'Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be!'

It is Open to Labour and to Merit!

Ruskin on the Move - Part 2

Well, this post is a continuation of, and a sequel to our last past post on John Ruskin!

Ruskin from here on, exhorts the reader to exercise their prudence and their discretion in choosing good friends for themselves! Friends of whom they will be so immensely proud of all of the time!

But at the same time, Ruskin also avers that good friendships are quite hard to come by!

Says he, in his Sesame –

[Additionally, let me append a gentle little suggestion for you dear reader: Please do read these Ruskinean lines given herein below, with much awe, adore and relish! 

May these Ruskinean delights of yore, seep gently into your system, pervade gracefully your entire psyche, help you transform your life’s purpose, and thereby enable you to chart your course anew with a rejuvenated dynamism from here on! 

By the way, please don’t feel shy of giving flying kisses and flying muahs ;-) to some of the sweetest phrases and noblest Ruskinean lines that you’re sure bound to come across in these mighty Ruskinean delights! ;-) Thank you!]

Ruskin speaking -

Granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice!

Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would; and those whom we now, we cannot have at our side when we most need them.

All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man of science, and be answered good- humouredly.

Blessed is the little child who is trained in the beautiful art of reading!
For the child who reads, becomes an adult who thinks!

We always relish momentary pleasures and momentary chances!

We may intrude ten minutes’ talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of a queen.

And yet these momentary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, and powers, in pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation; - talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts.

And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long, - kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it! - in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves, - we make no account of that company, - perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long!

You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them; and the passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar.

But it is not so.

Suppose you never were to see their faces; — suppose you could be put behind a screen in the statesman’s cabinet, or the prince’s chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen?

And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men; - this station of audience, and honourable privy council, you despise!

And what, pray, is this society that he’s talking about?

Well, that’s the society and the company of great minds of the past, great philosophers of the past, great writers of the past, and great books of the past!

Continues Ruskinji - 

But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them.

Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you about passing matters much better in their writings than in their careless talk. Yet I admit that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings—books, properly so called.

For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

Mark this distinction—it is not one of quality only. There are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go farther.

The good book of the hour, then, —I do not speak of the bad ones, - is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend’s present talk would be.

These bright accounts of travels; good-humoured and witty discussions of question; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history; - all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them.

But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend’s letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day.

So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and weather, last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a “book” at all, nor, in the real sense, to be ‘read’.

A book is essentially not a talking thing, but a written thing; and written, not with a view of mere communication, but of permanence.

The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would—the volume is mere MULTIPLICATION of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would; you write instead: that is mere CONVEYANCE of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it.

The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful.

So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly at all events.

In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him; —this, the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize.

He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, ‘This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory’.

That is his ‘writing’; it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree

of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture.

That is a ‘Book’.

Books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men: - by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers.

These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; —yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain tomorrow?

Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for ENTREE here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time?

Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead.

The place you desire, and the place you FIT YOURSELF FOR, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this: -

it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else.

No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there.

At the portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question: - “Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be.

Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? —no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you.

The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognize our presence’.

This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your love in these two following ways.

(1) First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects.

(2) Very ready we are to say of a book, ‘How good this is—that’s exactly what I think!’ But the right feeling is, ‘How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day’.

But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at HIS meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first.

And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once; —nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it.

And it is just the same with men’s best wisdom. When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, ‘Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?’

And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author’s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul.

Do not hope to get at any good author’s meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.

How many flying muahs did you give to these awe-inspiring lines, dear reader!? Well, if you ask me, I musta given a million myself! ;-)

He real affects eternity! And howww!

To be continued…