DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0051
‘MODERN PAINTERS’—SECOND VOLUME. 39
reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings, or beguile
of its hope.” Spirituality and morality have done ill
to forego their divine claim to that art whereto they
had a right not only of authority but of very origin
and essence. And in the literally divine gift of art
is implied the responsibility of choice, so that men
are bound to authentic and incorrupt beauty in art
as they are bound to justice in action. The happiness
which the senses and their spirit take in the good
which they contemplate and follow is itself, by its
very energy, a sure rule of choice; “it clasps what it
loves so hard, that it crushes it if it be hollow.” And
this happiness, far too high to be called “ aesthetic,”
Ruskin names the Theoretic Faculty.
“We must advance, as we live on, from what is
brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised
to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to
what is our crown, only observing in all things how
that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from
the root, is dislike [of natural things] and not affection.”
Beauty is “the bread of the soul,” for which virginal
hunger is renewed every morning. And good genius
was infallibly imaginative in the days before men had
“ begun to bring to the cross foot their systems instead
of their sorrow.” From this noble doctrine to the
conclusion that a false and impious man could not
be a great imaginative painter (a judgment that has
been cast in Ruskin’s teeth a thousand times), the logic
of a young man carried him, not in haste indeed but
reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings, or beguile
of its hope.” Spirituality and morality have done ill
to forego their divine claim to that art whereto they
had a right not only of authority but of very origin
and essence. And in the literally divine gift of art
is implied the responsibility of choice, so that men
are bound to authentic and incorrupt beauty in art
as they are bound to justice in action. The happiness
which the senses and their spirit take in the good
which they contemplate and follow is itself, by its
very energy, a sure rule of choice; “it clasps what it
loves so hard, that it crushes it if it be hollow.” And
this happiness, far too high to be called “ aesthetic,”
Ruskin names the Theoretic Faculty.
“We must advance, as we live on, from what is
brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised
to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to
what is our crown, only observing in all things how
that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from
the root, is dislike [of natural things] and not affection.”
Beauty is “the bread of the soul,” for which virginal
hunger is renewed every morning. And good genius
was infallibly imaginative in the days before men had
“ begun to bring to the cross foot their systems instead
of their sorrow.” From this noble doctrine to the
conclusion that a false and impious man could not
be a great imaginative painter (a judgment that has
been cast in Ruskin’s teeth a thousand times), the logic
of a young man carried him, not in haste indeed but