The Eagle's Nest: Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given Before the University of Oxford, in Lent Term, 1872Ruskin, John
Philosophy
The Eagle's Nest: Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art, Given Before the University of Oxford, in Lent Term, 1872
Ruskin, John
Art and science
27. Let us make a farther supposition. Returning to our first condition,
that both the girls desire equally to look at the stars; let us put it
now that both have equal self-command, and would therefore, supposing no
other motives were in their minds, together go on star-gazing, or
together stop star-gazing; but that one of them has greater
consideration for her friends than the other, and though she would not
mind catching cold for her own part, would mind it much for fear of
giving her mother trouble. She will leave the stars first, therefore;
but should we be right now in saying that she was only more sensible
than her companion, and not more wise? This respect for the feelings of
others, this understanding of her duty towards others, is a much higher
thing than the love of stars. It is an imaginative knowledge, not of
balls of fire or differences of space, but of the feelings of living
creatures, and of the forces of duty by which they justly move. This is
a knowledge, or perception, therefore, of a thing more surpassing and
marvellous than the stars themselves, and the grasp of it is reached by
a higher sophia.
28. Will you have patience with me for one supposition more? We may
assume the attraction of the spectacle of the heavens to be equal in
degree, and yet, in the minds of the two girls, it may be entirely
different in kind. Supposing the one versed somewhat in abstract
Science, and more or less acquainted with the laws by which what she now
sees may be explained; she will probably take interest chiefly in
questions of distance and magnitude, in varieties of orbit, and
proportions of light. Supposing the other not versed in any science of
this kind, but acquainted with the traditions attached by the religion
of dead nations to the figures they discerned in the sky: she will care
little for arithmetical or geometrical matters, but will probably
receive a much deeper emotion, from witnessing in clearness what has
been the amazement of so many eyes long closed; and recognizing the same
lights, through the same darkness, with innocent shepherds and
husbandmen, who knew only the risings and settings of the immeasurable
vault, as its lights shone on their own fields or mountains; yet saw
true miracle in them, thankful that none but the Supreme Ruler could
bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion. I
need not surely tell you, that in this exertion of the intellect and the
heart, there would be a far nobler sophia than any concerned with the
analysis of matter, or the measurement of space.
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