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
32. Now, just imagine what this inherently selfish
passion--unconquerable as you will find it by the most deliberate and
maintained efforts--fancy what it becomes, when instead of striving to
subdue, we take every means in our power to increase and encourage it;
and when all the circumstances around us concur in the deadly
cultivation. In all base schools of Art, the craftsman is dependent for
his bread on originality; that is to say, on finding in himself some
fragment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be recognized as
distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to take delight in
our little doings, without any such stimulus;--what must be the effect
of the popular applause which continually suggests that the little thing
we can separately do is as excellent as it is singular! and what the
effect of the bribe, held out to us through the whole of life, to
produce--it being also at our peril _not_ to produce--something
different from the work of our neighbours? In all great schools of art
these conditions are exactly reversed. An artist is praised in these,
not for what is different in him from others, nor for solitary
performance of singular work; but only for doing most strongly what all
are endeavouring; and for contributing, in the measure of his strength,
to some great achievement, to be completed by the unity of multitudes,
and the sequence of ages.
33. And now, passing from art to science, the unselfishness of sophia is
shown by the value it therein attaches to every part of knowledge, new
or old, in proportion to its real utility to mankind, or largeness of
range in creation. The selfishness which renders sophia impossible, and
enlarges the elastic and vaporous kingdom of folly, is shown by our
caring for knowledge only so far as we have been concerned in its
discovery, or are ourselves skilled and admired in its communication. If
there is an art which "puffeth up," even when we are surrounded by
magnificence of achievement of past ages, confessedly not by us to be
rivalled, how much more must there be a science which puffeth up, when,
by the very condition of science, it must be an advance on the
attainments of former time, and however slight, or however slow, is
still always as the leaf of a pleasant spring compared to the dried
branches of years gone by? And, for the double calamity of the age in
which we live, it has chanced that the demand of the vulgar and the dull
for originality in Art, is associated with the demand of a sensual
economy for originality in science; and the praise which is too readily
given always to discoveries that are new, is enhanced by the reward
which rapidity of communication now ensures to discoveries that are
profitable. What marvel if future time shall reproach us with having
destroyed the labours, and betrayed the knowledge of the greatest
nations and the wisest men, while we amused ourselves with fantasy in
art, and with theory in science: happy, if the one was idle without
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