Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work — John Shaqi
Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of WorkRuskin, John
Philosophy
Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work
Ruskin, John
Social sciences; Working class -- Great Britain
20. Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad
siding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again,
and slips aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen
inches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his changeless duty all day
long, content, for eternal reward, with his night's rest, and his
champed mouthful of hay;--anything more earnestly moral and beautiful
one cannot image--I never see the creature without a kind of worship.
And yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he
knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this
world;--who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the
words of the 'Zauberfloete' and of 'Don Giovanni'--foolishest and most
monstrous of conceivable human words and subjects of thought--for the
future "amusement" of his race!--No such spectacle of unconscious (and
in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the
highest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history. But
Mozart is nevertheless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding;
nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker that he, and
all his frivolous audiences, should evade the degradation of the
profitless piping, only by living, like horses, in daily physical
labor for daily bread.
21. There are three things to which man is born[A]--labor, and sorrow,
and joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its
nobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There is base sorrow,
and noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the
things themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three.
Labor without joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow
without labor is base. Joy without labor is base.
[A] I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this
paragraph, on which much of what else I have to say depends.
22. I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to the pantomime;
I am not ready to come to it yet in due course, for we ought to go and
see the Japanese jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to
you what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day; so I shall merely
tell you what part of the play set me thinking of all this, and leave
you to consider of it yourself, till I can send you another letter.
The pantomime was, as I said, 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' The
forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions, who
were girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some
way mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were
girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the
Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene,
with a forest, in which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in
which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow which was all of
girls.
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