A Joy For Ever (and Its Price in the Market)Ruskin, John
Philosophy
A Joy For Ever (and Its Price in the Market)
Ruskin, John
Art
30. There are many other points of nearly as much importance as these,
to be explained with reference to the development of genius; but I
should have to ask you to come and hear six lectures instead of two if I
were to go into their detail. For instance, I have not spoken of the way
in which you ought to look for those artificers in various manual
trades, who, without possessing the order of genius which you would
desire to devote to higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and
sense of colour, and fancy for form--all commercially valuable as
quantities of intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lower
arts of iron-work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. But
these details, interesting as they are, I must commend to your own
consideration, or leave for some future inquiry. I want just now only to
set the bearings of the entire subject broadly before you, with enough
of detailed illustration to make it intelligible; and therefore I must
quit the first head of it here, and pass to the second--namely, how best
to employ the genius we discover. A certain quantity of able hands and
heads being placed at our disposal, what shall we most advisably set
them upon?
31. II. APPLICATION.--There are three main points the economist has to
attend to in this.
First, To set his men to various work.
Secondly, To easy work.
Thirdly, To lasting work.
I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest your
attention on the last.
32. I say first to various work. Supposing you have two men of equal
power as landscape painters--and both of them have an hour at your
disposal. You would not set them both to paint the same piece of
landscape. You would, of course, rather have two subjects than a
repetition of one.
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