many and great—that does not rise up against me, and + take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession of sight, of + understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam of rightness + or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this art, and its + vision. So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret either, my power is owing + to what of right there is in me. I dare to say it, that, because through + all my life I have desired good, and not evil; because I have been kind to + many; have wished to be kind to all; have wilfully injured none; and + because I have loved much, and not selfishly; therefore, the morning light + is yet visible to me on those hills, and you, who read, may trust my + thought and word in such work as I have to do for you; and you will be + glad afterwards that you have trusted them. + </p> + <p> + 112. Yet, remember,—I repeat it again and yet again,—that I + may for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly clear: the inherited + art-gift must be there, as well as the life in some poor measure, or + rescued fragment, right. This art-gift of mine could not have been won by + any work or by any conduct: it belongs to me by birthright, and came by + Athena's will, from the air of English country villages, and Scottish + hills. I will risk whatever charge of folly may come on me, for printing + one of my many childish rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, just + north of Loch Leven. It bears date 1st January, 1828. I was born on the + 8th of February, 1819; and al that I ever could be, and all that I cannot + be, the weak little rhyme already shows. + </p> + <p> + "Papa, how pretty those icicles are, That are seen so near,—that are + seen so far; —Those dropping waters that come from the rocks And + many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. That silvery stream that runs + babbling along, Making a murmuring, dancing song. Those trees that stand + waving upon the rock's side, And men, that, like specters, among them + glide. And waterfalls that are heard from far, And come in sight when very + near. And the water-wheel that turns slowly round, Grinding the corn that—requires + to be ground,— + </p> + <p> + (Political Economy of the future!) + </p> + <p> + ——And mountains at a distance seen, And rivers winding through + the plain, And quarries with their craggy stones, And the wind among them + moans." + </p> + <p> + So foretelling Stones of Venice, and this essay on Athena. + </p> + <p> + Enough now concerning myself. + </p> + <p> + 113. Of Turner's life, and of its good and evil, both great, but the good + immeasurably the greater, his work is in all things a perfect and + transparent evidence. His biography is simply, "He did this, nor will ever + another do its like again." Yet read what I have said of him, as compared + with the great Italians, in the passages taken from the "Cestus of + Aglaia," farther on, §158, pp. 164, 165. + </p> + <p> + 114. This, then, is the nature of the connection between morals and art. + Now, secondly, I have asserted the foundation of both these, at least + hitherto, in war. The reason of this too manifest fact is, that, until now + it has been impossible for any nation, except a warrior one, to fix its + mind wholly on its men, instead of their possessions. Every great soldier + nation thinks, necessarily, first of multiplying its bodies and souls of + men, in good temper and strict discipline. As long as this is its + political aim, it does not matter what it temporarily suffers, or loses, + either in numbers or in wealth; its morality and its arts (if it have + national art-gift) advance together; but so soon as it ceases to be a + warrior nation, it thinks of its possessions instead of its men; and then + the moral and poetic powers vanish together. + </p> + <p> + 115. It is thus, however, absolutely necessary to the virtue of war that + it should be waged by personal strength, not by money or machinery. A + nation that fights with a mercenary force, or with torpedoes instead of + its own arms, is dying. Not but that there is more true courage in modern + than even in ancient war; but this is, first, because all the remaining + life of European nations is with a morbid intensity thrown into their + soldiers; and, secondly, because their present heroism is the culmination + of centuries of inbred and traditional valor, which Athena taught them by + forcing them to govern the foam of the sea-wave and of the horse,—not + the steam of kettles. + </p> + <p> + 116. And further, note this, which is vital to us in the present crisis: + If war is to be made by money and machinery, the nation which is the + largest and most covetous multitude will win. You may be as scientific as + you choose; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpowder + will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your faces, and make an end + of you; of itself, also, in good time, but of you first. And to the + English people the choice of its fate is very near now. It may + spasmodically defend its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few + years longer—a very few. No walls will defend either it, or its + havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spreading faster than + the clouds, over the habitable earth. We shall be allowed to live by small + pedler's business, and iron-mongery—since we have chosen those for + our line of life—as long as we are found useful black servants to + the Americans, and are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders; and + have still coals to dig,—they once exhausted, or got cheaper + elsewhere, we shall be abolished. But if we think more wisely, while there + is yet time, and set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on + cheapening English wares, if we resolve to submit to wholesome laws of + labor and economy, and setting our political squabbles aside, try how many + strong creatures, friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd into + every spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail + against us; nor traffic, nor hatred; the noble nation will yet, by the + grace of heaven, rule over the ignoble, and force of heart hold its own + against fireballs. + </p> + <p> + 117. But there is yet a further reason for the dependence of the arts on + war. The vice and injustice of the world are constantly springing anew, + and are only to be subdued by battle; the keepers of order and law must + always be soldiers. And now, going back to the myth of Athena, we see that + though she is first a warrior maid, she detests war for its own sake; she + arms Achilles and Ulysses in just quarrels, but she disarms Ares. She + contends, herself, continually against disorder and convulsion, in the + earth giants; she stands by Hercules' side in victory over all monstrous + evil; in justice only she judges and makes war. But in this war of hers + she is wholly implacable. She has little notion of converting criminals. + There is no faculty of mercy in her when she has been resisted. Her word + is only, "I will mock when your fear cometh." Note the words that follow: + "when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a + whirlwind;" for her wrath is of irresistible tempest: once roused, it is + blind and deaf,—rabies—madness of anger— darkness of the + Dies Iræ. + </p> + <p> + And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to know about our own + several lives. Wisdom never forgives. Whatever resistance we have offered + to her loaw, she avenges forever; the lost hour can never be redeemed, and + the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best that can be done + afterwards, but for that, had been better; the falsest of all the cries of + peace, where there is no peace, is that of the pardon of sin, as the mob + expect it. Wisdom can "put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it; and she is + apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the black ægis is + on her breast. + </p> + <p> + 118. And this is also a fact we have to know about our national life, that + it is ended as soon as it has lost the power of noble Anger. When it + paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful criminalities; and endures its + false weights, and its adulterated food; dares not to decide practically + between good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor smite the other, + but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and consoles the evil + with pious sympathy, and conserves it in the sugar of its leaden heart,—the + end is come. + </p> + <p> + 119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with any people is that + they become warriors, and that the chief thought of every man of them is + to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail from his brother's side in + battle. Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's + orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war. + </p> + <p> + But further: Athena presides over industry, as well as battle; typically, + over women's industry; that brings comfort with pleasantness. Her word to + us all is: "Be well exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in your + right minds; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes clutched + from each other's shoulders. Fight and weave. Then I myself will answer + for the course of the lance, and the colors of the loom." + </p> + <p> + And now I will ask the reader to look with some care through these + following passages respecting modern multitudes and their occupations, + written long ago, but left in fragmentary form, in which they must now + stay, and be of what use they can. + </p> + <p> + 120. It is not political economy to put a number of strong men down on an + acre of ground, with no lodging, and nothing to eat. Nor is it political + economy to build a city on good ground, and fill it with store of corn and + treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it. Political economy + creates together the means of life, and the living persons who are to use + them; and of both, the best and the most that it can, but imperatively the + best, not the most. A few good and healthy men, rather than a multitude of + diseased rogues; and a little real milk and wine rather than much chalk + and petroleum; but the gist of the whole business is that the men and + their property must both be produced together—not one to the loss of + the other. Property must not be created in lands desolate by exile of + their people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity, in lands barren of + bread. + </p> + <p> + 121. Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions are to be + increased at the same time, the first object of thought is always to be + the multiplication of a worthy people. The strength of the nation is in + its multitude, not in its territory; but only in its sound multitude. It + is one thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to be + swollen with putrid humors. Not that multitude ever ought to be + inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be wiser than one, and two + thousand than two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records + of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of + cities. As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws + and repress crimes! As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks— + men, only in separate dens! As if it were easy to help one another on the + opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of a + street! But when the men are true and good, and stand shoulder to + shoulder, the strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in + its land nor gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its + territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the madness of + economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the madness of + kings to seek for land instead of life. They want the town on the other + side of the river, and seek it at the spear point; it never enters their + stupid heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this side of + the river would make them stronger kings; and that this doubling might be + done by the ploughshare instead of the spear, and through happiness + instead of misery. + </p> + <p> + Therefore, in brief, this is the only object of all true policy and true + economy: "utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground"— + imperatively always good, sound, honest men,—not a mob of + white-faced thieves. So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong + which is inconsistent with numbers; and on the other all numbers are wrong + which are inconsistent with breeding. + </p> + <p> + 122. Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the maintenance of such + men, observe, that you must never use the terms "money" and "wealth" as + synonymous. Wealth consists of the good, and therefore useful, things in + the possession of the nation; money is only the written or coined sign of + the relative quantities of wealth in each person's possession. All money + is a divisible title-deed, of immense importance as an expression of right + to property, but absolutely valueless as property itself. Thus, supposing + a nation isolated from all others, the money in its possession is, at its + maximum value, worth all the property of the nation, and no more, because + no more can be got for it. And the money of all nations is worth, at its + maximum, the property of all nations, and no more, for no more can be got + for it. Thus, every article of property produced increases, by its value, + the value of all the money in the world, and every article of property + destroyed, diminishes the value of all the money in the world. If ten men + are cast away on a rock, with a thousand pounds in their pockets, and + there is on the rock, neither food nor shelter, their money is worth + simply nothing, for nothing is to be had for it. If they built ten huts, + and recover a cask of biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, + at its maximum value, is worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. If they + make their thousand pounds into two thousand by writing new notes, their + two thousand pounds are still worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And + the law of relative value is the same for all the world, and all the + people in it, and all their property, as for ten men on a rock. Therefore, + money is truly and finally lost in the degree in which its value is taken + from it (ceasing in that degree to be money at all); and it is truly + gained in the degree in which value is added to it. Thus, suppose the + money coined by the nation be a fixed sum, and divided very minutely (say + into francs and cents), and neither to be added to nor diminished. Then + every grain of food and inch of lodging added to its possessions makes + every cent in its pockets worth proportionally more, and every gain of + food it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall to ruin, makes every + cent in its pockets worth less; and this with mathematical precision. The + immediate value of the money at particular times and places depends, + indeed, on the humors of the possessors of property; but the nation is in + the one case gradually getting richer, and will feel the pressure of + poverty steadily everywhere relaxing, whatever the humors of individuals + may be; and, in the other case, is gradually growing poorer, and the + pressure of its poverty will every day tell more and more, in ways that it + cannot explain, but will most bitterly feel. + </p> + <p> + 123. The actual quantity of money which it coins, in relation to its real + property, is therefore only of consequence for convenience of exchange; + but the proportion in which this quantity of money is divided among + individuals expresses their various rights to greater or less proportions + of the national property, and must not, therefore, be tampered with. The + government may at any time, with perfect justice, double its issue of + coinage, if it gives every man who has ten pounds in his pocket another + ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence another ten pence; for it thus + does not make any of them richer; it merely divides their counters for + them into twice the number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to + other people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former holders to + precisely that extent. This most important function of money, as a + title-deed, on the non-violation of which all national soundness of + commerce and peace of life depend, has been never rightly distinguished by + economists from the quite unimportant function of money as a means of + exchange. You can exchange goods—at some inconvenience, indeed, but + you can still contrive to do it—without money at all; but you cannot + maintain your claim to the savings of your past life without a document + declaring the amount of them, which the nation and its government will + respect. + </p> + <p> + 124. And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money in + relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its + function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing + produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple + and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. How + many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others + will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your + ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has + destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated + girl—do even the women in high political position—know that + every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys + precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it + are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming somewhat + louder. + </p> + <p> + 125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. So much goods, so + much money; so little goods, so little money. But, as there is this true + relation between money and "goods," or good things, so there is a false + relation between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad things will + fetch a price in exchange; but they do not increase the wealth of the + country. Good wine is wealth, drugged wine is not; good meat is wealth, + putrid meat is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A + thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to + pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you + please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth + one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more + than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce many + potters to manufacture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to buy + them; but the nation is, through the whole business so encouraged, rich by + the addition to its wealth of so many potsherds,—and there an end. + The thing is worth what it CAN do for you, not what you think it can; and + most national luxuries, nowadays, are a form of potsherd, provided for the + solace of a self-complacent Job, voluntary sedent on his ash-heap. + </p> + <p> + 126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and have become media + of exchange, the variations in their prices are absolutely indifferent to + the nation. Whether Mr. A. buys a Titian from Mr. B. for twenty, or for + two thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national revenue; that + is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue whether Mr. A. has the + picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the picture, and Mr. A. the + money. Which of them will spend the money most wisely, and which of them + will keep the picture most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of some + importance; but this cannot be known by the mere fact of exchange. + </p> + <p> + 127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace and well-being + besides, depend on the number of persons it can employ in making good and + useful things. I say its well-being also, for the character of men depends + more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or + principles with which we can imbue them. The employment forms the habits + of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man,—the + greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under + special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is + the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; + and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern + depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty + there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of + event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, + namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the + determination of their final fate by their character. The moment, and the + first direction of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but + their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the + nature of the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English + Parliament may have been more or less accidental; the results of the + measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been + developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life. + Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will + depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general + intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them + whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and + modest in their estimate of the promises, of life. + </p> + <p> + 128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or employment + of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be remembered + that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act of heroism, + but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made + villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they + committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct + begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,—not merely at the + moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt. + </p> + <p> + All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their + timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error + corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can be no more stayed, + nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern philanthropy to + remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the sick to perish, + and the foolish to stray, while it spends itself in frantic exertions to + raise the dead, and reform the dust. + </p> + <p> + The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital + punishment is, I trust, the sign of an awakening perception that + punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislator + for the prevention of crime. The true instruments of reformation are + employment and reward; not punishment. Aid the willing, honour the + virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no deed + for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. + </p> + <p> + 129. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes + depends on the establishment of institutions for their active employment, + while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of + self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice, not + altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should + always be able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed; + but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be + the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced; + and they must be convinced. If the danger of the principal thoroughfares + in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than + ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are not enough, they will not + have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of + the lower orders has reached a point at which it begins to bear its + necessary fruit, and every day makes the fields, not whiter, but more + stable, to harvest. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +130. The general principles by which employment should be regulated may +be briefly stated as follows: + + I. There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our +disposal, namely, (a) vital or muscular power; (b) natural mechanical +power of wind, water, and electricity; and (c) artificially produced +mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all +available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and +only at last have recourse to artificial power. And this because it is +always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe +himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he +cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him feed and clothe +himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine—as a windmill +or watermill—than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have +natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually +hear economists regret that the water-power of the cascades or streams of +a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its +idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as +the south of Provence, where a strong wind* blows steadily all day long +for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a windmill, while +men are continually employed at a hundred miles to the north, in digging +fuel to obtain artificial power. But the principal point of all to be +kept in view is, that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the +country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of +so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our +force, while the vital force is unused, and not only unused, but in being +so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal, and spoil our +humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, wherever there is an +idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last +all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one +about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer." +Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of +mechanical force? We are continually in search of means to pull, to +hammer, to fetch, to carry. We waste our future resources to get this +strength, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere +pestiferous breath, and production of its variously noisome forms of +ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. +The industrious hands must already have so much to do that they can do +no more, or else we need not use machines to help them. Then use the +idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put +it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroluem +cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order +that, and many other things, time enough before we want it. So, the +carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most +wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing-vessels; and +no healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, than such +active porterage. +</pre> + <p> + * In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery + to turn the variable into a constant velocity—no insurmountable + difficulty. + </p> + <p> + 131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to + make the employments we choose as educational as possible; for a wholesome + human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well + as bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer well, and a woman taught + to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are already educated in many + essential moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has hitherto been + thought of only for criminals; but the real and noblest function of labor + is to prevent crime, and not to be Reformatory, but Formatory. + </p> + <p> + 132. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is + pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed + to the production of useful articles only; that is to say, of food, of + simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, + and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not + at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business + cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband-makers + at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have + employed lace-makers at Honiton; or makers of something else, as useless, + elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it + cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it + away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad + speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to + pay navies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or + button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we cannot lose it + (unless by actually destroying it) without giving employment of some kind; + and, therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative quantity + of employment must some day come out of it; but the distress of the nation + signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will + support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, + or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless + ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means + of life. One of the most beautiful uses of railroads is to enable A to + travel from the town of X to take away the business of B in the town of Y; + while, in the mean time, B travels from the town of Y to take away A's + business in the town of X. But the national wealth is not increased by + these operations. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in + repairing lodging, in making necessary and good roads, in preventing + danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are + required, is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To + cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, and every + acre of sand gained from the sea in Lincolnshire, makes life easier all + over England. + </p> + <p> + 4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else must be working + somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing, therefore, + double the quantity of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is + only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his + maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in many countries to + take away laborers who supported their families, from their useful work, + and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display at the public + expense. Since this has been long endured by the most civilized nations, + let it not be thought they would not much more gladly endure a + conscription which should seize only the vicious and idle, already living + by criminal procedures at the public expense; and which should discipline + and educate them to labor which would not only maintain themselves, but be + serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is simply this: we must feed + the drunkard, vagabond, and thief; but shall we do so by letting them + steal their food, and do no work for it? or shall we give them their food + in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work which shall be worth + it, and which, in process of time, will redeem their own characters and + make them happy and serviceable members of society? + </p> + <p> + I find by me a violent little fragment of undelivered lecture, which puts + this, perhaps, still more clearly. Your idle people (it says), as they are + now, are not merely waste coal-beds. They are explosive coal-beds, which + you pay a high annual rent for. You are keeping all these idle persons, + remember, at far greater cost than if they were busy. Do you think a + vicious person eats less than an honest one? or that it is cheaper to keep + a bad man drunk, than a good man sober? There is, I suppose, a dim idea in + the mind of the public, that they don't pay for the maintenance of people + they don't employ. Those staggering rascals at the street corner, grouped + around its splendid angle of public-house, we fancy that they are no + servants of ours! that we pay them no wages! that no cash out of our + pockets is spent over that beer-stained counter! + </p> + <p> + Whose cash is it then they are spending? It is not got honestly by work. + You know that much. Where do they get it from? Who has paid for their + dinner and their pot? Those fellows can only live in one of two ways—by + pillage or beggary. Their annual income by thieving comes out of the + public pocket, you will admit. They are not cheaply fed, so far as they + are fed by theft. But the rest of their living—all that they don't + steal—they must beg. Not with success from you, you think. Wise, as + benevolent, you never gave a penny in "indiscriminate charity." Well, I + congratulate you on the freedom of your conscience from that sin, mine + being bitterly burdened with the memory of many a sixpence given to + beggars of whom I knew nothing but that they had pale faces and thin + waists. But it is not that kind of street beggary that is the worst + beggars' trade. Home alms which it is their worst degradation to receive. + Those scamps know well enough that you and your wisdom are worth nothing + to them. They won't beg of you. They will beg of their sisters, and + mothers, and wives, and children, and of any one else who is enough + ashamed of being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them out of + sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane of a family. That is the + deadly "indiscriminate charity"—the charity which each household + pays to maintain its own private curse. + </p> + <p> + 133. And you think that is no affair of yours? and that every family ought + to watch over and subdue its own living plague? Put it to yourselves this + way, then: suppose you knew every one of those families kept an idol in an + inner room—a big-bellied bronze figure, to which daily sacrifice and + oblation was made; at whose feet so much beer and brandy was poured out + every morning on the ground; and before which, every night, good meat, + enough for two men's keep, was set, and left, till it was putrid, and then + carried out and thrown on the dunghill; you would put an end to that form + of idolatry with your best diligence, I suppose. You would understand then + that the beer, and brandy, and meat, were wasted; and that the burden + imposed by each household on itself lay heavily through them on the whole + community? But, suppose further, that this idol were not of silent and + quiet bronze only, but an ingenious mechanism, wound up every morning, to + run itself down into automatic blasphemies; that it struck and tore with + its hands the people who set food before it; that it was anointed with + poisonous unguents, and infected the air for miles round. You would + interfere with the idolatry then, straightway? Will you not interfere with + it now, when the infection that they venomous idol spreads is not merely + death, but sin? + </p> + <p> + 134. So far the old lecture. Returning to cool English, the end of the + matter is, that, sooner or later, we shall have to register our people; + and to know how they live; and to make sure, if they are capable of work, + that right work is given them to do. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +The different classes of work for which bodies of men could be +consistently organized, might ultimately become numerous; these following +divisions of occupation may all at once be suggested: + + I. Road-making.—Good roads to be made, wherever needed, and kept in +repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads, in spoiled horses, +strained wheels, and time, done away with. + + II. Bringing in of waste land.—All waste lands not necessary for +public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed; chiefly our +wide and waste seashores. Not our mountains nor moorland. Our life +depends on them, more than on the best arable we have. + + III. Harbor-making.—The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage +in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous +points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection +with the pilot and life-boat services. There is room for every order of +intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers. + + IV. Porterage.—All heavy goods, not requiring speed in transit, to +be carried (under preventative duty on transit, by railroad) by +canal-boats, employing men for draught; and the merchant-shipping service +extended by sea; so that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while +there are idle ones in mischief on shore. + + V. Repair of buildings.—A body of men in various trades to be kept +at the disposal of the authorities in every large town, for repair of +buildings, especially the houses of the poorer orders, who, if no such +provision were made, could not employ workmen on their own houses, but +would simply live with rent walls and roofs. + + VI. Dressmaking.—Substantial dress, of standard material and kind, +strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as +to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, +to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing. + + VII. Works of Art.—Schools to be established on thoroughly sound +principles of manufacture, and use of materials, and with sample and, for +given periods, unalterable modes of work; first, in pottery, and +embracing gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting; the +two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial +establishments, being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable +degree; and the production of everything by hand-work, for the special +purpose of developing personal power and skill in the workman. +</pre> + <p> + The last two departments, and some subordinate branches of others, would + include the service of women and children. + </p> + <p> + I give now, for such further illustrations as they contain of the points I + desire most to insist upon with respect both to education and employment, + a portion of the series of notes published some time ago in the "Art + Journal," on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and the unescapable + law of wise restraint. I am sorry that they are written obscurely—and + it may be thought affectedly; but the fact is, I have always had three + different ways of writing: one, with the single view of making myself + understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal of what comes into my + head; another, in which I say what I think ought to be said, in what I + suppose to be the best words I can find for it (which is in reality an + affected style—be it good or bad); and my third way of writing is to + say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the first words + that come, retouching them afterward into (approximate) grammar. These + notes for the "Art Journal" were so written; and I like them myself, of + course; but ask the reader's pardon for their confusedness. + </p> + <p> + 135. "Sir, it cannot be better done." + </p> + <p> + We will insist, with the reader's permission, on this comfortful saying of + Albert Dürer's in order to find out, if we may, what Modesty is; which it + will be well for painters, readers, and especially critics, to know, + before going farther. What it is; or, rather, who she is, her fingers + being among the deftest in laying the ground-threads of Aglaia's cestus. + </p> + <p> + For this same opinion of Albert's is entertained by many other people + respecting their own doings—a very prevalent opinion, indeed, I find + it; and the answer itself, though rarely made with the Nuremberger's + crushing decision, is nevertheless often enough intimated, with delicacy, + by artists of all countries, in their various dialects. Neither can it + always be held an entirely modest one, as it assuredly was in the man who + would sometimes estimate a piece of his unconquerable work at only the + worth of a plate of fruit, or a flask of wine—would have taken even + one "fig for it," kindly offered; or given it royally for nothing, to show + his hand to a fellow-king of his own, or any other craft—as + Gainsborough gave the "Boy at the Stile" for a solo on the violin. An + entirely modest saying, I repeat, in him—not always in us. For + Modesty is "the measuring virtue," the virtue of modes or limits. She is, + indeed, said to be only the third or youngest of the children of the + cardinal virtue, Temperance; and apt to be despised, being more given to + arithmetic, and other vulgar studies (Cinderella-like), than her elder + sisters; but she is useful in the household, and arrives at great results + with her yard-measure and slate-pencil—a pretty little Marchande des + Modes, cutting her dress always according to the silk (if this be the + proper feminine reading of "coat according to the cloth"), so that, + consulting with her carefully of a morning, men get to know not only their + income, but their in being—to know themselves, that is, in a + gauger's manner, round, and up and down—surface and contents; what + is in them and what may be got out of them; and in fine, their entire + canon of weight and capacity. That yard-measure of Modesty's, lent to + those who will use it, is a curious musical reed, and will go round and + round waists that are slender enough, with latent melody in every joint of + it, the dark root only being soundless, moist from the wave wherein + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda + O che 'n durasse, vi puote aver vita."* +</pre> + <p> + * "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109. + </p> + <p> + But when the little sister herself takes it in hand, to measure things + outside of us with, the joints shoot out in an amazing manner: the + four-square walls even of celestial cities being measurable enough by that + reed; and the way pointed to them, though only to be followed, or even + seen, in the dim starlight shed down from worlds amidst which there is no + name of Measure any more, though the reality of it always. For, indeed, to + all true modesty the necessary business is not inlook, but outlook, and + especially uplook: it is only her sister Shamefacedness, who is known by + the drooping lashes—Modesty, quite otherwise, by her large eyes full + of wonder; for she never contemns herself, nor is ashamed of herself, but + forgets herself—at least until she has done something worth memory. + It is easy to peep and potter about one's own deficiencies in a quiet + immodest discontent; but Modesty is so pleased with other people's doings, + that she has no leisure to lament her own: and thus, knowing the fresh + feeling of contentment, unstained with thought of self, she does not fear + being pleased, when there is cause, with her own rightness, as with + another's, as with another's, saying calmly, "Be it mine or yours, or + whose else's it may, it is no matter; this also is well." But the right to + say such a thing depends on continual reverence and manifold sense of + failure. If you have known yourself to have failed, you may trust, when it + comes, the strange consciousness of success; if you have faithfully loved + the noble work of others, you need not fear to speak with respect of + things duly done, of your own. + </p> + <p> + 136. But the principal good that comes of art being followed in this + reverent feeling is of it. Men who know their place can take it and keep + it, be it low or high, contentedly and firmly, neither yielding nor + grasping; and the harmony of hand and thought follows, rendering all great + deeds of art possible—deeds in which the souls of men meet like the + jewels in the windows of Aladdin's palace, the little gems and the large + all equally pure, needing no cement but the fitting of facets; while the + associative work of immodest men is all jointless, and astir with wormy + ambition; putridly dissolute, and forever on the crawl: so that if it come + together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis through a flash of + volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the clay of it, and + fastening the slime, only to end in wilder scattering; according to the + fate of those oldest, mightiest, immodestest of builders, of whom it is + told in scorn, "They had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." + </p> + <p> + 137. The first function of Modesty, then, being this recognition of place, + her second is the recognition of law, and delight in it, for the sake of + law itself, whether her part be to assert it, or obey. For as it belongs + to all immodesty to defy or deny law, and assert privilege and license, + according to its own pleasure (it being therefore rightly called + "insolent," that is, "custom-breaking," violating some usual and appointed + order to attain for itself greater forwardness or power), so it is the + habit of all modesty to love the constancy and "solemnity," or, literally, + "accustomedness," of law, seeking first what are the solemn, appointed, + inviolable customs and general orders of nature, and of the Master of + nature, touching the matter in hand; and striving to put itself, as + habitually and inviolably, in compliance with them. Out of which habit, + once established, arises what is rightly called "conscience," nor + "science" merely, but "with-science," a science "with us," such as only + modest creatures can have—with or within them—and within all + creation besides, every member of it, strong or weak, witnessing together, + and joining in the happy consciousness that each one's work is good; the + bee also being profoundly of that opinion; and the lark; and the swallow, + in that noisy, but modestly upside-down, Babel of hers, under the eaves, + with its unvolcanic slime for mortar; and the two ants who are asking of + each other at the turn of that little ant's-foot-worn bath through the + moss "lor via e lor fortuna;" and the builders also, who built yonder pile + of cloud-marble in the west, and the gilder who gilded it, and is gone + down behind it. + </p> + <p> + 138. But I think we shall better understand what we ought of the nature of + Modesty, and of her opposite, by taking a simple instance of both, in the + practice of that art of music which the wisest have agreed in thinking the + first element of education; only I must ask the reader's patience with me + through a parenthesis. + </p> + <p> + Among the foremost men whose power has had to assert itself, though with + conquest, yet with countless loss, through peculiarly English + disadvantages of circumstance, are assuredly to be ranked together, both + for honor, and for mourning, Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank. There + is, however, less cause for regret in the instance of Bewick. We may + understand that it was well for us once to see what an entirely keen and + true man's temper, could achieve, together, unhelped, but also unharmed, + among the black bans and wolds of Tyne. But the genius of Cruikshank has + been cast away in an utterly ghastly and lamentable manner: his superb + line-work, worthy of any class of subject, and his powers of conception + and composition, of which I cannot venture to estimate the range in their + degraded application, having been condemned, by his fate, to be spent + either in rude jesting, or in vain war with conditions of vice too low + alike for record or rebuke, among the dregs of the British populace. Yet + perhaps I am wrong in regretting even this: it may be an appointed lesson + for futurity, that the art of the best English etcher in the nineteenth + century, spent on illustrations of the lives of burglars and drunkards, + should one day be seen in museums beneath Greek vases fretted with + drawings of the wars of Troy, or side by side with Dürer's "Knight and + Death." + </p> + <p> + 139. Be that as it may, I am at present glad to be able to refer to one of + these perpetuations, by his strong hand, of such human character as our + faultless British constitution occasionally produces in out-of-the-way + corners. It is among his illustrations of the Irish Rebellion, and + represents the pillage and destruction of a gentleman's house by the mob. + They have made a heap in the drawing-room of the furniture and books, to + set first fire to; and are tearing up the floor for its more easily + kindled planks, the less busily-disposed meanwhile hacking round in rage, + with axes, and smashing what they can with butt-ends of guns. I do not + care to follow with words the ghastly truth of the picture into its + detail; but the most expressive incident of the whole, and the one + immediately to my purpose, is this, that one fellow has sat himself at the + piano, on which, hitting down fiercely with his clenched fists, he plays, + grinning, such tune as may be so producible, to which melody two of his + companions, flourishing knotted sticks, dance, after their manner, on the + top of the instrument. + </p> + <p> + 140. I think we have in this conception as perfect an instance as we + require of the lowest supposable phase of immodest or licentious art in + music; the "inner consciousness of good" being dim, even in the musician + and his audience, and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by the + Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic powers. This + represented scene came into my mind suddenly one evening, a few weeks ago, + in contrast with another which I was watching in its reality; namely, a + group of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Hallê, as he was + playing a variation on "Home, Sweet Home." They had sustained with + unwonted courage the glance of subdued indignation with which, having just + closed a rippling melody of Sebastian Bach's (much like what one might + fancy the singing of nightingales would be if they fed on honey instead of + flies), he turned to the slight, popular air. But they had their own + associations with it, and besought for, and obtained it, and pressed + close, at first, in vain, to see what no glance could follow, the + traversing of the fingers. They soon thought no more of seeing. The wet + eyes, round-open, and the little scarlet upper lips, lifted, and drawn + slightly together, in passionate glow of utter wonder, became + picture-like, porcelain-like, in motionless joy, as the sweet multitude of + low notes fell, in their timely infinities, like summer rain. Only La + Robbia himself (nor even he, unless with tenderer use of color than is + usual in his work) could have rendered some image of that listening. + </p> + <p> + 141. But if the reader can give due vitality in his fancy to these two + scenes, he will have in them representative types, clear enough for all + future purpose, of the several agencies of debased and perfect art. And + the interval may easily and continuously be filled by mediate gradations. + Between the entirely immodeset, unmeasured, and (in evil sense) + unmannered, execution with the fist; and the entirely modest, measured, + and (in the noblest sense) mannered, or moral'd execution with the finger; + between the impatient and unpractised doing, containing in itself the + witness of lasting impatience and idleness through all previous life, and + the patient and practised doing, containing in itself the witness of + self-restraint and unwearied toil through all previous life; between the + expressed subject and sentiment of home violation, and the expressed + subject and sentiment of home love; between the sympathy of audience, + given in irreverent and contemptuous rage, joyless as the rabidness of a + dog, and the sympathy of audience given in an almost appalled humility of + intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reasoning and reasonable pleasure; + between these two limits of octave, the reader will find he can class, + according to its modesty, usefulness and grace, or becomingness, all other + musical art. For although purity of purpose and fineness of execution by + no means go together, degree to degree (since fine, and indeed all but the + finest, work is often spent in the most wanton purpose —as in all + our modern opera—and the rudest execution is again often joined with + purest purpose, as in a mother's song to her child), still the entire + accomplishment of music is only in the union of both. For the difference + between that "all but" finest and "finest" is an infinite one; and besides + this, however the power of the performer, once attained, may be afterwards + misdirected, in slavery to popular passion or childishness, and spend + itself, at its sweetest, in idle melodies, cold and ephemeral (like + Michael Angelo's snow statue in the other art), or else in vicious + difficulty and miserable noise—crackling of thorns under the pot of + public sensuality—still, the attainment of this power, and the + maintenance of it, involve always in the executant some virtue or courage + of high kind; the understanding of which, and of the difference between + the discipline which develops it and the disorderly efforts of the + amateur, it will be one of our first businesses to estimate rightly. And + though not indeed by degree to degree, yet in essential relation (as of + winds to waves, the one being always the true cause of the other, though + they are not necessarily of equal force at the same time,) we shall find + vice in its varieties, with art-failure,—and virtue in its + varieties, with art-success,—fall and rise together; the + peasant-girl's song at her spinning-wheel, the peasant laborer's "to the + oaks and rills,"—domestic music, feebly yet sensitively skilful,—music + for the multitude, of beneficent or of traitorous power,—dance-melodies, + pure and orderly, or foul and frantic,—march-music, blatant in mere + fever of animal pugnacity, or majestic with force of national duty and + memory,— song-music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, forgetful + even of the foolish words it effaces with foolish noise,—or + thoughtful, sacred, healthful, artful, forever sanctifying noble thought + with separately distinguished loveliness of belonging sound,—all + these families and graduations of good or evil, however mingled, follow, + in so far as they are good, one constant law of virtue (or + "life-strength," which is the literal meaning of the word, and its + intended one, in wise men's mouths), and in so far as they are evil, are + evil by outlawry and unvirtue, or death-weakness. Then, passing wholly + beyond the domain of death, we may still imagine the ascendant nobleness + of the art, through all the concordant life of incorrupt creatures, and a + continually deeper harmony of "puissant words and murmurs made to bless," + until we reach + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + "The undisturbed song of pure consent, + Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne." +</pre> + <p> + 142. And so far as the sister arts can be conceived to have place or + office, their virtues are subject to a law absolutely the same as that of + music, only extending its authority into more various conditions, owing to + the introduction of a distinctly representative and historical power, + which acts under logical as well as mathematical restrictions, and is + capable of endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, and defeat, as well as of + endlessly manifold victory. + </p> + <p> + 143. Next to Modesty, and her delight in measures, let us reflect a little + on the character of her adversary, the Goddess of Liberty, and her delight + in absence of measures, or in false ones. It is true that there are + liberties and liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow-swift, + with its spray leaping into the air like white troops of fawns, is free + enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless marsh —soaking + in slow shallowness, as it will, hither and thither, listless among the + poisonous reeds and unresisting slime—it is free also. We may choose + which liberty we like,—the restraint of voiceful rock, or the dumb + and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of that evil liberty which men are + now glorifying and proclaiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and + will presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with invitation to + them out of their courses,—and of its opposite continence, which is + the clasp and 'chrusee perone' of Aglaia's cestus, we must try to find out + something true. For no quality of Art has been more powerful in its + influence on public mind; none is more frequently the subject of popular + praise, or the end of vulgar effort, than what we call "Freedom." It is + necessary to determine the justice or injustice of this popular praise. + </p> + <p> + 144. I said, a little while ago, that the practical teaching of the + masters of Art was summed by the O of Giotto. "You may judge my masterhood + of craft," Giotto tells us, "by seeing that I can draw a circle + unerringly." And we may safely believe him, understanding him to mean + that, though more may be necessary to an artist than such a power, at + least this power is necessary. The qualities of hand and eye needful to do + this are the first conditions of artistic craft. + </p> + <p> + 145. Try to draw a circle yourself with the "free" hand, and with a single + line. You cannot do it if your hand trembles, nor if it is in the common + sense of the word "free." So far from being free, it must be as if it were + fastened to an inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must move, under this + necessary control, with perfect, untormented serenity of ease. + </p> + <p> + 146. That is the condition of all good work whatsoever. All freedom is + error. Every line you lay down is either right or wrong; it may be timidly + and awkwardly wrong, or fearlessly and impudently wrong. The aspect of the + impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and is what they + commonly call "free" execution; the timid, tottering, hesitating wrongness + is rarely so attractive; yet sometimes, if accompanied with good + qualities, and right aims in other directions, it becomes in a manner + charming, like the inarticulateness of a child; but, whatever the charm or + manner of the error, there is but one question ultimately to be asked + respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most + assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained, + and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as + decisive, and just as "free," as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a + critical incision. A great operator told me that his hand could check + itself within about the two-hundredth of an inch, in penetrating a + membrane; and this, of course, without the help of sight, by sensation + only. With help of sight, and in action on a substance which does not + quiver or yield, a fine artist's line is measurable in its proposed + direction to considerably less than the thousandth of an inch. + </p> + <p> + A wide freedom, truly! + </p> + <p> + 147. The conditions of popular art which most foster the common ideas + about freedom, are merely results of irregularly energetic effort by men + imperfectly educated; these conditions being variously mingled with cruder + mannerisms resulting from timidity, or actual imperfection of body. + Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so subtle as Southern; and + in very cold countries, artistic execution is palsied. The effort to break + through this timidity, or to refine the bluntness, may lead to a + licentious impetuosity, or an ostentatious minuteness. Every man's manner + has this kind of relation to some defect in his physical powers or modes + of thought; so that in the greatest work there is no manner visible. It is + at first uninteresting from its quietness; the majesty of restrained power + only dawns gradually upon us, as we walk towards its horizon. + </p> + <p> + There is, indeed, often great delightfulness in the innocent manners of + artists who have real power and honesty, and draw in this way or that, as + best they can, under such and such untoward circumstances of life. But the + greater part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of modern work is + the expression of an inner spirit of license in mind and heart, connected, + as I said, with the peculiar folly of this age, its hope of, and trust in, + "liberty," of which we must reason a little in more general terms. + </p> + <p> + 148. I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free + creature than in the common house-fly. Nor free only, but brave; and + irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any + philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not care + whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift + mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is + one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and + self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having been made for flies. + Strike at him with your hand, and to him, the mechanical fact and external + aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be if an acre of red clay, + ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, + hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crashing down with an + aim. That is the external aspect of it; the inner aspect, to his fly's + mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence—one of the + momentary conditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your + hand, and alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern + him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion + on all matters; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask + no advice of yours. He has no work to do—no tyrannical instinct to + obey. The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building; + the spider her cunning network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All + these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business. But your + fly, free in the air, free in the chamber—a black incarnation of + caprice, wandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his + will, with rich variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the + grocer's window to those of the butcher's back-yard, and from the galled + place on your cab-horse's back, to the brown spot in the road, from which, + as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry republican buzz—what + freedom is like his? + </p> + <p> + 149. For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is as sorrowful a + type as you will easily find. Mine certainly is. The day is lovely, but I + must write this, and cannot go out with him. He is chained in the yard + because I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like dogs + in gardens. He has no books,—nothing but his own weary thoughts for + company, and a group of those free flies, whom he snaps at, with sullen + ill success. Such dim hope as he may have that I may take him out with me, + will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed; or, worse, darkened at once + into a leaden despair by an authoritative "No"—too well understood. + His fidelity only seals his fate; if he would not watch for me, he would + be sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: but he watches, and + is wise, and faithful, and miserable; and his high animal intellect only + gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and + affection, which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, would we rather + be watch-dog or fly? + </p> + <p> + 150. Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is not how free we + are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small importance to any + of us whether we get liberty; but of the greatest that we deserve it. + Whether we can win it, fate must determine; but that we will be worthy of + it we may ourselves determine; and the sorrowfullest fate of all that we + can suffer is to have it without deserving it. + </p> + <p> + 151. I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on writing, as I + remember (I would that it were possible for a few consecutive instants to + forget) the infinite follies of modern thought in this matter, centred in + the notion that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is + likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable! unspeakable! unendurable to look + in the full face of, as the laugh of a cretin. You will send your child, + will you, into a room where the table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit—some + poisoned, some not?—you will say to him, "Choose freely, my little + child! It is so good for you to have freedom of choice; it forms your + character—your individuality! If you take the wrong cup or the wrong + berry, you will die before the day is over, but you will have acquired the + dignity of a Free child?" + </p> + <p> + 152. You think that puts the case too sharply? I tell you, lover of + liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it is similarly between + life and death. There is no act, nor option of act, possible, but the + wrong deed or option has poison in it which will stay in your veins + thereafter forever. Never more to all eternity can you be as you might + have been had you not done that—chosen that. You have "formed your + character," forsooth! No; if you have chosen ill, you have De-formed it, + and that for ever! In some choices it had been better for you that a + red-hot iron bar struck you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you had + so chosen. "You will know better next time!" No. Next time will never + come. Next time the choice will be in quite another aspect— between + quite different things,—you, weaker than you were by the evil into + which you have fallen; it, more doubtful than it was, by the increased + dimness of your sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong, nor + stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing right, whether + forced or not; the prime, the one need is to do that, under whatever + compulsion, until you can do it without compulsion. And then you are a + Man. + </p> + <p> + 153. "What!" a wayward youth might perhaps answer, incredulously, "no one + ever gets wiser by doing wrong? Shall I not know the world best by trying + the wrong of it, and repenting? Have I not, even as it is, learned much by + many of my errors?" Indeed, the effort by which partially you recovered + yourself was precious; that part of your thought by which you discerned + the error was precious. What wisdom and strength you kept, and rightly + used, are rewarded; and in the pain and the repentance, and in the + acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin, you have learned + something; how much less than you would have learned in right paths can + never be told, but that it is less is certain. Your liberty of choice has + simply destroyed for you so much life and strength never regainable. It is + true, you now know the habits of swine, and the taste of husks; do you + think your father could not have taught you to know better habits and + pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in his house; and that the knowledge + you have lost would not have been more, as well as sweeter, than that you + have gained? But "it so forms my individuality to be free!" Your + individuality was given you by God, and in your race, and if you have any + to speak of, you will want no liberty. You will want a den to work in, and + peace, and light—no more,—in absolute need; if more, in + anywise, it will still not be liberty, but direction, instruction, + reproof, and sympathy. But if you have no individuality, if there is no + true character nor true desire in you, then you will indeed want to be + free. You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a man; and, as a + man, think yourself as good as every other. You will choose freely to eat, + freely to drink, freely to stagger and fall, freely, at last, to curse + yourself and die. Death is the only real freedom possible to us; and that + is consummate freedom, permission for every particle in the rotting body + to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for itself. You call it + "corruption" in the flesh; but before it comes to that, all liberty is an + equal corruption in mind. You ask for freedom of thought; but if you have + not sufficient grounds for thought, you have no business to think; and if + you have sufficient grounds, you have no business to think wrong. Only one + thought is possible to you if you are wise—your liberty is + geometrically proportionate to your folly. + </p> + <p> + 154. "But all this glory and activity of our age; what are they owing to, + but to freedom of thought?" In a measure, they are owing—what good + is in them—to the discovery of many lies, and the escape from the + power of evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or cruel + masters. Brave men have dared to examine lies which had long been taught, + not because they were free-thinkers, but because they were such stern and + close thinkers that the lie could no longer escape them. Of course the + restriction of thought, or of its expression, by persecution, is merely a + form of violence, justifiable or not, as other violence is, according to + the character of the persons against whom it is exercised, and the divine + and eternal laws which it vindicates or violates. We must not burn a man + alive for saying that the Athanasian creed is ungrammatical, nor stop a + bishop's salary because we are getting the worst of an argument with him; + neither must we let drunken men howl in the public streets at night. There + is much that is true in the part of Mr. Mill's essay on Liberty which + treats of freedom of thought; some important truths are there beautifully + expressed, but many, quite vital, are omitted; and the balance, therefore, + is wrongly struck. The liberty of expression, with a great nation, would + become like that in a well-educated company, in which there is indeed + freedom of speech, but not of clamor; or like that in an orderly senate, + in which men who deserve to be heard, are heard in due time, and under + determined restrictions. The degree of liberty you can rightly grant to a + number of men is in the inverse ratio of their desire for it; and a + general hush, or call to order, would be often very desirable in this + England of ours. For the rest, of any good or evil extent, it is + impossible to say what measure is owing to restraint, and what to license + where the right is balanced between them. I was not a little provoked one + day, a summer or two since, in Scotland, because the Duke of Athol + hindered me from examining the gneiss and slate junctions in Glen Tilt, at + the hour convenient to me; but I saw them at last, and in quietness; and + to the very restriction that annoyed me, owed, probably, the fact of their + being in existence, instead of being blasted away by a mob-company; while + the "free" paths and inlets of Loch Katrine and the Lake of Geneva are + forever trampled down and destroyed, not by one duke, but by tens of + thousands of ignorant tyrants. + </p> + <p> + 155. So, a Dean and Chapter may, perhaps, unjustifiably charge me twopence + for seeing a cathedral; but your free mob pulls spire and all down about + my ears, and I can see it no more forever. And even if I cannot get up to + the granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes down from them pure to + the Garry; but in Beddington Park I am stopped by the newly-erected fence + of a building speculator; and the bright Wandel, divine of waters as + Castaly, is filled by the free public with old shoes, obscene crockery, + and ashes. + </p> + <p> + 156. In fine, the arguments for liberty may in general be summed in a few + very simple forms, as follows: + </p> + <p> + Misguiding is mischievous: therefore guiding is. + </p> + <p> + If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch: therefore, nobody + should lead anybody. + </p> + <p> + Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields; much more bears and + wolves. + </p> + <p> + If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in any direction he + pleases. + </p> + <p> + A fence across a road is inconvenient; much more one at the side of it. + </p> + <p> + Babes should not be swaddled with their hands bound down to their sides: + therefore they should be thrown out to roll in the kennels naked. + </p> + <p> + None of these arguments are good, and the practical issues of them are + worse. For there are certain eternal laws for human conduct which are + quite clearly discernible by human reason. So far as these are discovered + and obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority the obedience is procured, + there follow life and strength. So far as they are disobeyed, by whatever + good intention the disobedience is brought about, there follow ruin and + sorrow. And the first duty of every man in the world is to find his true + master, and, for his own good, submit to him; and to find his true + inferior, and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. The punishment is + sure, if we either refuse the reverence, or are too cowardly and indolent + to enforce the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or poisons its wise + men, and lets its fools rave and rot in the streets. A wise nation obeys + the one, restrains the other, and cherishes all. + </p> + <p> + 157. The best examples of the results of wise normal evidence in Art will + be found in whatever evidence remains respecting the lives of great + Italian painters, though, unhappily, in eras of progress, but just in + proportion to the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be + usually the scantiness of its history. The individualities and liberties + which are causes of destruction may be recorded; but the loyal conditions + of daily breath are never told. Because Leonardo made models of machines, + dug canals, built fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in + capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him;—but no + picture of importance on canvas, and only a few withered stains of one + upon a wall. But because his pupil, or reputed pupil, Luini, labored in + constant and successful simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him;—only + hundreds of noble works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of the + highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man who entirely united the + religious temper which was the spirit-life of art, with the physical power + which was its bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of Angelico to + the strength of Veronese: the two elements, poised in perfect balance, are + so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most of us lose the + sense of both. The artist does not see the strength, by reason of the + chastened spirit in which it is used: and the religious visionary does not + recognize the passion, by reason of the frank human truth with which it is + rendered. He is a man ten times greater than Leonardo;—a mighty + colorist, while Leonardo was only a fine draughtsman in black, staining + the chiaroscuro drawing, like a colored print: he perceived and rendered + the delicatest types of human beauty that have been painted since the days + of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved his finer instincts by caricature, + and remained to the end of his days the slave of an archaic smile: and he + is a designer as frank, instinctive, and exhaustless as Tintoret, while + Leonardo's design is only an agony of science, admired chiefly because it + is painful, and capable of analysis in its best accomplishment. Luini has + left nothing behind him that is not lovely; but of his life I believe + hardly anything is known beyond remnants of tradition which murmur about + Lugano and Saronno, and which remain ungleaned. This only is certain, that + he was born in the loveliest district of North Italy, where hills, and + streams, and air meet in softest harmonies. Child of the Alps, and of + their divinest lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty + religious creed, and a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical arts. + Whether lessoned by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disciplined in + the system of the Milanese school, he learns unerringly to draw, + unerringly and enduringly to paint. His tasks are set him without question + day by day, by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept + it without any harmful praise, or senseless blame. Place, scale, and + subject are determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as + he is required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints + what he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize + gloriously: every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he conceives is + beautiful and pure: his hand moves always in radiance of blessing; from + day to day his life enlarges in power and peace; it passes away + cloudlessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far against the night. + </p> + <p> + 158. Oppose to such a life as this that of a great painter amidst the + elements of modern English liberty. Take the life of Turner, in whom the + artistic energy and inherent love of beauty were at least as strong as in + Luini: but, amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of + London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into toleration of + evil, or even into delight in it. He gathers what he can of instruction by + questioning and prying among half-informed masters; spells out some + knowledge of classical fable; educates himself, by an admirable force, to + the production of wildly majestic or pathetically tender and pure + pictures, by which he cannot live. There is no one to judge them, or to + command him: only some of the English upper classes hire him to paint + their houses and parks, and destroy the drawings afterwards by the most + wanton neglect. Tired of laboring carefully, without either reward or + praise, he dashes out into various experimental and popular works—makes + himself the servant of the lower public, and is dragged hither and thither + at their will; while yet, helpless and guideless, he indulges his + idiosyncrasies till they change into insanities; the strength of his soul + increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its errors; all the purpose + of life degenerating into instinct; and the web of his work wrought, at + last, of beauties too subtle to be understood, his liberty, with vices too + singular to be forgiven—all useless, because magnificent + idiosyncrasy had become solitude, or contention, in the midst of a + reckless populace, instead of submitting itself in loyal harmony to the + Art-laws of an understanding nation. And the life passed away in darkness; + and its final work, in all the best beauty of it, has already perished, + only enough remaining to teach us what we have lost. + </p> + <p> + 159. These are the opposite effects of Law and of Liberty on men of the + highest powers. In the case of inferiors the contrast is still more fatal: + under strict law, they become the subordinate workers in great schools, + healthily aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudinous force of hand, + the mind of the leading masters: they are the nameless carvers of great + architecture—stainers of glass—hammerers of iron— + helpful scholars, whose work ranks round, if not with, their master's, and + never disgraces it. But the inferiors under a system of license for the + most part perish in miserable effort;* a few struggle into pernicious + eminence—harmful alike to themselves and to all who admire them; + many die of starvation; many insane, either in weakness of insolent + egotism, like Haydon, or in a conscientious agony of beautiful purpose and + warped power, like Blake. There is no probability of the persistence of a + licentious school in any good accidentally discovered by them; there is an + approximate certainty of their gathering, with acclaim, round any shadow + of evil, and following it to whatever quarter of destruction it may lead. + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> +* As I correct this sheet for press, my "Pall Mall Gazette" of last +Saturday, April 17, is lying on the table by me. I print a few lines out +of it: + + "AN ARTIST'S DEATH.—A sad story was told at an inquest held in St. +Pancras last night by Dr. Lankester on the body of . . ., aged +fifty-nine, a French artist who was found dead in his bed at his rooms in +. . . Street. M. . . ., also an artist, said he had known the deceased +for fifteen years. He once held a high position, and being anxious to +make a name in the world, he five years ago commenced a large picture, +which he hoped, when completed, to have in the gallery at Versailles; and +with that view he sent a photograph of it to the French Emperor. He also +had an idea of sending it to the English Royal Academy. He labored on +this picture, neglecting other work which would have paid him well, and +gradually sank lower and lower into poverty. His friends assisted him, +but being absorbed in his great work, he did not heed their advice, and +they left him. He was, however, assisted by the French Ambassador, and +last Saturday, he (the witness) saw deceased, who was much depressed in +spirits, as he expected the brokers to be put in possession for rent. He +said his troubles were so great that he feared his brain would give way. +The witness gave him a shilling for which he appeared very thankful. On +Monday the witness called upon him, but received no answer to his knock. +He went again on Tuesday, and entered the deceased's bedroom and found +him dead. Dr. George Ross said that when called into the deceased he had +been dead at least two days. The room was in a filthy, dirty condition, +and the picture referred to—certainly a very fine one—was in that room. +The post-mortem examination showed that the cause of death was fatty +degeneration of the heart, the latter probably having ceased its action +through the mental excitement of the deceased." +</pre> + <p> + 160. Thus far the notes of Freedom. Now, lastly, here is some talk which I + tried at the time to make intelligible; and with which I close this + volume, because it will serve sufficiently to express the practical + relation in which I think the art and imagination of the Greeks stand to + our own; and will show the reader that my view of that relation is + unchanged, from the first day on which I began to write, until now. + </p> + <h3> + *** + </h3> + <h3> + THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA. + </h3> + <p> + ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF THE ART SCHOOL OF SOUTH LAMBERT, MARCH 15, + 1869. + </p> + <p> + 161. Among the photographers of Greek coins which present so many + admirable subjects for your study, I must speak for the present of one + only: the Hercules of Camarina. You have, represented by a Greek workman, + in that coin, the face of a man and the skin of a lion's head. And the + man's face is like a man's face, but the lion's skin is not like a lion's + skin. + </p> + <p> + 162. Now there are some people who will tell you that Greek art is fine, + because it is true; and because it carves men's faces as like men's as it + can. + </p> + <p> + And there are other people who will tell you that Greek art is fine, + because it is not true; and carves a lion's skin so as to look not at all + like a lion's skin. + </p> + <p> + And you fancy that one or the other of these sets of people must be wrong, + and are perhaps much puzzled to find out which you should believe. + </p> + <p> + But neither of them are wrong, and you will have eventually to believe, or + rather to understand and know, in reconciliation, the truths taught by + each; but for the present, the teachers of the first group are those you + must follow. + </p> + <p> + It is they who tell you the deepest and usefullest truth, which involves + all others in time. Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a + man's face as like a man's face as it can. Hold to that. All kinds of + nonsense are talked to you, nowadays, ingeniously and irrelevantly about + art. Therefore, for the most part of the day, shut your ears, and keep + your eyes open: and understand primarily, what you may, I fancy, easily + understand, that the greatest masters of all greatest schools—Phidias, + Donatello, Titian, Velasquez, or Sir Joshua Reynolds—all tried to + make human creatures as like human creatures as they could; and that + anything less like humanity than their work, is not so good as theirs. + </p> + <p> + Get that well driven into your heads; and don't let it out again, at your + peril. + </p> + <p> + 163. Having got it well in, you may then further understand, safely, that + three is a great deal of secondary work in pots, and pans, and floors, and + carpets, and shawls, and architectural ornament, which ought essentially, + to be unlike reality, and to depend for its charm on quite other qualities + than imitative ones. But all such art is inferior and secondary—much + of it more or less instinctive and animal, and a civilized human creature + can only learn those principles rightly, by knowing those of great + civilized art first—which is always the representation, to the + utmost of its power, of whatever it has got to show—made to look as + like the thing as possible. Go into the National Gallery, and look at the + foot of Correggio's Venus there. Correggio made it as like a foot as he + could, and you won't easily find anything liker. Now, you will find on any + Greek vase something meant for a foot, or a hand, which is not at all like + one. The Greek vase is a good thing in its way, but Correggio's picture is + the best work. + </p> + <p> + 164. So, again, go into the Turner room of the National Gallery, and look + at Turner's drawing of "Ivy Bridge." You will find the water in it is like + real water, and the ducks in it are like real ducks. Then go into the + British Museum, and look for an Egyptian landscape, and you will find the + water in that constituted of blue zigzags, not at all like water; and + ducks in the middle of it made of blue lines, looking not in the least as + if they could stand stuffing with sage and onions. They are very good in + their way, but Turner's are better. + </p> + <p> + 165. I will not pause to fence my general principle against what you + perfectly well know of the due contradiction,—that a thing may be + painted very like, yet painted ill. Rest content with knowing that it must + be like, if it is painted well; and take this further general law: + Imitation is like charity. When it is done for love it is lovely; when it + is done for show, hateful. + </p> + <p> + 166. Well, then, this Greek coin is fine, first because the face is like a + face. Perhaps you think there is something particularly handsome in the + face, which you can't see in the photograph, or can't at present + appreciate. But there is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, quiet, + commonplace sort of face; and any average English gentleman's, of good + descent, would be far handsomer. + </p> + <p> + 167. Fix that in your heads also, therefore, that Greek faces are not + particularly beautiful. Of that much nonsense against which you are to + keep your ears shut, that which is talked to you of the Greek ideal of + beauty is the absolutest. There is not a single instance of a very + beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek art. On coins, there is + even no approximately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a virago; the + Athena of Athens grotesque, the Athena of Corinth is insipid; and of + Thurium, sensual. The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins + of Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without expression, and + chiefly set off by their well-curled hair. You might have expected + something subtle in Mercuries; but the Mercury of Ænus is a very + stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it. + The Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with his hair pomatum'd. The Jupiter of + Syracurse is, however, calm and refined; and the Apollo of Clazomenæ would + have been impressive, if he had not come down to us, much flattened by + friction. But on the whole, the merit of Greek coins does not primarily + depend on beauty of features, nor even, in the period of highest art, that + of the statues. You make take the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty + of the central Greek type. She has tranquil, regular, and lofty features; + but could not hold her own for a moment against the beauty of a simple + English girl, of pure race and kind heart. + </p> + <p> + 168. And the reason that Greek art, on the whole, bores you (and you know + it does), is that you are always forced to look in it for something that + is not there; but which may be seen every day, in real life, all round + you; and which you are naturally disposed to delight in, and ought to + delight in. For the Greek race was not at all one of exalted beauty, but + only of general and healthy completeness of form. They were only, and + could be only, beautiful in body to the degree that they were beautiful in + soul (for you will find, when you read deeply into the matter, that the + body is only the soul made visible). And the Greeks were indeed very good + people, much better people than most of us think, or than many of us are; + but there are better people alive now than the best of them, and lovelier + people to be seen now than the loveliest of them. + </p> + <p> + 169. Then what are the merits of this Greek art, which make it so + exemplary for you? Well, not that it is beautiful, but that it is Right.* + All that it desires to do, it does, and all that it does, does well. You + will find, as you advance in the knowledge of art, that its laws of + self-restraint are very marvelous; that its peace of heart, and + contentment in doing a simple thing, with only one or two qualities, + restrictedly desired, and sufficiently attained, are a most wholesome + element of education for you, as opposed to the wild writhing, and + wrestling, and longing for the moon, and tilting at windmills, and agony + of eyes, and torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's soul + into fiddle-strings, which constitute the ideal life of a modern artist. + </p> + <p> + * Compare above, §101. + </p> + <p> + Also observe, there is an entire masterhood of its business up to the + required point. A Greek does not reach after other people's strength, nor + outreach his own. He never tries to paint before he can draw; he never + tries to lay on flesh where there are no bones; and he never expects to + find the bones of anything in his inner consciousness. Those are his first + merits—sincere and innocent purpose, strong common-sense and + principle, and all the strength that follows on that strength. + </p> + <p> + 170. But, secondly, Greek art is always exemplary in disposition of + masses, which is a thing that in modern days students rarely look for, + artists not enough, and the public never. But, whatever else Greek work + may fail of, you may always be sure its masses are well placed, and their + placing has been the object of the most subtle care. Look, for instance, + at the inscription in front of this Hercules of the name of the town— + Camarina. You can't read it, even though you may know Greek, without some + pains; for the sculptor knew well enough that it mattered very little + whether you read it or not, for the Camarina Hercules could tell his own + story; but what did above all things matter was, that no K or A or M + should come in a wrong place with respect to the outline of the head, and + divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the whole + inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually diminishing size, + continuing from the lion's paws, round the neck, up to the forehead, and + answering a decorative purpose as completely as the curls of the mane + opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or displace one without + mischief; they are almost as even in reticulation as a piece of + basket-work; but each has a different form and a due relation to the rest, + and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will find that, + whatever time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite into their + places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury. If you want + to test your powers of accurate drawing, you may make that lion's mane + your pons asinorum, I have never yet met with a student who didn't make an + ass in a lion's skin of himself when he tried it. + </p> + <p> + 171. Granted, however, that these tresses may be finely placed, still they + are not like a lion's mane. So we come back to the question,—if the + face is to be like a man's face, why is not the lion's mane to be like a + lion's mane? Well, because it can't be like a lion's mane without too much + trouble,—and inconvenience after that, and poor success, after all. + Too much trouble, in cutting the die into fine fringes and jags; + inconvenience after that,—because, though you can easily stamp + cheeks and foreheads smooth at a blow, you can't stamp projecting tresses + fine at a blow, whatever pains you take with your die. + </p> + <p> + So your Greek uses his common sense, wastes no time, uses no skill, and + says to you, "Here is beautifully set tresses, which I have carefully + designed and easily stamped. Enjoy them, and if you cannot understand that + they mean lion's mane, heaven mend your wits." + </p> + <p> + 172. See, then, you have in this work well-founded knowledge, simple and + right aims, thorough mastery of handicraft, splendid invention in + arrangement, unerring common sense in treatment,—merits, these, I + think, exemplary enough to justify our tormenting you a little with Greek + art. But it has one merit more than these, the greatest of all. It always + means something worth saying. Not merely worth saying for that time only, + but for all time. What do you think this helmet of lion's hide is always + given to Hercules for? You can't suppose it means only that he once killed + a lion, and always carried its skin afterwards to show that he had, as + Indian sportsmen sent home stuffed rugs, with claws at the corners, and a + lump in the middle which one tumbles over every time one stirs the fire. + What was this Nemean Lion, whose spoils were evermore to cover Hercules + from the cold? Not merely a large specimen of Felis Leo, ranging the + fields of Nemea, be sure of that. This Nemean cub was one of a bad litter. + Born of Typhon and Echidna,—of the whirlwind and the snake,—Cerberus + his brother, the Hydra of Lerna his sister,—it must have been + difficult to get his hide off him. He had to be found in darkness, too, + and dealt upon without weapons, by grip at the throat— arrows and + club of no avail against him. What does all that mean? + </p> + <p> + 173. It means that the Nemean Lion is the first great adversary of life, + whatever that may be—to Hercules, or to any of us, then or now. The + first monster we have to strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the + dark, and with none to help us, only Athena standing by to encourage with + her smile. Every man's Nemean Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. The + slothful man says, There is a lion in the path. He says well. The quiet + unslothful man says the same, and knows it too. But they differ in their + further reading of the text. The slothful man says, I shall be slain, and + the unslothful, IT shall be. It is the first ugly and strong enemy that + rises against us, all future victory depending on victory over that. Kill + it; and through all the rest of your life, what was once dreadful is your + armor, and you are clothed with that conquest for every other, and helmed + with its crest of fortitude for evermore. + </p> + <p> + Alas, we have most of us to walk bare-headed; but that is the meaning of + the story of Nemea,—worth laying to heart and thinking of sometimes, + when you see a dish garnished with parsley, which was the crown at the + Nemean games. + </p> + <p> + 174. How far, then, have we got in our list of the merits of Greek art + now? + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + Sound knowledge. + Simple aims. + Mastered craft. + Vivid invention. + Strong common sense. + And eternally true and wise meaning. +</pre> + <p> + Are these not enough? Here is one more, then, which will find favor, I + should think, with the British Lion. Greek art is never frightened at + anything; it is always cool. + </p> + <p> + 175. It differs essentially from all other art, past or present, in this + incapability of being frightened. Half the power and imagination of every + other school depend on a certain feverish terror mingling with their sense + of beauty,—the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or a sick + person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly dreams. They + cannot draw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes they put themselves to + their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing,—the Medusa's head, for + instance,—but they can't do it, not they, because nothing frightens + them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the cheeks, and + set the eyes a goggling; and the thing is only ridiculous after all, not + the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts. Pensiveness; + amazement; often deepest grief and desolateness. All these; but terror + never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate; and joy such as they + could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but in beauty at perfect rest! + A kind of art this, surely, to be looked at, and thought upon sometimes + with profit, even in these latter days. + </p> + <p> + 176. To be looked at sometimes. Not continually, and never as a model for + imitation. For you are not Greeks; but, for better or worse, English + creatures; and cannot do, even if it were a thousand times better worth + doing, anything well, except what your English hearts shall prompt, and + your English skies teach you. For all good art is the natural utterance of + its own people in its own day. + </p> + <p> + But also, your own art is a better and brighter one than ever this Greek + art was. Many motives, powers, and insights have been added to those elder + ones. The very corruptions into which we have fallen are signs of a subtle + life, higher than theirs was, and therefore more fearful in its faults and + death. Christianity has neither superceded, nor, by itself, excelled + heathenism; but it has added its own good, won also by many a Nemean + contest in dark valleys, to all that was good and noble in heathenism; and + our present thoughts and work, when they are right, are nobler than the + heathen's. And we are not reverent enough to them, because we possess too + much of them. That sketch of four cherub heads from and English girl, by + Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, is an incomparably finer thing than + ever the Greeks did. Ineffably tender in the touch, yet Herculean in + power; innocent, yet exalted in feeling; pure in color as a pearl; + reserved and decisive in design, as this Lion crest, —if it alone + existed of such,—if it were a picture by Zeuxis, the only one left + in the world, and you build a shrine for it, and were allowed to see it + only seven days in a year, it alone would teach you all of art that you + ever needed to know. But you do not learn from this or any other such + work, because you have not reverence enough for them, and are trying to + learn from all at once, and from a hundred other masters besides. + </p> + <p> + 177. Here, then, is the practical advice which I would venture to deduce + from what I have tried to show you. Use Greek art as a first, not a final, + teacher. Learn to draw carefully from Greek work; above all, to place + forms correctly, and to use light and shade tenderly. Never allow + yourselves black shadows. It is easy to make things look round and + projecting; but the things to exercise yourselves in are the placing of + the masses, and the modelling of the lights. It is an admirable exercise + to take a pale wash of color for all the shadows, never reinforcing it + everywhere, but drawing the statue as if it were in far distance, making + all the darks one flat pale tint. Then model from those into the lights, + rounding as well as you can, on those subtle conditions. In your chalk + drawings, separate the lights from the darks at once all over; then + reinforce the darks slightly where absolutely necessary, and put your + whole strength on the lights and their limits. Then, when you have learned + to draw thoroughly, take one master for your painting, as you would have + done necessarily in old times by being put into his school (were I to + choose for you, it should be among six men only—Titian, Correggio, + Paul Veronese, Velasquez, Reynolds, or Holbein). If you are a landscapist, + Turner must be your only guide (for no other great landscape painter has + yet lived); and having chosen, do your best to understand your own chosen + master, and obey him, and no one else, till you have strength to deal with + the nature itself round you, and then, be your own master, and see with + your own eyes. If you have got masterhood or sight in you, that is the way + to make the most of them; and if you have neither, you will at least be + sound in your work, prevented from immodest and useless effort, and + protected from vulgar and fantastic error. + </p> + <p> + And so I wish you all, good speed, and the favor of Hercules and of the + Muses; and to those who shall best deserve them, the crown of Parsley + first and then of the Laurel. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12641 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |