Nash, J. V.

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THE UTOPIA OF JOHN RUSKINBY J. V. NASHIX order to understand John Ruskin's ideas as an economist andsociologist, it is necessary to relate them first, to his religiousinheritance, and secondly, to his aesthetic principles. For Ruskinwas first of all a deeply religious man ; and, closely allied to thisaspect of his nature, there was in him a profound belief in thevalue of art in all its forms. He was an extraordinary combina-tion of a Hebrew prophet and a Greek aesthete. In this connec-tion one thinks of the lines of John Keats:Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know."But Ruskin would never have subscribed to the theory of "art forart's sake." Art was for him not an end but rather a means, theend being moral perfection. Therefore, art was not simply to beenjoyed in a detached way, as by the connoisseur or dilettante. Itmust be made a vital factor in the life of mankind, and it mustlead to the redemption of the world from all that is sordid andugly, so that at last we should have a purified and glorified human-ity worthy of its intrinsic divinity. In other words, art must "getreligion," and religion of a rather puritanical brand in its moralfervor. Then we should have at last the New Jerusalem on earth.This, in brief, was Ruskin's gospel.Ruskin was brought up in an intensely evangelical religious en-vironment. "The creed of his home was puritanic and Calvinistic,"says Burgess in The Religion of Ruskin. But as he grew to man-hood, theology lost its hold upon him, as it did upon many of thefinest spirits of his generation. By 1858, when Ruskin was thirty-nine years old, the change had become complete. Burgess saysthat it was "a revolt : a tearing up of his entire religious faith bythe roots. It made so deep an impression upon him that it formedTHE UTOPIA OF JOHN RUSKIN 177the subject of correspondence with his friends and resulted in an-nouncements discrediting what he had written of reHgion in hisearHer days."But although Ruskin parted forever from theology, his ferventevangelical spirit remained. Forced underground, it had to find anoutlet through other channels than theology and the historic creedsof the churches. While Ruskin was popularly regarded as an ag-nostic, as a matter of fact God continued to be for him a supremereality, undefined as it might be; and to the end of his life he con-stantly- had recourse to the Bible for inspiration and illustration.He stood outside the churches, like a John the Baptist calling man-kind to repentance and reformation. When it was rumored thathe was likely to become a Roman Catholic, he wrote:"I can no more become a Roman Catholic, than again an Evan-gelical Protestant. I am a 'Catholic" of those Catholics to whomthe Catholic Epistle of St. James is addressed—'the Twelve Tribeswhich are scattered abroad'—the literally or spiritually wanderingIsrael of all the Earth."The other basic element in Ruskin's nature—the Greek lovefor and appreciation of line, form, color, and harmony—was totake the place of the theology which he had lost, as the way to God.The new Trinity was the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—andthese three are One. Through cultivation of art, he believed thatmen and women might become truly godlike, that life might begiven a meaning and made worth-while. "His taste for art," saysG. ]\Iercer Adam, "was manifested at an early age, and after pass-ing from the university he studied painting tmder J. D. Hardingand Copley Fielding; but his masters, as he tells us in 'Praeterita,'were Rubens and Rembrandt."Ruskin made his appeal to the public of England in languageof such an exquisite texture that to-day it stands unrivaled in Eng-lish literature. He owed his superb mastery of English very largelyto thorough study of the King James Bible. "Knowing the Songof Moses and the Sermon on the Mount b\' heart and half of theApocalypse besides." he wrote, "I was in no need of tutorshipeither in the majesty or simplicit}' of English words."But wdiat was the connection between Ruskin's preoccupationwith moral earnestness and art on the one hand, and the economicand social system of mid-nineteenth century England on the other?178 THE OPEN COURTThe answer is not far to seek. He was not content with saving hisown soul, for his evangehcal inheritance had given him the mis-sionary spirit. Born to wealth and leisure, with full opportunityto enjoy for himself the beauties of art and of nature, he still wasunhappy. He wanted to save the world, to share his own salva-tion with his fellow-men.Hence, it was inevitable that he should have fallen foul of theactual conditions of life, as lived by the masses, which he saw allabout him. Growing up, as he did, in a time when the machineage was first getting England into its iron grip, he saw working-class humanity huddled together in the slums of the great cities,in frightful poverty and degradation, while enormous wealth wasbeing piled up in the hands of the few. Political economy, in theform which was dominant at that time, was based on the doctrineof laissez-faire. The result was a ruthless race for wealth andmaterial possessions, "each for himself and the devil take the hind-most." The poor, the unfortunate, frail women, and even littlechildren, were sweated and exploited for the benefit of their mas-ters—vulgarians whose only object in life was to accumulate morewealth. And it was taught and believed that all this misery andfutility was necessary and unavoidable under "the laws of polit-icaleconomy," which had become a fetish for the preservation ofthe status quo.Against this devil's philosophy the soul of Ruskin rebelled. "Hishumanity and moral sense were outraged," says Adam, "by themanner in which the mass of his countrymen lived, and trenchantwas his castigation of this, and eager as well as righteous his desireto amend their condition and elevate and inspire their minds." Hesummed up the fundamental philosophy of the modern industrialage in one devastating sentence : "No matter how much you have,get more; no matter where you are, go somewhere else."In Fors Clavigera fa collection of Letters to the Workmen andLabourers of Great Britain), we find the most explicit statementsof Ruskin's indictment of industrial society and mechanistic civil-ization."Modern science," he writes, "economic and of other kinds, hasreached its climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed func-tion of the nineteenth century to exhibit in all things the elect pat-tern of perfect Folly, for a warning to the farthest future." HeTHE UTOPIA OF JOHN RUSKIN 179insised that men and women "will neither be so good nor so happyas without the machines." Even if the benefits of machine produc-tion were fairly distributed, it would, he reasoned, merely compelthe masses to spend a large part of their time in unprofitable idle-ness-Ruskin pointed out that there are three material things whichare essential to the good life; these are Pure Air, Water, andEarth. Besides these, there are three immaterial things which arelikewise indispensable ; namely. Admiration, Hope, and Love. Thesesix essentials for right living, he believed, will be encompassed bymankind only when Political Economy has become a real science;at present Political Economy is prostituting all of them.Pure Air, Water, and Earth are given by heaven freely. Asto what we are doing to Pure Air, he writes : "Everywhere, all davlong, you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations ; and thehorrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than labora-tories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes andsmells." So, too, with Water, the eft'ect of industrial civilization isto "turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that }0ucannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unlessyou hold its face out in the rain ; and even that falls dirty." Again,with the Earth, "meant to be nourishing for you and blossoming,"he says, "as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, in-ventive of explosive and deathful instead of blossoming and life-giving dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother Earth, Dem-eter, into an Avenger Earth, Tisiphone—with the voice of yourbrother's blood crying out of it in one wild harmony round all itsmurderous sphere."In the same way, Admiration, Hope, and Love have been defiledand turned to base uses. "For Admiration, you have learned con-tempt." Concerning Hope, "You have not so much spirit of it inyou as to begin any plan which will not pay for ten years ; nor somuch intelligence of it in you (either politicians or workmen) asto be able to form one clear idea of what you would like }"ourcountry to become." In regard to Love, "You were ordered bythe Founder of your religion to love your neighbour as yourselves.You have founded an entire science of Political Economy on whatyou have stated to be the constant instinct of man—the desire todefraud his neighbour."180 THE OPEN COURTOf what value the electric telegraph, he asks, if you have nomessage of any importance or significance to send over it? Ofwhat value your railroad trains, if they only serve the purpose ofenabling a fool in one town to be transported to another at break-neck speed?So Ruskin went up and down the country, preaching his coun-ter-gospel of personal development and social culture. "What hedesires for the working-man," remarks Adam, "he desires also forhis family, and consequently he urges parents to train their sonsand daughters to see and love the beautiful, to cultivate their higherinstincts, and call forth and feed their souls."It meant, in short, a complete turning of our backs upon mod-ern industrial civilization. For Ruskin considered that this pre-vented mankind from realizing the good life in all its manifoldforms. Industrialism, therefore, was the arch-enemy of humansalvation. Even if men should be free of human masters, by thespread of democracy, what would that profit their souls if theywere to become the slaves of machines?Accordingly, Ruskin denounced and repudiated nineteenth cen-tury industrial society and all its works. He would have none ofit. What he proposed as a substitute was the return to a kind ofmedieval Arcadia, in which virtuous and trustful common peopleshould work with their own hands on little farms, raising all theirown food, and making, by simple handicrafts, everything that wasneedful for their welfare. The government was to be in the handsof a wise and good aristocracy, to which the common people shouldgive unquestioning obedience. He would thus realize Plato's dreamof long ago.In Fors Clavigera Ruskin summarizes the leading features ofhis Utopia as follows:"We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads ; wewill have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; nonewretched but the sick ; none idle but the dead. We will have noliberty upon it, but instant obedience to known law and appointedpersons ; no equality upon it, but recognition of every betternessthat we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. When wewant to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not atforty miles an hour in the risk of our lives ; when we want to carryanything anywhere we will carry it either on the backs of beasts,THE UTOPIA OF JOHN RUSKIN 181or on our own, or in carts or boats. We will have plenty of flowersand vegetables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in ourfields,—and few bricks. We will have some music and poetry ; thechildren shall learn to dance to it and sing it; perhaps some of theold people, in time, may also."To many to-day it may seem incredible that an Englishmen ofthe nineteenth century should seriously believe that the wheels ofprogress could be turned back in this drastic fashion, and that sucha scheme of social organization, even if it could be established,would work. How, for instance, should we secure the wise andgood governors ; and how replace them, when they passed on ? Thatis the rock on which all Platonic Utopias finally ground. Dr. WillDurant, in his recent Mansions of Philosophy, comes perhaps near-est a practical solution in proposing a system in which only thegraduates of professional schools of political science, with subse-quent creditable records of performance in lower public offices,shall be eligible for election to the higher places in the State. Butin that event, might we not get only efficient bureaucrats or inflex-ible theorists, intent upon enhancing their own power and prestige,out of direct touch with the people, and hostile to initiative andchange ?Certainly, in his sociological panaceas, Ruskin was naive andquixotic. If he had had a more practical grasp of the subject, hemight have envisaged some plan whereby the good things in mod-ern discovery and invention might be utilized for the benefit ofall; and the social injustice, the ignorance, the poverty, and theslums of industrial society eliminated by some effective means ofsocial control. He perversely looked backward, and not forward,to a Golden Age. In this he shared a failing of other nineteenthcentury dreamers ; in the Utopia of William Morris we find ourdescendants several centuries hence sedately riding about in horse-drawn gigs.But Ruskin's protest against the deification of Alammon waspotent. He compelled the people of England to listen, and his lec-tures and writings were a factor in freeing the world from theworst evils of industrialism.

The Utopia of John Ruskin.

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The Utopia of John Ruskin.

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