On this page
-
Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
"$$&& Qtifrt ULtmtt* tSATTODAY,
-
^nrtMtn.
-
We should do our utmost to encourage the...
-
which to see the general tendency of a h...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
"$$&& Qtifrt Ultmtt* Tsattoday,
" $$ && Qtifrt ULtmtt * tSATTODAY ,
^Nrtmtn.
^ nrtMtn .
We Should Do Our Utmost To Encourage The...
We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , foi the Useful encourages itself . —Gokthe .
Which To See The General Tendency Of A H...
which to see the general tendency of a human being set in rapid intellectual motion . They have no idea of work , and even now its history has still to "be written ; pieces are patched together every day in the papers , because now we have begun to wonder ; but to the bulk of literary men the useful is disagreeable to a proverb . Their views of things contain sufficient truth ; like the earlier prophets and teachers , they point out man ' s higher aims ; but the slow and gradual road of the race they have not seen , and even now only see it as observers .
THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL . ( Concluded from No . 85 , p . 1070 . ) Part III . It becomes the duty of the teachers of the people of the Tyrtseus of the workmen , to animate every one ; but literary men have been as far behind , and their ignorance of facts has been only a consequence of the general law , that the mind goes on to seek its own ideas of beauty as well as of pleasure , without thinking of its dependence . Literary men have constantly looked on the beautiful as the highest ; and as specimens of the most activeminded of their race , thev are the best cases from
Indeed , it is probable that when they cease to see it otherwise than as observers , they will cease to be literary men , but workers in science , in art , or in organization . But their point of view has not been sufficient , they tell us of sensations and sentiments that are beautiful , and have acquired power over us in an emotional way , so that our very morals are dependent only on vague and dim ideas of what should be—sufficient , certainly , for him who has attained a large amount of abstract thought , but utterly insufficient for him who wants to found rational laws of behaviour . The
definition of a lie is different with different men ; and Parliament disputed and often changed its mind about the propriety of marriage with a sisterin-law . The very use of morals is a subject scarcely ever dreamed of ; and some portion of society , seeing them based on such a mere erhotional foundation , have begun to think them o no value . We do not recognize them as impressed upon man so deeply that every society without
proper recognition of them must sooner or later fall into pieces—as real useful facts , without which we should neither feel comfortable nor happy , nor become great , or useful , or progressive . Indeed , some people consider their laws made only for the timid and the weak , whereas the unavoidable punishment which they slowly and vigorously inflict , shows them to be hacked by a great and terrible authority .
Hut the same way has been followed in our civil laws . Men have followed the devices and desires of their own hearts ; and , instead of seeking what will be useful for the community , political economy has been a fight of abstract against abstract idea . The use is only corning to be inquired into since statistics became a science . Pride , revenge , and vanity have all been followed before use ; and ho blind have they been that they did not see that usefulness would supply all , even these wants , with greater energy . Some beau ideal of governing a country , us ( Jod governs a country , has condemned
whole nations to wretchedness ; some beautiful theory of vieegereney bus kept back Europe in vice and in darkness , and beauty itself has been lost from the want , of the useful . The flower blossoms beautifully , but only after the branches shall have grown from the root ; the beautiful in not to be expected under the soil . A primrose may rise up in a desolate season ; but until there be a warming of the roots we shall have no beautiful fields and orchards . The useful in at the root of everything ; the very flesh , and blood , and bone , whose whole becomes a beautiful
object . Jn one sense the useful may be Raid to encourage itself ; but we must , take it comparatively , it . has < lone so less than the beautifu ^ it has become an object of Kcorn , and , although nature has pointed wtrongly to it in directing many minds at all times to its stoien , yet the toil necessary bus been considered mean , and that which was poor has been trampled upon . A nation so full of high emotion us the Jewish , come from a country ho skilled in the useful , forgot so early their artu that , whilst they retained their inspired leaders , they uiupt go
very existence of a country depends on work , idle lounger has been looked on as the happiest man , surrounded with beautiful objects . Even the enlightened manufacturer often thinks of his great amount of machinery as valuable because it keeps up his drawing-room . But it was for something else than a few score fine drawing-rooms that the machine was made ; the sunny day did not come merely to enliven some drooping daisies in your garden .
the to an enemy ' s country to borrow a grindstone . Skill in workmanship is highly spoken of by Moses as a kind of inspiration , and the Egyptians must have admired it , and probably kept some of their knowledge as peculiar only for the privileged ; but it was not considered by these thinkers as worth preserving . They wrote their history but not their arts , and their conquerors did not even care to learn the representations of them which are left as inscriptions on their tombs . Whilst the
Work , in fact , has been depressed systematically , not always with that direct intention , but with some sinister and ignorant reason behind the action . Take our most useful product—coal , which came into the slowest use . Men could not see the value of it , it was black and ugly , and a fine tree was to be preferred . It was burnt in London , and was disliked excessively , because it was said to blacken everything , and was attempted to be suppressed , whilst they never thought of the great amount of poor and uncomfortable whom it
would make comfortable , nor the abundance of nuisances which made the city so unwholesome . Coal has slowly developed itself , its usefulness has come very gradually on the country , slower than the appreciation of any poet or painter , slower than any form of the beautiful which we know of . It has taken the power from sceptres and jewels , as if mother earth would show that she can govern her children ; and we have in its history rebelled against it as much as we have against all our duties . It has come in the form of a task with
labour and dirt , whilst we have left its vicinity , as soon as we could , leaving it to those who saw its value to work it out . Laws have trammelled us at every step , because the law worker at the useful , by becoming rich , had his ignoble blood fed as well as the noble ; and vile cities with narrow streets opposed the will of the lordly possessor of the neighbouring castle . Little as England has done for its commerce as a Government , in comparison to what it has done for itself as a power , it still stands as a mark for other nations to aim at , because it has encouraged to some extent the useful . The first to recognize its value , it has given privileges to the worker such as
he never had before ; but so new has been the policy that we are called with a sneer shopkeepers . Encouraging the useful we cease , of course , to encourage the supremacy of idle pride ; and by making the worker rich the noble finds that he will actually become poor , unless be ceases to depend for his existence on untilled land . Thus the whole country has , to some extent , become a working country in late years ; and other nations who keep the old nystem may be looked on as our former selves sneering at our iitilitarian present . But sneering is out of place . We are still wanting in the respect which the useful deserves ; and every class has an idle pleasure in leaving it , for the premature enjoyment of the beautiful .
Civilization cannot be gained by striving with pure intellect or abstract truth . It is worked out by the matter around us in which is the life of the world , and the secrets which it is the object of the understanding to find out ; and whilst we prepare for ourselves a spiritual existence on a high inner life , we must not forget that it is allied to certain forms , im our own spirit is unknown , except to a fleshly covering .
The working out of the value of the useful has been the great work of modern times . The desire of earlier times was to work out the beautiful ; now we have a new era it is entirely new , it is thousands of years against a ic \ v years ; it makes us incapable of drawing comparisons between the empires of the present and the past , because we live on an entirely different foundation . The spirit
of the conqueror is to consume , the producer has life within himself ; a nation that makes during its conquests ---that produces more food in the country which it takes than the country could product ; before , and which itself does not depend upon it , but producciH still more wealth at home , is not to he compared to one which kills and eats wherever it goes . lly what lawn the one nation dies we know , by what lawo the other dic « wo do not know . AU
these years , however , have passed away before the useful has been recognized by a nation , before £ became a rivalry among nations , and we irjav till look upon this year as a remarkable one . Not tW it has done much for trade . I know not what wUi be its effects , probably for evil , as it has stirred men's minds more to travel , and set them in th road of admiring . But when many men are movinein . one direction , they soon meet from whatever quarter they come , and this meeting is a proof that for these years of peace at least we have had the great object of the arts strongly in view . To have it recognized as a great truth is a proclamatio n of a great Gospel , a religion which will alter the world till its very face shall not be known to the comets as they return to look at us .
I was strongly impressed with this feeling as I walked into the Great Exhibition , and still I found that like nearly all other men , the natural tendency of my mind was to look at the beautiful , and I often found myself turning to the right to see the Foreign curiosities . We look calmly at beautiful objects —beauty has great power to soothe us . I went
o the beautiful objects with a kind of instinct , although I knew my duty lay amongst the useful . They produced a gentle feeling of delight and a constant succession of calm emotions . The industry of foreign countries has shown the bent of their mind , that it was more towards beauty even in an Industrial Exhibition . I walked then to
England , and there the languor of my emotions vanished , the power of labour roused me to sensations corresponding with its own mechanical strength and intellectual fertility . Ever ^ step in this quarter was a history , a step also in the civilization of man ; every invention was a sign of his progress , a mark of the ground he had cleared . Labour does not , like a statue , calm you and enchant your view ; its appearance may be insignificant , but , like an insignificant figure with a powerful brain , you know it has a character of its own . It does not
stand an isolated fact , but is capable of unending multiplication ; it is like life itself , when once begun it may have countless posterity . Every man who makes an invention bestows a largess on the race more valuable than ever Roman gave to a hungry people , and , unlike it , bearing an annual interest which never diminishes in value , because the capital can never be consumed .
Whilst the natural man inclines to the beautiful , the new man , so to speak , seeks the useful , because he knows that by it the stores of Nature are opened and the benevolence of the Deity is dispensed . AVithout it Nature appears harsh , and God himself is considered unkind ; without it the race is stationary , and the aspirations of man are become weak and frivolous . The vague longings of youth and the
take place of the realizations of maturity , land of fiction takes the place of the gradual revealing of the future . Let us encourage the use uJ , the beautiful is grasped too soon ; the child dislikes the useful , but we must make it his education ; the man dislikes it too , but he learns it as a duty ; it goes against the instincts of us all who are idle by nature , but it commands the respect of all when in
has been accomplished . Above all let us encourage the useful that we may be allowed to make rapid progress ; without its universal and quick diffusion all who are unsunplied will drag back the advanced , and it is impossible for one class to live long entirely unconnectcu with another . The link must 8 o 6 n be made , citncr by the savage violence of the one or by the ™"" , and sympathy of the other , and the £ f ltesL " ^ this age is to leave no man behind . Tli * rcveUtion of the useful has taught us the ™ lue of eve . y The world has a new idea , but the principle i « j it is to do what is sot before us , and not to nun too high things which it is not fitted or uh y w naturo
• ... A » r .. J ? „ .. j iw . , « Mfori . i . lK or nature , Htuuy enjoy Work up the materials » t , . laws ! and lay hold of the gifts ol < . <> d wl u h £ ready given under your feet . Do not imaging ^ idleness and amusement are happiness , m ^ sirable , even if they tempt under the rm beautiful ; for the work wanted is of a M ] t although the greai ; men of the earth hc «> { down by persecuting science destroy ., g 1 . Ik . * l preventing educatiou-all ... omen s of t c ^ whilst they have encode , la n , ng I ,
^ otherwise / which is calculated to proven" - ness or independence of the people-I have been led away by ^ J ^ Z * ^ subject into < bfluseness , but probal , ly H ^ atraiu of thought which will J o . kc ! U ^ ^^ leading to conclusions which ¦ sh . » •¦ ^ h * for the useful , and Hhovvmg the va \ v e o i )| g lt what in ho much wanted m pocicty ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 6, 1851, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_06121851/page/18/
-