The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

this day, and yet never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the

separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now

it is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and

lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is pestilential air at the

bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right

freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey another man,

to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is

often the best kind of liberty�liberty from care. The man who says to one,

Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh,4 has, in most cases,

more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The move

ments of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by

the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened;

but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield

reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not

slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.

There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is to say irrational or selfish:

but there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a

man is never so noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the

feeling pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised

by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him�the Irish peasant

who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust

through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant, who, 200 years ago,

at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his

chief?5�as each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, "Another for Hec

2. Fanciful, imaginative. 5. An incident described in the preface to Sir Wal3. Devoid of anatomy (Ruskin's coinage). ter Scott's novel The Fair Maid of Perth (1828). 4. Matthew 8.9.

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133 0 / JOHN RUSKIN

tor!" And therefore, in all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and

sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoic

ingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been

borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the

heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them,

and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls

withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an

unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered

with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes�this nature bade not�

this God blesses not�this humanity for no long time is able to endure. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized inven

tion of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly

speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: Divided into mere segments

of men�broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little

piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a

nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.

Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if

we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished�sand of

human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is�

we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that

rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all

in very deed for this�that we manufacture everything there except men; we

blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but

to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never

enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is

urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching,

for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to them, if

we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right

understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for

men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such

convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation

of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and

results of healthy and ennobling labour. And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and this

demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad and simple

rules:

1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention has no share.

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end.