DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0230
218
JOHN RUSKIN.
crashing street he loathes, in order to listen to the
Beethoven within the walls. Some sophia originally
directed the prudence of the common builder; much
sophia inspired the music. It is music again that
gravely refuses assent to these lessons of humiliation,
repeated in the fourth lecture.
Ruskin anticipates the murmurs of his hearers at
hearing him rank sciences in degrees whereof chemistry
holds the lowest and theology the highest; nevertheless
he affirms that if theology be science at all, the highest is
its place; and that it is a science other sciences vouch.
“You will find it a practical fact that external tempta-
tion and inevitable trials of temper have power against
you which your health and virtue depend on your
resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them
will pass into your own heart; . . . and that the
ordinary and vulgarised phrase ‘the Devil, or betraying
spirit, is in him ’ is the most scientifically accurate which
you can apply to any person so influenced.”
All science, the lecture proceeds, must needs be
modest, because although the field of fact is immeasur-
able, not so is the human power of research. Art is
modest; Ruskin here commends humble landscape
and discommends the Matterhorns and Monte Rosas;
although elsewhere he laments that good painters are
too easily content with the odds and ends of landscape,
and leave noble scenery to the bad ones. Art, accord-
ing to the present lesson, should be content. The
promise that we shall know all things is a siren promise,
JOHN RUSKIN.
crashing street he loathes, in order to listen to the
Beethoven within the walls. Some sophia originally
directed the prudence of the common builder; much
sophia inspired the music. It is music again that
gravely refuses assent to these lessons of humiliation,
repeated in the fourth lecture.
Ruskin anticipates the murmurs of his hearers at
hearing him rank sciences in degrees whereof chemistry
holds the lowest and theology the highest; nevertheless
he affirms that if theology be science at all, the highest is
its place; and that it is a science other sciences vouch.
“You will find it a practical fact that external tempta-
tion and inevitable trials of temper have power against
you which your health and virtue depend on your
resisting; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them
will pass into your own heart; . . . and that the
ordinary and vulgarised phrase ‘the Devil, or betraying
spirit, is in him ’ is the most scientifically accurate which
you can apply to any person so influenced.”
All science, the lecture proceeds, must needs be
modest, because although the field of fact is immeasur-
able, not so is the human power of research. Art is
modest; Ruskin here commends humble landscape
and discommends the Matterhorns and Monte Rosas;
although elsewhere he laments that good painters are
too easily content with the odds and ends of landscape,
and leave noble scenery to the bad ones. Art, accord-
ing to the present lesson, should be content. The
promise that we shall know all things is a siren promise,