Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
Ruskin, John
Sculpture
[12] There is a primary and vulgar sense of 'exhibited' in Lucian's
mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it.
[13] In the Greek, 'ambrosial.' Recollect always that ambrosia, as food
of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is
ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called 'ambrosial'
because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the
23d Psalm, the stillness of waters.
[14] I have italicized this final promise of blessedness, given by the
noble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's fifth Latter-day
Pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition.
[15] "Falsely represented," would be the better expression. In the cast
of the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage,
of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is
represented by a repetition of casts from one mold, of which the design
itself is entirely conjectural.
LECTURE III.
IMAGINATION.
_November, 1870._
66. The principal object of the preceding Lecture, (and I choose rather
to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in
defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and
false phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a
spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking
phase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] give the general
term of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols
which may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods,
spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying
the actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession,
in reality, of the forms we attribute to them.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
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