The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things but enjoy the right things – not merely industrious, but to love industry, to love knowledge, purity and justice and not merely to practise these with a half-heartedness.
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Says J. Ruskin:—
“I notice that the Churches and Schools of England are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never Gothic.”
You live under one school of architecture (Italian) and worship under another. You have separated your religion from your life.
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“Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the Churches”
And yet Christians (Hypocrites) advocate the same kind of prayer.
In calling your Churches only “holy” you call your hearths and homes “profane”; and have separated yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the ground. Your Religion is not that to which you day tithes of property and sevenths (Sundays) of time; but it is that to which you devote nine-tenths of your property and six-sevenths of your time.
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I never can make out how it is that a knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a pedlar-errant always does. The people are willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands cheap, that they are ready to go on fervent crusa4es to recover the tomb of a buried God, but never on any travels to fulfil the orders of living one; – that they will go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must be well-bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes.
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As to your Goddess of Getting on, we ask Getting on – but where to? Gathering together – but how much? Do you mean to gather always – never to spend?
It is because of this (among many other such errors) that I fearlessly declare your so-called Science of Political Economy to be no Science, it omits the study of exactly the most important branch of the business – the study of spending. Will you put an Olympus of Silver upon a golden Pelian —make Ossa like a wart? Do you think the rain and dew would then come down to you in the streams from such mountains more blessedly than they will down the mountains which God has made for you of moss and whinstone?
But it is not gold that you want to gather, what is it? Greenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it then – is it ciphers after a capital I? Can you not practise writing ciphers and write as many as you want? Write ciphers for an hour every morning in a big book and gay every evening, I am worth all those noughts more, than I was yesterday.” Won’t that do? Well, what in the name of Plutus is it you want?
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Unlike Pallas and Madonna, your Goddess of Getting on is the Goddess – not of everybody’s getting on – but only of somebody’s getting on and this is a vital, a rather deathful, distinction.
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Even good things have no abiding power – and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? Change must come. Think you that “men may come and men may go,” but – mills – go on forever? Not so.
Is not the sacrifice of “Iphigenia” far sweeter and more remarkable than that of Jesus?
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Ruskin quotes two instances to determine what “human nature” is —
1. The captain of the “London” shook hands with his mate, saying “God speed you! I will go down with my passengers.” From no religious motive, hope of reward or fear of punishment.
2. A mother living among the fair fields of merry England gives up her two years old child to be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room while the said mother waits and talks outside.
The former is evidently an illustration of humanity, human-nature; the latter is inhuman on the face of it.
The former is natural, the latter unnatural.
Will you take for foundation of act and hope the faith that this man was such as God made him or that this woman was such as God made her?
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There may be venom enough in a dead body to infect a nation. Does it prove the greatness of the deceased?
So a dead Jesus might infect whole Europe, that does not prove his virtue.
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Some slaves are scourged to their work by whips; others are scourged to it by restlessness or ambition. It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery is in being driven to your work at another’s bidding. Again some slaves are bought with money and others with praise. It matters not what the purchase money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price and be bought for it.
A true wife in her husband’s house is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen.
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Ruskin says of England:
“Our cities are a wilderness of spinning wheels instead of palaces; yet the people have not clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; our harbours are a forest of merchant-ships, and the people die of hunger.”
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“Educate” and “Govern” are one and the same thing.
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People complain about “how difficult it is to make people pay for being educated”! Why, I should think so! Do you make your children pay for their education, or do you give it them compulsorily and gratis?
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Education is not a profitable business but a costly one. You do not learn that you may live – you live that you may learn.
Hand Labour is of four kinds.
(1) On Earth; (2) On Sea; (3) In Art; (4) In War.
Hand labour on Earth—
(i) that of husbandman, (ii) of Shepherd.
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Luther struck the first mighty blow in contending that “the matter of Revelation (Bible) was divine and the composition human.” Then it was found that not all the matter is divine; the scientific statements were not divine. Then the profane history was declared to be not divine. Then it was contended that all its sacred history was not necessarily divine. Then it was stated that the reasoning of the writers of the word was not inspired, – assertions and not proofs, being the proper subjects of inspiration, and the objects of unqualified assent.
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Let everybody have according to his need and do according to his ability. Pay according to need and get according to ability. Heavenly Family.