We usually believe in immortality so far as to avoid preparation for death, and in mortality so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas a wise man will at least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events, of which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things ended in order, for his sleep, or left in order, for his awakening. Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to end them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendour of the rooms in their Father's house as to be happier when their friends are called to these mansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to live at court; nor has the Church's most ardent "desire to depart and be with Christ" ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons; and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave may indeed make the deviceless person more contented in his dulness; but it will make the deviser only more earnest in devising: nor is human conduct likely, in every case, to be purer, under the conviction that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed, and that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain, than it may be under the sterner and to many not unwise minds more probable apprehension that "what a man soweth that shall he also reap," or others reap, when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness, but lies down therein. - But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to happier persons. Might not a preacher, in comfortless but faithful zeal, from the poor height of a grave-hillock for his Hill of Mars,' and with the Cave of the Eumenides 2 at his side, say to them thus: Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be deaf forever. For these others, at your right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven; - for these who, stained and blackened in the battle-smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her feathers like gold; - for these, indeed, it may be permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future of innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded that they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which one day will be remembered no more. In them it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching, and to leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. But for you there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance; you may crush them, before the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you; their breath, which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing; they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the worms cover you; and for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no vengeance, only the question murmured above your grave: "Who shall repay him what he hath done?" Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you be more prompt to the injustice which can never be redressed, and niggardly of the mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse forever? I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than that you 1 Where Paul preached immortality to the Athenians. 2 The Furies. would act thus, well understanding your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes not less grave when brought into these curt limits. If your life were but a fever fit, the madness of a night, whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted away the sickly hours, what toys you snatched at, or let fall, — what visions you followed wistfully, with the deceived eyes of helpless frenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? are health and heaven to come? Then play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straws into what crowns please you; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in the air with your dying hands; — and yet it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital, but your palace-inheritance; — if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win must be won now, and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never; will you still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, in their saddest hours, thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest: no proud one! no jewelled circlet flaming through heaven above the height of the unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give them.1 Seeking a better than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for them only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you: the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch, only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and 1 A reference to the Plutus of Aristophanes, in which the character Poverty is made to say: "Zeus, of course, is poor; . . . for if he were rich, how is it that when he himself institutes the Olympic contest, he proclaimed that those of the athletes who won the prize should be wreathed with the crown of wild olive? And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Zeus been so poor." thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery. But this, such as it is, you may win, while yet you live; type of grey honour and sweet rest. Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain; these — and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things—may yet be here your riches, untormenting and divine, serviceable for the life that now is, nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come. FORS CLAVIGERA LETTER 5 [Fors Clavigera, in its entirety, is a collection of 96" Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain," amounting to some 650,000 words, which Ruskin published in various forms between January, 1871, and December, 1884. The title means "Fortune with the Nail," a phrase suggested by one of Horace's (Odes, 1, 35), which Ruskin interpreted with elaborate symbolism. His desire to attempt a better system of land-holding and agriculture, as outlined in the closing part of this letter, resulted in the forming of the "Guild of St. George," to which he personally contributed some eight thousand pounds, and which undertook the development of certain tracts of land in Worcestershire and elsewhere.] MY FRIENDS: "For lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds is come. Arise, O my fair one, my dove, DENMARK HILL, 1st May, 1871. It has been asked of me, very justly, why I have hitherto written to you of things you were likely little to care for, in words which it was difficult for you to understand. I have no fear but that you will one day understand all my poor words the saddest of them perhaps too well. But I have great fear that you may never come to understand these written above, which are a part of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of 1 Song of Solomon 2:11-13. many long since gone. I fear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass, the flowers never appear on the earth; that for you no bird may ever sing; for you no perfect Love arise and fulfil your life in peace. "And why not for us as for others?" Will you answer me so and take my fear for you as an insult? Nay, it is no insult; nor am I happier than you. For me the birds do not sing, nor ever will. But they would for you, if you cared to have it so. When I told you that you would never understand that love-song, I meant only that you would not desire to understand it. Are you again indignant with me? Do you think, though you should labour and grieve and be trodden down in dishonour, all your days, at least you can keep that one joy of Love, and that one honour of Home? Had you, indeed, kept that, you had kept all. But no men yet, in the history of the race, have lost it so piteously. In many a country and many an age, women have been compelled to labour for their husbands' wealth or bread; but never until now were they so homeless as to say, like the poor Samaritan, "I have no husband." Women of every country and people have sustained without complaint the labour of fellowship; for the women of the latter days in England it has been reserved to claim the privilege of isolation. This, then, is the end of your universal education and civilization, and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle Ages and of their chivalry. Not only do you declare yourselves too indolent to labour for daughters and wives, and too poor to support them, but you have made the neglected and distracted creatures hold it for an honour to be independent of you and shriek for some hold of the mattock for themselves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been so low a level of thought reached by any race since they grew to be male and female out of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else they have been made from by natural selection—according to modern science. That modern science, also, economic and of other kinds, has reached its climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed function of the nineteenth century to exhibit in all things the elect pattern of perfect Folly, for a warning to the farthest future. Thus the statement of principle which I quoted to you my last letter, from the circular of the Emigration Society, in |