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
Yet it can scarcely be necessary for me to point out to you, in so many
terms, that what we call theology, if true, is a science; and if false,
is not theology; or that the distinction even between natural science
and theology is illogical: for you might distinguish indeed between
natural and unnatural science, but not between natural and spiritual,
unless you had determined first that a spirit had no nature. You will
find the facts to be, that entirely true knowledge is both possible and
necessary--first of facts relating to matter, and then of the forces and
passions that act on or in matter;--that, of all these forces, the
noblest we can know is the energy which either imagines, or perceives,
the existence of a living power greater than its own; and that the study
of the relations which exist between this energy, and the resultant
action of men, are as much subjects of pure science as the curve of a
projectile. The effect, for instance, upon your temper, intellect, and
conduct during the day, of your going to chapel with or without belief
in the efficacy of prayer, is just as much a subject of definite
science, as the effect of your breakfast on the coats of your stomach.
Which is the higher knowledge, I have, with confidence, told you; and am
not afraid of any test to which you may submit my assertion.
68. Assuming such limitation, then, and such rank, for our knowledge;
assuming, also, what I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you,
that graphic art is the shadow, or image, of knowledge,--I wish to point
out to you to-day the function, with respect to both, of the virtue
called by the Greeks 'σωφροσύνη' 'safeness of mind,' corresponding to
the 'salus' or 'sanitas' mentis, of the Latins; 'health of heart' is,
perhaps, the best English; if we receive the words 'mens,' 'μῆνις,' or
'φρήν,' as expressing the passionate soul of the human being,
distinguished from the intellectual; the 'mens sana' being possible to
all of us, though the contemplative range of height her wisdom may be
above our capacities; so that to each of us Heaven only permits the
ambition of being σοφός, but commands the resolution to be σώφρων.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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