The Eagle's Nest. John Ruskin
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of language; and there are people who will tell you that the only art I can teach you myself, is the art of it. But try your triple parallelism once more, briefly, and see if another idea will not occur to you. In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, you must not talk before you do. In literature you must not talk before you—think.
That is your third Province. The Kingdom of Thought, or Conception.
And it is entirely desirable that you should define to yourselves the three great occupations of men in these following terms:—
| Science. | The knowledge of things, whether Ideal or Substantial. |
| Art. | The modification of Substantial things by our Substantial Power. |
| Literature. | The modification of Ideal things by our Ideal Power. |
4. But now observe. If this division be a just one, we ought to have a word for literature, with the ‘Letter‘ left out of it. It is true that, for the most part, the modification of ideal things by our ideal power is not complete till it is expressed; nor even to ourselves delightful, till it is communicated. To letter it and label it—to inscribe and to word it rightly—this is a great task, and it is the part of literature which can be most distinctly taught. But it is only the formation of its body. And the soul of it can exist without the body; but not at all the body without the soul; for that is true no less of literature than of all else in us or of us—“litera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat.”
Nevertheless, I must be content to-day with our old word. We cannot say ‘spiriture’ nor ‘animature,’ instead of literature; but you must not be content with the vulgar interpretation of the word. Remember always that you come to this University—or, at least, your fathers came—not to learn how to say things, but how to think them.
5. “How to think them! but that is only the art of logic,” you perhaps would answer. No, again, not at all: logic is a method, not a power; and we have defined literature to be the modification of ideal things by ideal power, not by mechanical method. And you come to the University to get that power, or develop it; not to be taught the mere method of using it.
I say you come to the University for this; and perhaps some of you are much surprised to hear it! You did not know that you came to the University for any such purpose. Nay, perhaps you did not know that you had come to a University at all? You do not at this instant, some of you, I am well assured, know what a University means. Does it mean, for instance—can you answer me in a moment, whether it means—a place where everybody comes to learn something; or a place where somebody comes to learn everything? It means—or you are trying to make it mean—practically and at present, the first; but it means theoretically, and always, the last; a place where only certain persons come, to learn everything; that is to say, where those who wish to be able to think, come to learn to think: not to think of mathematics only, nor of morals, nor of surgery, nor chemistry, but of everything, rightly.
6. I say you do not all know this; and yet, whether you know it or not—whether you desire it or not—to some extent the everlasting fitness of the matter makes the facts conform to it. For we have at present, observe, schools of three kinds, in operation over the whole of England. We have—I name it first, though, I am sorry to say, it is last in influence—the body consisting of the Royal Academy, with the Institute of Architects, and the schools at Kensington, and their branches; teaching various styles of fine or mechanical art. We have, in the second place, the Royal Society, as a central body; and, as its satellites, separate companies of men devoted to each several science: investigating, classing, and describing facts with unwearied industry. And lastly and chiefly, we have the great Universities, with all their subordinate public schools, distinctively occupied in regulating—as I think you will at once admit—not the language merely, nor even the language principally, but the modes of philosophical and imaginative thought in which we desire that youth should be disciplined, and age informed and majestic. The methods of language, and its range; the possibilities of its beauty, and the necessities for its precision, are all dependent upon the range and dignity of the unspoken conceptions which it is the function of these great schools of literature to awaken, and to guide.
7. The range and dignity of conceptions! Let us pause a minute or two at these words, and be sure we accept them.
First, what is a conception? What is this separate object of our work, as scholars, distinguished from artists, and from men of science?
We shall discover this better by taking a simple instance of the three agencies.
Suppose that you were actually on the plain of Pæstum, watching the drift of storm-cloud which Turner has here engraved.[B] If you had occupied yourself chiefly in schools of science, you would think of the mode in which the electricity was collected; of the influence it had on the shape and motion of the cloud; of the force and duration of its flashes, and of other such material phenomena. If you were an artist, you would be considering how it might be possible, with the means at your disposal, to obtain the brilliancy of the light, or the depth of the gloom. Finally, if you were a scholar, as distinguished from either of these, you would be occupied with the imagination of the state of the temple in former times; and as you watched the thunderclouds drift past its columns, and the power of the God of the heavens put forth, as it seemed, in scorn of the departed power of the god who was thought by the heathen to shake the earth—the utterance of your mind would become, whether in actual words or not, such as that of the Psalmist:—“Clouds and darkness are round about Him—righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His throne.” Your thoughts would take that shape, of their own accord, and if they fell also into the language, still your essential scholarship would consist, not in your remembering the verse, still less in your knowing that “judgment” was a Latin word, and “throne” a Greek one; but in your having power enough of conception, and elevation enough of character, to understand the nature of justice, and be appalled before the majesty of dominion.
8. You come, therefore, to this University, I repeat once again, that you may learn how to form conceptions of proper range or grasp, and proper dignity, or worthiness. Keeping then the ideas of a separate school of art, and separate school of science, what have you to learn in these? You would learn in the school of art, the due range and dignity of deeds; or doings—(I prefer the word to “makings,” as more general), and in the school of science, you would have to learn the range and dignity of knowledges.
Now be quite clear about this: be sure whether you really agree with me or not.
You come to the School of Literature, I say, to learn the range and dignity of conceptions.
To the School of Art, to learn the range and dignity of deeds.
To the School of Science, to learn the range and dignity of knowledges.
Do you agree to that, or not? I will assume that you admit my triple division; but do you think, in opposition to me, that a school of science is still a school of science, whatever sort of knowledge it teaches; and a school of art still a school of art, whatever sort of deed it teaches; and a school of literature still a school of literature, whatever sort of notion it teaches?
Do you think that? for observe, my statement denies that. My statement is, that a school of literature teaches you to have one sort of conception, not another sort; a school of art to do a particular sort of deed, not another sort; a school of science to possess a particular sort of knowledge, not another sort.
9. I assume that you differ with me on this point;—some of you certainly will. Well then, let me go back a step. You will all go thus far with me, that—now taking the Greek words—the school of literature teaches you to have νοῦς, or conception of things, instead of ἄνοια—no conception of things; that the school of art teaches you τεχνὴ of things, instead of ἀτεχνία; and the school of science ἐπιστήμη, instead of ἄγνοια or ‘ignorantia.‘ But, you recollect, Aristotle names two other faculties with these three—φρόνησις,