DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0257
‘DEUCALION.’
245
assigned to Proteus in the Odyssey. Deucalion, Proser-
pina, and an essay on birds—Love's Meinie—me the
nearest approach that other labours allowed to the
works on natural history threatened, with a smile—the
geology and botany were to be “ in twenty-four volumes ”
—and they are strangely complete, full of that natural
fact which Ruskin has acknowledged as at once the
justification and the judge of art, the beginning and the
never-attainable end. It is perhaps with a contemptuous
consent to be, by some, misread, that in his contention
on glaciers with Professor Tyndall he often slights the
name of “ science ” and “ man of science ” ; whereas
obviously it was on the point of science that issue was
joined, and if he did not reproach his adversary in that
this adversary was too little and not too much a man of
science, he reproached him to no purpose. Ruskin,
intending to teach the form of mountains as they
have stood since man was man, and as they have suffered
the daily strokes of rains or have carried the varying
burden of snow, makes very sure of the little he has to
tell of the anatomy of those clothed figures. The up-
heaving forces of the first remote period and the sculp-
tural forces of the second are treated with the brevity
that befits their unknown ages and immeasurable action ;
but to the disintegrating and diffusing forces of the
earth as the eyes of man have known it, Ruskin gives
the study of many a year. The human race has had
many and many centuries in which to watch the Alps
-—and has made small use thereof; but out of those
245
assigned to Proteus in the Odyssey. Deucalion, Proser-
pina, and an essay on birds—Love's Meinie—me the
nearest approach that other labours allowed to the
works on natural history threatened, with a smile—the
geology and botany were to be “ in twenty-four volumes ”
—and they are strangely complete, full of that natural
fact which Ruskin has acknowledged as at once the
justification and the judge of art, the beginning and the
never-attainable end. It is perhaps with a contemptuous
consent to be, by some, misread, that in his contention
on glaciers with Professor Tyndall he often slights the
name of “ science ” and “ man of science ” ; whereas
obviously it was on the point of science that issue was
joined, and if he did not reproach his adversary in that
this adversary was too little and not too much a man of
science, he reproached him to no purpose. Ruskin,
intending to teach the form of mountains as they
have stood since man was man, and as they have suffered
the daily strokes of rains or have carried the varying
burden of snow, makes very sure of the little he has to
tell of the anatomy of those clothed figures. The up-
heaving forces of the first remote period and the sculp-
tural forces of the second are treated with the brevity
that befits their unknown ages and immeasurable action ;
but to the disintegrating and diffusing forces of the
earth as the eyes of man have known it, Ruskin gives
the study of many a year. The human race has had
many and many centuries in which to watch the Alps
-—and has made small use thereof; but out of those