I am far from claiming infallibility for Ruskin. Infallibility is an out-of-date conception altogether. There is no such thing on earth. To be infallible you must know everything; you must be infinite. The infallibility of a finite creature is an inhuman, even an inorganic conception. Organic life means growth, and growth means imperfection; but growth is Nature’s way of making things. Infallibility is a tyrant born of ecclesiasticism, and bred on human laziness and fear. It has become the attribute of the quack pill, and there let it abide. But, beyond this safe generality, Ruskin had human weaknesses of an obvious kind. He loved paradox; he played with his thunderbolts a little, and rather liked to shock people. He was a humorist as well as a divine. It is difficult to put down some of his derivations to anything but sheer fooling; a man who will put the English _Force_ and Latin _Fors_ down to the same root, will do anything in that line. Again, when he was in thunderous action he allowed volcanoes of vituperation to erupt, which one would have wished otherwise. He sadly lacked restraint, but, like the strong language of the old Prophets, his had its root in love of man. We know more of his intimacies and his foibles, which he loves humorously to exaggerate, than are generally given to the public. He has taken means to prevent any artificial pedestal, in idealized aloofness, ever being raised to him. His utter frankness led him to give the public his private accounts, which people generally keep to themselves; and such correspondence as that painful one with Octavia Hill.[2] But when the faults of others were in question he was silent as the grave, to his own hurt. He was “kind even to the unthankful and the evil.” As for many of us, how much more vulgar and base would the world have been without that noble and lovely soul. Many are those who owe him an irredeemable debt. His life was not, as he sadly thought, the story of baffled strife. Of him, as of Dr. Arnold, it could be said that not alone was he saved.[3] _CHAPTER II_ _THE PILGRIM’S WAY_ Having now stated our conviction that Ruskin was always essentially religious, we will trace the history of his beliefs. He began life in 1819, under the strong influence of his mother, as a Calvinistic Protestant, of the narrow type then current. The Ruskins were properly Scottish Presbyterians, living in London. A Low Church or Spurgeon’s Tabernacle was equally acceptable. His mother made him read with her daily portions of the Bible, two or three chapters, undiluted and unselected. They accomplished the journey from Genesis to Revelation in about a year, and then began at Genesis again next day, “hard names, numbers, Levitical Law and all.” They went through it at least six times together. She also taught him, “complete and sure,” twenty-six chapters of the Bible, including the 119th Psalm, and all the Scottish Paraphrases of the Psalms.[4]