John Ruskin (1819–1900)

John Ruskin is now most famous for his artistic criticism, but like many Victorians he was a polymath, and Deucalion collects his writings on the topic of geology, especially glaciers. Ruskin was involved in a protracted argument with the physicist John Tyndall. Tyndall argued that glaciers moved very slowly, carving out mountain passes as they did; Ruskin thought this was total bullshit because he'd never seen a glacier move. I guess we know who ended up on the right side of history in that show more one. You might think I'm exaggerating, but not by much; at one point, he asks, "Do you know so much as a single rivulet of clear water which has cut away a visible half-inch of Highland rock, to your own knowledge, in your own day?" (121) For Ruskin, the issue is fundamentally one of sight, and how one does science.

Ruskin was not anti-scientific, but against the new form of science emerging the late nineteenth century, one that privileged the inducted mathematical truth over visual observation. Referring to a youthful scientific error he made in Modern Painters, he characterizes his mistake as following "the mathematical method of science as opposed to the artistic. Thinking of a thing, and demonstrating,--instead of looking at it. [...] always very dangerously inferior to the unpretending method of sight--for people who have eyes, and can use them" (129-30). You need to trust what you see, and not allow theories and desires to inflect your vision of what you observe. Ruskin felt that Tyndall was violating this principle, and indeed, he gets in a couple direct jabs at him, complaining about Tyndall's use of scale models to demonstrate principles (130) and said he'd do better science if it wasn't for his "incapacity of drawing, and ignorance of perspective" (139).

So, Ruskin kind of comes across as a grumpy old man ranting against things he doesn't fully understand. Like, dude, that's not how erosion works. And did you really need to write 282 pages about what you saw in glaciers. But if you're me, this is a pretty fascinating look at the scientific attitudes of a certain era, and from one of the great thinkers of the age. Ruskin isn't some fringe lunatic, after all, but one of the most influential art critics there's ever been. A lot of what underpinned his artistic criticism manifests here, too: that one should privilege one's own sight and soul. (Ruskin felt too many painters followed convention instead of painting what they were actually seeing; that was why he liked J. M. W. Turner and defended him against all comers.) In the lectures collected here, he tells his audience, "your power of seeing mountains cannot be developed either by your vanity, your curiosity, or your love of muscular exercise. It depends on the cultivation of the instrument of sight itself, and of the soul that uses it" (103). No one could be taught to see a mountain by learning things about them from science; indeed, that would impede your ability to actually see them.

This has moral implications, as scientific sight so often does. Ruskin complains that "in modern days, by substituting analysis for sense in morals, and chemistry for sense in matter, we have literally blinded ourselves to the essential qualities of both matter and morals; and are entirely incapable of understanding what is meant by the description given us, in a book we once honoured, of men who 'by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil'" (116). That's the Bible he's talking about there, and I don't know it, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Ruskin didn't care for John Stuart Mill. He does get in a jab at Darwin, saying that the myths of Eve, Noah, Proserpine, and Deucalion are "together incomparably truer than the Darwinian Theory," going on to add that "the feeblest myth is better than the strongest theory" and that a scientific theory is "an unnatural exertion of the wits of little men, and half-wits of impertinent multitudes" (98-9). Ouch! Ruskin comes across as a man of science who would have been at home in the eighteenth century, but was being left behind by the way sciences were shifting in the nineteenth.

Beauty was best way to distinguish truth from falsehood, Ruskin claimed. If you were unable to distinguish the angel and devil vying for your spirit, "you may discern the one from the other by a vivid, instant, practical test. The devils always will exhibit to you what is loathsome, ugly, and, above all, dead; and the angels, what is pure, beautiful, and, above all, living" (263). Ergo, he continues, sloths are evil and squirrels are good! But if you take your child and "force him out of the fresh air into the dusty bone-house" and show him dinosaurs and "make him pore over its rotten cells and wire-stitched joints, and vile extinct capacities of destruction," when he does go outside, he'll probably throw rocks at squirrels (265). So paleontology turns out to be responsible for the misbehavior of little boys. "All true science begins in the love, not the dissection, of your fellow-creatures; and it ends in the love, not the analysis, of God" (265-66).

I guess this could seem bizarre from a modern perspective, but maybe not. Probably we could draw some connections from Ruskin to climate change deniers, or to science-skeptical humanities academics. Ruskin is their intellectual ancestor in some ways, I guess.

I still remember climbing Sentinel Dome in Yosemite National Park back in 2006. It's a gorgeous vista, you get a 360-degree panorama. My family liked it so much that after hiking it, we went back three days later to take in the view again at sunset. It was still gorgeous, but the view that time was marred by a sort of hippy religious fellow with a large group, who he was lecturing. His exact words are long forgotten, but I remember the essence: "Who knows where it all came from? And that's okay. Just sit here and bask in the not knowing of it all." I'm not saying there aren't times you shouldn't just lean back and absorb the scenic vista, but to argue that knowledge ruins your vision seems very backwards, whether you're a random guy atop Sentinel Dome or the author of Modern Painters.

P.S. The 39-volume Library Edition Works of John Ruskin in which I read Deucalion (along with excerpts from the other Ruskin writing I cited in my dissertation, mostly The Eagle's Nest, which collects his astronomy lectures, but also Modern Painters) is an absolutely gorgeous example of early twentieth-century book production. See this bookseller's site for an example set, and Mark Scroggin's discussion of their beauty and heft. I don't even like Ruskin very much, but I'd love to own the set. A mere $20,000! Maybe I'll buy 'em if I ever sell out and become a provost.

Many of the pages of the volumes in the library had never been cut, and I had to cut them apart myself with a letter opener! I cannot believe that no one at my university in the past century has wanted to read what Ruskin thought about the movement of glaciers and ice cream. It would seem I'm not alone, however; Scroggins says, "John Dixon Hunt, in the intro to The Ruskin Polygon, comments that one never encounters a set of the Library Edition without at least some of its pages still uncut." show less

I started this for two reasons.
The first one is that I read, many years ago, an essay on Proust's aesthetics based on his critique of Sesame and Lilies. I made a mental note to myself to get to the bottom of it, then I went on with my cheap thrillers and Netflix series (when Netflix arrived, that' HOW long ago I read the essay) and I forgot even what the essay said, let alone embarking in a study of the available sources. Because that's what we do, and funnily enough, now that I think of it, show more Ruskin describes this tendency of humanity in its universality as well as dire consequences.
The other reason is that it's very short, and since I have just started a reading challenge, my scattered brain needs an easy dopamine shot to start build a neural pathway that's gonna keep me from derailing before this train even leaves the station. This is not discussed by Ruskin in the book, though. It's good stuff, but not that all-encompassing.

Two lectures, on the value and function of reading and on the value and function of women.
I kid you not.
Jokes aside, this is a book worth reading, despite its obvious Victorian England flavour - especially in the view of women as function of men's fulfillment in the second lecture, Lilies or Of Queens' Gardens, and the casual remark about Jews in the first lecture, Sesame, or the Treasuries of Kings.
So, cancel-culture warning: if you are that kind of person, you will put this book on your nice pyre. Unless you stop for few seconds to recall who was famous in history for burning and censoring literature on the grounds of morality before you started , and decide to open your mind and learn something valid from an imperfect teacher. Which is, more or less, a point made in the lecture, by the way.
With this disclaimer out of the way, I can guarantee you that the 50 - or so - pages of Sesame are enough to give you food for thought for few weeks.

Sesame is a jewel of oratory and a treasure chest of food for thought on the human condition and on the function of art and culture in the construction of a just and spiritually elevated society. Ruskin does not spare his compatriots when it comes to condemning colonialist aggression, mass stupidity and above all exploitation and class inequality, Yet his tone always remains gentle, measured, and his intent remains visibly maieutic, starting from his Christian spirituality and from his view of the artist as a prophet of divine perfection among the people. In this world view, education is not a door to glory or social and economic advancement, but a value in itself. books are the elevated company we need to keep, the kings whose advice we need to seek to get out of our narrow opinions and better ourselves and society.
Some propositions especially struck me for their relevance, especially when Ruskin reminds us that there are books for today - the ones written like letters, to inform and communicate; and books for time, and that, although both have a dignified function, it is the books written to last that take us beyond our limits. But even the greatest thinker reaches the top in a discontinuous and episodic way, because he is human like us, but he has something so important to say that he works on it for so long, that his words become a distillation of precision in which every syllable is necessary and appropriate.
The difference between the great authors and us, their readers, is that we only have half-baked opinions that we need to refrain from seeking confirmation for in book, while the Greats may achieve, at best, the posing of a good question. This thought stayed with me in the last few days, together with the surprise at the extent to which I found relevant to our times the criticism that Ruskin advanced at Victorian society - of being a mob, guided by gut reactions to calculated propaganda with an agenda, disseminated by information steered by a greedy ruling class even less dignified than its subjects.
Ruskin thought that education for the sake of itself was the only antidote to blind patriotism, populist rage and exploitation. I have to say, we may need some more Ruskin reading than we need. show less

Having read, and been rather disgusted by, Praeterita, I expected to dislike this book. At first, it did seem to be a lot of nonsense. And yes, Mr. Ruskin is on a dubious hobbyhorse, but for some reason the book does seem to have power. Is it the Scriptural language? I don't know. If it is, is the language reightly applied, or is it just cant? Again, I don't know.

John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900, was a leading English art critic, social thinker, and early "political economist", of the Victorian era. This work is a publication of two lectures in which he conflates subjects as varied as Treasure (Kings) and Gardens (Queens), gender roles and studies of drama, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. His brilliance is in seeing connections.

For example, the power of one of the themes--that education is salvific and show more women are as worthy of education as males--is apparent with his reposte after observing that it is foolish to enslave a woman to a man: "As if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave." [115] This is the truth behind the fact that the harems rarely produce great leaders, for the children of slaves are rarely able to raise themselves to be kings and queens.

Ruskin understands English to be a mongrel tongue [33]--cobbled out of trade and a series of migrations--and recognizes that the use of a single word can stamp "class" and merit upon a speaker because of the power of Education. [29-30] He hurls theologians upon the swords of their own mistranslations. [32 ff] He provides an example from Milton's "Lycidas", perhaps taking the elegy as a homily on the keys to heaven. Among his teachings is the observation that "what you took for your own judgment was mere chance prejudice" which drifted in upon you. He suggests you set fire to "such wind-sown herbage of evil surmise". [52] Instead, turn to education, and educate both your thoughts and your passions. [53 ff]
Ruskin is unequivocal about hypocrisy: "A great nation does not mock Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a revelation which asserts the love of money to be the root of all evil, and declaring, at the same time, that it is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, by no other love." [61]

Like his Unitarian friend, Carlyle, UU Ruskin began to adopt the “prophetic” stance, familiar from the Bible, of a voice crying from the wilderness and seeking to call a lapsed people back into the paths of righteousness.

These two lectures exemplify Ruskin's self-positioning into a prophetic but marginal role as a disenchanted outsider. Ruskin here is a wondrous voice crying out from the wilderness and seeking to call a lapsed people back into the paths of righteousness. He makes a case for moral and esthetic consistency. The writing exhibits the beauty, ferocity and oddness that are features of Ruskin’s unique career. show less