Fors Clavigera (Volume 2 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great BritainRuskin, John
General
Fors Clavigera (Volume 2 of 8): Letters to the workmen and labourers of Great Britain
Ruskin, John
Aesthetics; Conduct of life; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Social problems; Working class -- Great Britain
Unfortunately, till those means can be obtained, (may it be soon),
it remains unriddled to us on what principles of "international
leverage" the love and beauty are to be provided. But the point I
wish you mainly to notice is, that for this general emancipation,
and elbow-room for men and steam, you are still required to find
"immense plains of wheat abroad." Is it not probable that these
immense plains may belong to somebody "abroad" already? And if not,
instead of bringing home their produce in flat-bottomed ships, why
not establish, on the plains themselves, your own flat-bottomed--I
beg pardon,--flat-bellied, persons, instead of living here in glass
cases, which surely, even at the British Museum, cannot be associated
in your minds with the perfect manifestation of love and beauty? It
is true that love is to be measured, in your perfected political
economy, by rectangular area, as you will find on reference to the
ingenious treatise of Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., Professor of Logic
and Political Economy in Owens College, Manchester, who informs you,
among other interesting facts, that pleasure and pain "are the ultimate
objects of the calculus of economy," and that a feeling, whether of
pleasure or pain, may be regarded as having two dimensions--namely,
in duration and intensity, so that the feeling, say of a minute, "may
be represented by a rectangle whose base corresponds to the duration of
a minute, and whose height is proportioned to the intensity." [5] The
collective area of the series of rectangles will mark the "aggregate
of feeling generated."
But the Professor appears unconscious that there is a third dimension
of pleasure and pain to be considered, besides their duration and
intensity; and that this third dimension is to some persons, the most
important of all--namely, their quality. It is possible to die of a
rose in aromatic pain; and, on the contrary, for flies and rats, even
pleasure may be the reverse of aromatic. There is swine's pleasure,
and dove's; villain's pleasure, and gentleman's, to be arranged,
the Professor will find, by higher analysis, in eternally dissimilar
rectangles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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