Story five

Story six

Story seven

Your John Ruskin Moment du Jour

From the very first letter in Volume One of Fors Clavigera, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britian, January 1871:

"I have listened to many ingenious persons, who say we are better off now than we were before. I do not know how well off we were before; but I know positively that many deserving persons of my acquaintance have great difficulty living under these improved circumstances: also, that my desk is full of begging letters, eloquently written either by distressed or dishonest people; and that we cannot be called, as a nation, well off, while so many of us are living either in honest or in villanous beggary."

*

"Object," you must always remember, is fine English for "Thing." It is a semi-Latin word, and properly means a thing "thrown in your way;" so that if you put "ion" to the end of it, it becomes Objection. We will rather say "Thing," if you have no objection - you and I. A "Material" thing, then, of course, signifies something solid and tangible. It is very necessary for Political Economists always to insert this word "material," lest some people should suppose that there was any use or value in Thought or Knowledge, and other such immaterial objects

"Embodied is a particularly elegant word; but superfluous because you know it would not be possible that a utility should be Disembodied, as long as it was a material object. But when you wish to express yourself as thinking in a great manner, you may say - as, for instance, when you are supping vegetable soup - that your power of doing so conveniently and gracefully is "Embodied" in a spoon.

- consecutive paragraphs from Letter IV, 1st April, 1871 Fors Clavigera

*

"Now I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven; when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them from becoming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands. So I thought to myself that it would be very charming if there were only seven sorts of leaves; but that perhaps, if one looked the woods and forests of the world carefully through, it was just possible that one might discover as many as eight sorts; and then where would be my friend's new knowledge of Botany be? So I said, "That was very pretty; but what more?" Then my friend told me that she had no idea, before, that petals were leaves. On which, I thought to myself that it would not have been any great harm to her if she had remained under her old impression that petals were petals. But I said, "That was very pretty, too; and what more?" So then my friend told me that the lecturer said, "the object of his lectures would be entirely accomplished if he could convince his hearers that there was no such thing as a flower." Now, in that sentence you have the most perfect and admirable summary given you of the general temper and purpose of modern science. It gives lectures on Botany, of which the object is to show that there is no such thing as a Flower; on Humanity, to show that there is no such thing as a Man; and on Theology, to show that there is no such thing as a God. No such thing as Man, but only a Mechanism; no such thing as a God, but only a series of Forces; The two faiths are essentially one: if you feel yourself to be only a machine, constructed to be a Regulator of minor machinery, you will put your statue of such science on your Holborn Viaduct, and necessarily recognize only major machinery as regulating YOU.

…
"And all true science - which my Savoyard guide recently scorned me when he thought I had not - all true science is "savoir vivre." But all your modern science is the contrary of that. It is "savoir mourir."

-from LETTER V, 1 May 1871

"Regulations which will bring about some curious changes in piano-playing, and several other things.
"Which will bring." They are bold words, considering how many schemes have failed disasterously (as your able editors gladly point out), which seemed much more plausible than this. But, as far as I know history, good designs have not failed except when they were too narrow in their final aim, and too obstinately and eagerly pushed in the beginning of them. Prosperous Fortune only grants an almost invisible slowness of success, and demands invincible patience in pursuing it. Many good men have failed in haste; more in egotism, and desire to keep everything in their own hands; and some by mistaking the signs of their times; but others, and those generally the boldest in imagination, have not failed; and their successors, true knights or monks, have bettered the fate and raised the thoughts of men for centuries; nay, for decades of centuries. And there is assuredly nothing in this purpose I lay before you, so far as it reaches hitherto, which will require either knightly courage or monkish enthusiasm to carry out. To divert a little of the large current of English charity and justice from watching disease to guarding health, and from punishment of crime to the reward of virtue; to establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals, and training schools instead of penitentiaries, is not, if you will slowly take it to heart, a frantic imagination.

- LETTER IX, 1st September, 1871