A Joy For Ever

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"A JOY FOR EVER";
(AND ITS PRICE IN THE MARKET):
BEING
THE SUBSTANCE (WITH ADDITIONS)
OF
TWO LECTURES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART,
_Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857._

BY

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D.,

HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW
OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."--KEATS.

SIXTEENTH THOUSAND.
LONDON:
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD.
1904.
[_All rights reserved_]
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

TO THE RE-ISSUE OF 1880.

The title of this book,--or, more accurately, of its subject;--for no
author was ever less likely than I have lately become, to hope for
perennial pleasure to his readers from what has cost himself the most
pains,--will be, perhaps, recognised by some as the last clause of the
line chosen from Keats by the good folks of Manchester, to be written in
letters of gold on the cornice, or Holy rood, of the great Exhibition
which inaugurated the career of so many,--since organized, by both
foreign governments and our own, to encourage the production of works of
art, which the producing nations, so far from intending to be their "joy
for ever," only hope to sell as soon as possible. Yet the motto was
chosen with uncomprehended felicity: for there never was, nor can be,
any essential beauty possessed by a work of art, which is not based on
the conception of its honoured permanence, and local influence, as a
part of appointed and precious furniture, either in the cathedral, the
house, or the joyful thoroughfare, of nations which enter their gates
with thanksgiving, and their courts with praise.

"Their" courts--or "His" courts;--in the mind of such races, the
expressions are synonymous: and the habits of life which recognise the
delightfulness, confess also the sacredness, of homes nested round the
seat of a worship unshaken by insolent theory: themselves founded on an
abiding affection for the past, and care for the future; and approached
by paths open only to the activities of honesty, and traversed only by
the footsteps of peace.

The exposition of these truths, to which I have given the chief energy
of my life, will be found in the following pages first undertaken
systematically and in logical sequence; and what I have since written on
the political influence of the Arts has been little more than the
expansion of these first lectures, in the reprint of which not a
sentence is omitted or changed.

The supplementary papers added contain, in briefest form, the aphorisms
respecting principles of art-teaching of which the attention I gave to
this subject during the continuance of my Professorship at Oxford
confirms me in the earnest and contented re-assertion.

JOHN RUSKIN,

BRANTWOOD,

_April 29th, 1880._

PREFACE

TO THE 1857 EDITION.

The greater part of the following treatise remains in the exact form in
which it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar passages of it,
which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been written with greater
explicitness and fulness than I could give them in speaking; and a
considerable number of notes are added, to explain the points which
could not be sufficiently considered in the time I had at my disposal in
the lecture room.

Some apology may be thought due to the reader, for an endeavour to
engage his attention on a subject of which no profound study seems
compatible with the work in which I am usually employed. But profound
study is not, in this case, necessary either to writer or readers,
while accurate study, up to a certain point, is necessary for us all.
Political economy means, in plain English, nothing more than "citizen's
economy"; and its first principles ought, therefore, to be understood by
all who mean to take the responsibility of citizens, as those of
household economy by all who take the responsibility of householders.
Nor are its first principles in the least obscure: they are, many of
them, disagreeable in their practical requirements, and people in
general pretend that they cannot understand, because they are unwilling
to obey them: or rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy their
capacity of understanding them. But there is not one of the really great
principles of the science which is either obscure or disputable,--which
might not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with an
annual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to be
taken into counsel by the housekeeper.

I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for thinking it
necessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know. But this fault
will hardly be found with me, while the commercial events recorded daily
in our journals, and still more the explanations attempted to be given
of them, show that a large number of our so-called merchants are as
ignorant of the nature of money as they are reckless, unjust, and
unfortunate in its employment.

The statements of economical principles given in the text, though I know
that most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing authorities on
the science, are not supported by references, because I have never read
any author on political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty years ago.
Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this subject, I have
usually found it encumbered with inquiries into accidental or minor
commercial results, for the pursuit of which an ordinary reader could
have no leisure, and by the complication of which, it seemed to me, the
authors themselves had been not unfrequently prevented from seeing to
the root of the business.

Finally, if the reader should feel induced to blame me for too sanguine
a statement of future possibilities in political practice, let him
consider how absurd it would have appeared in the days of Edward I. if
the present state of social economy had been then predicted as
necessary, or even described as possible. And I believe the advance from
the days of Edward I. to our own, great as it is confessedly, consists,
not so much in what we have actually accomplished, as in what we are now
enabled to conceive.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
PAGE
THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART 1

_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10th, 1857._

LECTURE II.

THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART 70

_Continuation of the previous Lecture; delivered
July 13th, 1857._

ADDENDA.

NOTE 1.--"FATHERLY AUTHORITY" 151
" 2.--"RIGHT TO PUBLIC SUPPORT" 159
" 3.--"TRIAL SCHOOLS" 169
" 4.--"PUBLIC FAVOUR" 180
" 5.--"INVENTION OF NEW WANTS" 183
" 6.--"ECONOMY OF LITERATURE" 187
" 7.--"PILOTS OF THE STATE" 189
" 8.--"SILK AND PURPLE" 193

SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONAL PAPERS.

EDUCATION IN ART 213

ART SCHOOL NOTES 229

SOCIAL POLICY 240

"A JOY FOR EVER."

LECTURE I.

THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART.

_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857._

1. Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, as
compared with other ages of this not yet _very_ experienced world, one
of the most notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome contempt
in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the _just_ and _wholesome_ contempt;
though I see that some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. I
assure them, I use it in sincerity; and I should not have ventured to
ask you to listen to me this evening, unless I had entertained a
profound respect for wealth--true wealth, that is to say; for, of
course, we ought to respect neither wealth nor anything else that is
false of its kind: and the distinction between real and false wealth is
one of the points on which I shall have a few words presently to say to
you. But true wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour; and sympathize,
for the most part, with that extraordinary feeling of the present age
which publicly pays this honour to riches.

2. I cannot, however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and how
this epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having no
philosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship of
poverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people who
voluntarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to maintain the
superiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks and Latins seem to
have looked on these eccentric, and I do not scruple to say, absurd
people, with as much respect as we do upon large capitalists and landed
proprietors; so that really, in those days, no one could be described as
purse proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct than
the honour which those curious Greek people pay to their conceited poor,
is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so that
one cannot listen long either to them, or to the Roman writers who
imitated them, without finding oneself entangled in all sorts of
plausible absurdities; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness of
collecting that heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and led
generally to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy.

3. Nor are matters much better in the Middle Ages. For the Greeks and
Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and
constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or Menippus, in
which the ferryman and the cynic rejoiced together as they saw kings and
rich men coming down to the shore of Acheron, in lamenting and
lamentable crowds, casting their crowns into the dark waters, and
searching, sometimes in vain, for the last coin out of all their
treasures that could ever be of use to them.

4. But these Pagan views of the matter were indulgent, compared with
those which were held in the Middle Ages, when wealth seems to have been
looked upon by the best men not only as contemptible, but as criminal.
The purse round the neck is, then, one of the principal signs of
condemnation in the pictured Inferno; and the Spirit of Poverty is
reverenced with subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, like
that of a loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen.
And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of these
feelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which,
nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is simply one of
the greatest powers which can be entrusted to human hands: a power, not
indeed to be envied, because it seldom makes us happy; but still less to
be abdicated or despised; while, in these days, and in this country, it
has become a power all the more notable, in that the possessions of a
rich man are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or
coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over whose
bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, exercises
harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alternative, Mammon
either of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness.

5. Now, it seemed to me that since, in the name you have given to this
great gathering of British pictures, you recognize them as
Treasures--that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of the real wealth of
the country--you might not be uninterested in tracing certain commercial
questions connected with this particular form of wealth. Most persons
express themselves as surprised at its quantity; not having known before
to what an extent good art had been accumulated in England: and it will,
therefore, I should think, be held a worthy subject of consideration,
what are the political interests involved in such accumulations, what
kind of labour they represent, and how this labour may in general be
applied and economized, so as to produce the richest results.

6. Now, you must have patience with me, if in approaching the specialty
of this subject, I dwell a little on certain points of general political
science already known or established: for though thus, as I believe,
established, some which I shall have occasion to rest arguments on are
not yet by any means universally accepted; and therefore, though I will
not lose time in any detailed defence of them, it is necessary that I
should distinctly tell you in what form I receive, and wish to argue
from them; and this the more, because there may perhaps be a part of my
audience who have not interested themselves in political economy, as it
bears on ordinary fields of labour, but may yet wish to hear in what way
its principles can be applied to Art. I shall, therefore, take leave to
trespass on your patience with a few elementary statements in the
outset, and with the expression of some general principles, here and
there, in the course of our particular inquiry.

7. To begin, then, with one of these necessary truisms: all economy,
whether of states, households, or individuals, may be defined to be the
art of managing labour. The world is so regulated by the laws of
Providence, that a man's labour, well applied, is always amply
sufficient to provide him during his life with all things needful to
him, and not only with those, but with many pleasant objects of luxury;
and yet farther, to procure him large intervals of healthful rest and
serviceable leisure. And a nation's labour, well applied, is, in like
manner, amply sufficient to provide its whole population with good food
and comfortable habitation; and not with those only, but with good
education besides, and objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these
you have around you now. But by those same laws of Nature and
Providence, if the labour of the nation or of the individual be
misapplied, and much more if it be insufficient,--if the nation or man
be indolent and unwise,--suffering and want result, exactly in
proportion to the indolence and improvidence--to the refusal of labour,
or to the misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or
degradation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industry
has been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, it
is not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the original and inevitable
evil of man's nature, which fill your streets with lamentation, and your
graves with prey. It is only that, when there should have been
providence, there has been waste; when there should have been labour,
there has been lasciviousness; and wilfulness, when there should have
been subordination.[1]

[Note 1: Proverbs xiii. 23: "Much food is in the tillage of the
poor, but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment."]

8. Now, we have warped the word "economy" in our English language into a
meaning which it has no business whatever to bear. In our use of it, it
constantly signifies merely sparing or saving; economy of money means
saving money--economy of time, sparing time, and so on. But that is a
wholly barbarous use of the word--barbarous in a double sense, for it is
not English, and it is bad Greek; barbarous in a treble sense, for it is
not English, it is bad Greek, and it is worse sense. Economy no more
means saving money than it means spending money. It means, the
administration of a house; its stewardship; spending or saving, that is,
whether money or time, or anything else, to the best possible advantage.
In the simplest and clearest definition of it, economy, whether public
or private, means the wise management of labour; and it means this
mainly in three senses: namely, first, _applying_ your labour
rationally; secondly, _preserving_ its produce carefully; lastly,
_distributing_ its produce seasonably.

9. I say first, applying your labour rationally; that is, so as to
obtain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting things, by
it: not growing oats in land where you can grow wheat, nor putting fine
embroidery on a stuff that will not wear. Secondly, preserving its
produce carefully; that is to say, laying up your wheat wisely in
storehouses for the time of famine, and keeping your embroidery
watchfully from the moth: and lastly, distributing its produce
seasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to the
place where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to the places
where they are gay; so fulfilling in all ways the Wise Man's
description, whether of the queenly housewife or queenly nation: "She
riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a
portion to her maidens. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her
clothing is silk and purple. Strength and honour are in her clothing,
and she shall rejoice in time to come."

10. Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfect
economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expression of
the balanced division of her care between the two great objects of
utility and splendour: in her right hand, food and flax, for life and
clothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honour
and for beauty. All perfect housewifery or national economy is known by
these two divisions; wherever either is wanting, the economy is
imperfect. If the motive of pomp prevails, and the care of the national
economist is directed only to the accumulation of gold, and of pictures,
and of silk and marble, you know at once that the time must soon come
when all these treasures shall be scattered and blasted in national
ruin. If, on the contrary, the element of utility prevails, and the
nation disdains to occupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty or
delight, not only a certain quantity of its energy calculated for
exercise in those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is bad
economy, but also the passions connected with the utilities of property
become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation merely for the
sake of accumulation, or even of labour merely for the sake of labour,
will banish at last the serenity and the morality of life, as
completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride,
and the likeness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, in
private and household economy, you may judge always of its perfectness
by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions.
You will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between its
well-set vegetables, and its fragrant flowers; you will see the good
housewife taking pride in her pretty table-cloth, and her glittering
shelves, no less than in her well-dressed dish, and her full storeroom;
the care in her countenance will alternate with gaiety, and though you
will reverence her in her seriousness, you will know her best by her
smile.

11. Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address you, on
this and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the subject of that economy
which relates rather to the garden than the farm-yard. I shall ask you
to consider with me the kind of laws by which we shall best distribute
the beds of our national garden, and raise in it the sweetest succession
of trees pleasant to the sight, and (in no forbidden sense) to be
desired to make us wise. But, before proceeding to open this specialty
of our subject, let me pause for a few moments to plead with you for the
acceptance of that principle of government or authority which must be at
the root of all economy, whether for use or for pleasure. I said, a few
minutes ago, that a nation's labour, well applied, was amply sufficient
to provide its whole population with good food, comfortable clothing,
and pleasant luxury. But the good, instant, and constant application is
everything. We must not, when our strong hands are thrown out of work,
look wildly about for want of something to do with them. If ever we feel
that want, it is a sign that all our household is out of order. Fancy a
farmer's wife, to whom one or two of her servants should come at twelve
o'clock at noon, crying that they had got nothing to do; that they did
not know what to do next: and fancy still farther, the said farmer's
wife looking hopelessly about her rooms and yard, they being all the
while considerably in disorder, not knowing where to set the spare
handmaidens to work, and at last complaining bitterly that she had been
obliged to give them their dinner for nothing. That's the type of the
kind of political economy we practise too often in England. Would you
not at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing of her
duties? and would you not be certain, if the household were rightly
managed, the mistress would be only too glad at any moment to have the
help of any number of spare hands; that she would know in an instant
what to set them to;--in an instant what part of to-morrow's work might
be most serviceably forwarded, what part of next month's work most
wisely provided for, or what new task of some profitable kind
undertaken; and when the evening came, and she dismissed her servants to
their recreation or their rest, or gathered them to the reading round
the work-table, under the eaves in the sunset, would you not be sure to
find that none of them had been overtasked by her, just because none had
been left idle; that everything had been accomplished because all had
been employed; that the kindness of the mistress had aided her presence
of mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to the weak, and the
formidable to the strong; and that as none had been dishonoured by
inactivity, so none had been broken by toil?

12. Now, the precise counterpart of such a household would be seen in a
nation in which political economy was rightly understood. You complain
of the difficulty of finding work for your men. Depend upon it, the real
difficulty rather is to find men for your work. The serious question for
you is not how many you have to feed, but how much you have to do; it
is our inactivity, not our hunger, that ruins us: let us never fear that
our servants should have a good appetite--our wealth is in their
strength, not in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, and
see what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbourless
cliffs--you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of refuge;
the unclean pestilence ravins in your streets--you have to bring the
full stream from the hills, and to send the free winds through the
thoroughfare; the famine blanches your lips and eats away your
flesh--you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to bid the morass
give forth instead of engulfing, and to wring the honey and oil out of
the rock. These things, and thousands such, we have to do, and shall
have to do constantly, on this great farm of ours; for do not suppose
that it is anything else than that. Precisely the same laws of economy
which apply to the cultivation of a farm or an estate, apply to the
cultivation of a province or of an island. Whatever rebuke you would
address to the improvident master of an ill-managed patrimony,
precisely that rebuke we should address to ourselves, so far as we
leave our population in idleness and our country in disorder. What would
you say to the lord of an estate who complained to you of his poverty
and disabilities, and when you pointed out to him that his land was half
of it overrun with weeds, and that his fences were all in ruin, and that
his cattle-sheds were roofless, and his labourers lying under the hedges
faint for want of food, he answered to you that it would ruin him to
weed his land or to roof his sheds--that those were too costly
operations for him to undertake, and that he knew not how to feed his
labourers nor pay them? Would you not instantly answer, that instead of
ruining him to weed his fields, it would save him; that his inactivity
was his destruction, and that to set his labourers to work was to feed
them? Now, you may add acre to acre, and estate to estate, as far as you
like, but you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escape
from the authority of these simple laws. The principles which are right
in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the
administration of a great country from horizon to horizon: idleness
does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour to be
productive because it is universal.

13. Nay, but you reply, there is one vast difference between the
nation's economy and the private man's: the farmer has full authority
over his labourers; he can direct them to do what is needed to be done,
whether they like it or not; and he can turn them away if they refuse to
work, or impede others in their working, or are disobedient, or
quarrelsome. There _is_ this great difference; it is precisely this
difference on which I wish to fix your attention, for it is precisely
this difference which you have to do away with. We know the necessity of
authority in farm, or in fleet, or in army; but we commonly refuse to
admit it in the body of the nation. Let us consider this point a little.

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