CHAPTER XV RUSKIN AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART No, that's the world's way (keep the mountain-side, He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, Give!"-So, he gowned him, Straight got by heart that book to its last page: ROBERT BROWNING, A Grammarian's Funeral (1855). AMONG those who were dissatisfied with the existing social order and dissenting from the accepted maxims of the classical economists I have incidentally mentioned Ruskin. Although we had many friends in common, it was not my fortune ever to meet him. Of those friends I should mention especially Robert Caird of Greenock, who stayed with Ruskin for some time in Florence and who came to be penetrated alike with Ruskin's views on art and with his views on social progress. Caird was a remarkable man, unproductive in a literary sense, but nevertheless highly cultivated. He had gone from Florence and Ruskin to polar opposites-to Chicago and Pullman, the introducer of the variety of travelling couch, or rather bunk, which bears his name. Pullman had been a cabinet-maker, and he developed his idea of a railway sleeping-car from the point of view of his craft, in the same manner as the early designers of gas chandeliers and brackets had developed these from the candlesticks and oil lamps which they had been accustomed to design and as the early designers of electric light fixtures had designed these from gas lamps. The method was natural and frequent in the evolution of design, but it was stodgy and was due to lack of invention. Caird was with Pullman when he developed another idea, well intended but lacking in insight into human naturethe idea of housing his workmen in sanitary but similar houses with formal gardens of deadly uniformity. From Chicago Caird returned to Greenock to take charge of the shipbuilding yard which was the possession of his family. Other friends of Ruskin and of mine were the Tullochs of Kirn, near Dunoon on the Clyde. Tulloch had been a stonemason and had early become a devoted adherent. Later he and his wife became friends of Ruskin. They corresponded with him frequently and paid occasional visits to Brantwood. They were not cultivated people, but they had affectionate dispositions and a great fund of commonsense. Ruskin acquired a liking for them both. Ruskin does not properly come within the scope of these recollections, yet it is necessary to mention him in this place because of the direction which he gave to the criticism of art and of life. Someone has said of William Morris that when he touched anything he somehow altered its history. The same might be said of Ruskin. Before his time there was much writing upon æsthetics from a philosophical point of view; but the philosophers knew nothing of the technique of painting, and in general floundered when they attempted to criticise works of art. The painters were not used to express themselves in any medium other than paint, and in general were unable to explain the nature of the standards they applied in criticism of their own works or the works of others. There was an equally wide breach between the man of science and the artist. They did not express themselves in the same language-to one another they were quite inarticulate. Criticism. of artistic products, such as it was, was left to writers with slender qualifications for such a task. No first-rate man of letters adequately equipped for the exercise of the special function of criticism of art had made his appearance. "Literary criticism" thus became a byword among artists. They learned nothing from it, and they found in it only ignorance of the methods, possibilities and purposes of painting as well as of the plastic arts in general. Into such a field Ruskin came equipped up to a certain point. He was a good draughtsman and a competent critic of line. It is true that he was probably deficient in colour sense; but he had an intimate knowledge of structure and much experience in detailed examination of numerous buildings and paintings acknowledged by many generations as great masterpieces. Behind these purely technical qualifications in regard to the plastic arts Ruskin had a certain knowledge of science and at least some knowledge of philosophy, especially in the department of æsthetics. Added to this equipment he had the great gift of expression. If his style sometimes lacks restraint, if it is occasionally marred by inartistic excess of splendour, it is always lucid. Moreover, at a moment when the world of art was either dominated by mere commonplace or by meaningless imitation of motives of the Late Renaissance, Ruskin brought to bear upon the criticism of works of art an enthusiasm for the Gothic and a vivid interpretation of it. Above all, Ruskin not only intellectualised the criticism of art, he did much to intellectualise art itself. In so doing he touched the social value and position of art. The artistic tradition which survived among the peasantry of some of the European countries had disappeared in the whirl of modern industry. Ruskin found the explanation of the depression of life under industrial conditions in the artlessness of it-in the drudgery of mechanical reproduction of things of ugliness instead of invention of new and beautiful things. This artlessness was due, he thought, to the conditions under which production took place, to the system of the organisation of industry for profit, involving exploitation of the workers and depression of their lives to a point at which artistic emotion and artistic invention were alike impossible. Ruskin found the classical economists unsatisfactory guides in studying the economic aspects of the social problem as it envisaged itself to him. He therefore mapped out for himself a theory of wealth which if not wholly new had new elements. This theory may be found in Unto this Last and others of his writings. In these Ruskin may be said, so far as his hostility to exploitation is concerned, to be a follower of Saint-Simon, with whose Nouveau Christianisme he was evidently acquainted. In his views on value Ruskin in effect returned to the mediæval idea of a "just price"; and in his views on interest he reverted also to mediæval ideas. Ruskin was probably the first among his contemporaries to emphasise and develop the implications of the idea of the unity of life-an idea by no means neglected by the ancients. Ruskin showed that the fine arts are integral parts of life, are indeed the visible manifestation of the higher forms of it, and are the means by which we recognise and record them. The philosophers and some of the poets had expressed the same idea after their own fashion; but their language was not that of the people, and their views had no wide influence. Ruskin came as an intermediary. He played the rôle of Interpreter and gave emphasis to those elements which seemed to him to need emphasis at his moment. From the beginning of the nineteenth century it was fashionable for writers on social progress to lay great stress on "conditions”on the circumstances by which any individual member of society found himself surrounded. It was supposed that all men were equal and that if they were "free," that is, released from external pressure, and not enslaved by society or by a part of it, that all would at least have the opportunity of being equally happy. This is not the place to develop the theoretical relations between the extreme views of Godwin and Robert Owen, the speculations of Darwin, the Utilitarianism of Mill and the views of Ruskin. The theories of life involved in these various speculations are more remarkable for their resemblances than for their differences. They all, for example, lay more stress as determinants of character upon the "conditions" under which the individual exists than they lay upon the inherent tendency towards variation in the character of the individual. The Stoics and the Epicureans both maintained the opposite thesis. Apart from the ancients, it is a commonplace of modern biology that the character of the response to a stimulus of any kind depends upon the character of the stimulated organism and not upon the character of the stimulus. The same stimulus will produce different effects upon different organisms; and an organism may at one time be excited into violent activity by a stimulus, while in the presence of the same stimulus at another time it remains inert. The tendency of biological speculation during the past thirty years, if such speculation can be described as having a tendency, has been towards emphasis of the importance of the inherent factor, and therefore towards a readjustment of views regarding the influence of conditions upon individual characters. At the moment when the societies of Western Europe were in transition from relatively small self-contained communities to large interdependent industrial groups, conditions external to these small communities and to individuals migrating from them were necessarily thrust into practical and speculative prominence. Molecular movements in society which constituted the transition involved changes alike in individual characters and in social conditions by which individuals were surrounded, and incidentally threw an increasing strain upon organs of government. While social systems were in a state of flux, and while, especially after the peace of 1815, the populations of Western Europe were on the whole increasing rapidly, the imperative needs of the hour were economic needs. A new and much enlarged industrial, commercial and financial organisation had to be evolved. This was evolved predominantly by spontaneous private effort, sometimes supplemented and sometimes thwarted by political action. During a period of this character it is not surprising that, save in rare individual instances, the general mind should be bent upon provision for economic needs in the narrow sense and should be distracted from provision for the less obviously imperative spiritual and intellectual needs. The effect of such a situation upon the finer minds of an age can readily be understood; but this effect seldom makes its appearance in an impressive manner until the close of such an age of transition. Only then can the finer minds acquire their necessary audience, and even then the finer minds never go into politics. The conditions which formed the background of Ruskin's theory of society were already passing away when he began to write. The acutest phases of the transition had passed before 1850; the Factory Acts and, more than all, the great increase of industrial production and the increased mobility of labour and of goods had, with other factors, carried society over many critical points in the transition-yet the effects of the changes had not become completely manifest. Increase of production and mobility of labour and goods had been attained by means of concentration of capital in the exploitation of raw materials, in manufacture, in railways and steamships. Conditions had been rendered more endurable by the very means that met with Ruskin's disapproval. The character of the industrial organisation spontaneously developed by labourers had been that of a selfcontained community. A society wholly composed of such communities had been almost destitute of science, quite ignorant of the fine arts and wholly governed by tradition. The political control of such a society was very easy, so long as those who inherited or secured the control were able to maintain it without increasing the traditional burdens of taxation. A reformer who proposed a new system of education, new regulations in respect to public health, or other measures aiming at the benefit of the community from his point of view, was necessarily looked upon as a public enemy unless he were prepared to sustain the cost of these reforms out of his own pocket. Even if he did so he was looked upon as a person of more or less unbalanced mind.1 In the new "Capitalistic" society art was developing rapidly. New schools were growing up in England. Constable and Turner made their appearance. The industrial revolution in Western Europe was carried out not by the members of self-contained communities, but by people who 'Chadwick and Richardson, for example, who fought the battle for public health against public indifference, were looked upon even by intelligent persons as mere cranks. |