ent. Its object would be not to establish any system, but to smash the idolatry of mere mechanism, whose presence has blighted the world so deeply and so long. For this false quantitative god, it would set up the true god-quality. It would care nothing how little wealth was produced so long as the men who produced it enjoyed the day's work and a good article came out at the end. Against every form of work which merely exhausts the body without interesting the mind it would wage relentless war, and the war would go on undeterred by falling statistics of exports and imports and revenue returns. In education it would be less concerned to educate men and more concerned not to prevent them from educating themselves-which is what so many schemes of education have done. Its ideas of government would be founded on a similar distinction. Instead of wanting to do good to everybody-which is an utterly impossible form of altruism -it would admit the right of every man to defend himself against the people who want to do him good. It would attend to that form of the Golden Rule which has been so often overlooked, "Leave other people alone, as you wish to be left alone yourself." Which is as much as to say that its practical rules would be founded not on good morals alone, but on good manners, which are a far higher thing. If the question were raised, "Am I my brother's keeper?" its morals might answer yes, but its manners would answers no; and between the two contrary answers it would develop a type of conduct the lesser half of which would be employed in correcting the world, and the larger half in seeking correction by the world. The discovery that we are incompetent to mind every

body's business would have for its counterpart an increase of competence in minding our own.

The transference of industry from a quantitative to a qualitative basis would be the greatest reform ever undertaken by man. It could hardly be accomplished without great suffering and economic loss. But of all the paths now open to us, there is none, so far as I can see, which does not promise greater suffering and greater loss. So long as civilization rests on a quantitative basis it will grow more and more unstable, no matter how it be reformed in detail; increase of wealth will mean increase of wars; economic recoveries will be rapid; and each catastrophe will be followed by another worse than the last.

Would the change I have indicated provide a remedy for the drift of civilization? To that question I answer both no and yes. I answer no, because in one sense the drift requires no remedy. To suppose, as some idealists seem to do, that the present generation can draw up the programme of human destiny on this planet, and take measures for carrying it out, seems to me the most preposterous of illusions. Whether the destinies of the race are controlled by a higher power than ours I do not here discuss. For my own part I think they are. But under our control they certainly are not. And the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that it is even so.

But I also answer yes. What we have to dread is not the drift that carries us to our destiny, but the drift which carries us away from it. Upon that drift every community is embarked which has quantity for its guiding principle, and from that drift at all events

we might be saved. With the ideal of quantity before us we are denying our nature as men, and it is in consequence of this denial that history has to record all its most cruel disappointments. Quality remains the only genuine human ideal; it is the connecting tissue which binds men together in stable, orderly, peaceful communities. As quantity is the source of unending strife, so quality is the ground of all brotherly relations between man and man.

What the millennium will be, when it will be, none of us can tell. Of this only can we be sure—that if there is to be a millennium, quality and not quantity is the name of the road which leads us thitherward.

XXVIII

The Mystery of Life and Its Arts

By John Ruskin 1

WHEN I accepted the privilege of addressing you today, I was not aware of a restriction with respect to Ithe topics of discussion which may be brought before this Society,2-a restriction which, though entirely wise and right under the circumstances contemplated in its introduction, would necessarily have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture for you on the subject of art in a form which might be permanently useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such limitation; for indeed my infringement will be of the letter-not of the spirit— of your commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither do I fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving—or at least stating as capable of positive proof the connection of all that is best in the crafts

1 This was first read at the Royal College of Science in Dublin in 1868 and was in 1871 included by Ruskin as a third lecture in Sesame and Lilies, the first two lectures of which had been published in 1865.EDITOR.

2 That no reference should be made to religious questions.

and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the sincerity of his patriotism.

But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not here only, but everywhere: namely, that I am never fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me attention only because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant language if indeed it ever were mine is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my thoughts have changed also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier life, what little influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their colors in the sky; so all the influence I now desire to retain must be due to the earnestness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form and beauty of another kind of cloud than those; the bright cloud of which it is written "What is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age, without having, at some moment of change or disappointment, felt the truth of those bitter words;