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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 , they are the best cases from 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 .
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 trs in an emotional way , s <* 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 emotional foundation , have begun to think them of 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 lall 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 inilict , shows them to be hacked by a great and terrible authori tv .
I 5 ut the same way lias been followed in our civil laws . Men have followed the devices and desires of their own hearts ; and , instead of seeking what will bo useful for the community , political economy has been a fight of abstract against abstract idea . The ime is only corning to be inquired into since statistics became a science . Pride , revenge , and vanity have all been followed before use ; and mo 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 , as (» od governs a country , has condemned whole nations to wretchedness ; some beautiful theory of vicegcrency Imh kept back Kurope 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 bruncIicH shall have grown from the root ; the beautiful is not to be expected under the soil- A primrose may ri . se up in u desolate ncason ; hut until there be ; i warming of the roots we shall have no beautiful fields and orchards . The useful is at the root of everything ; the very flesh , ; md blood , and bone , whose whole becomes a beautiful object .
In one sense the useful may be said to encourage itself ; but wo must take it comparatively , ii . has done so les . s than the beautiful , it has become an object of scorn , and , although nature has pointed ( strongly to it in directing many minds al , nil times to itH stores , yet ( he toil necessary has been con-Hidered mean , and that which wan poor lias been trampled upon . A nation ho full of high emotion hk the Jewish , conio from a country ho skilled in tin ; UHeful , forgot so early their arts that , whiles !' they retained their inspired leudorw , they inuut go
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
very existence of a country depends on work , the 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 .
Work 3 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 he ceases to depend for his existence on untillcd land . Thus the whole
country has , to some extent , become a working country in late years ; and other nations who keep the old system may be looked on as our former selves sneering at our utilitarian 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 undcrstnuding to find out ; and whilst we prepare for ourselves a spiritual existence on n , high inner life , we must not forget that it is allied to certain forms , ita our own wpirit is unknown , except to a fleshly covering .
J he working out of the value of the useful has been the , great work of modern times . The desire of earlier times wan to work out the beautiful ; now we have a new era it is entirely new , it is thousands of years against a few years ; it makes uh incapable of drawing comparisons between the empires of the present and the past , because we live on an entirely diflerent foundation . The . spirit ,
of the conqueror in to consume , the producer has lile within himnclf ; a nation that makes during its conquests that produces more ; food in the country which it taken than the country could produce before , and which itself does not depend upon it , but produces still more wealth at homo , is not to be compared to one , which kill . s and eat , ) wherever it goes . liy what lawn the one nation dies we know , by what laws the other dies we do not know . All
these years however , have passed away before the useful has been recognized by a nation , before i ! became a rivalry among nations , and we may well look upon this year as a remarkable one . Not thai it has done much for trade . I know not what will be its effects , probably for evil , as it has stirred men s minds more to travel , and set them in the road of admiring . But when many men are movin g in one direction , they soon meet from whate ver 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 proclamation 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 an d intellectual fertility . Every 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 . Without 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 take place of the realizations of maturity , and tho land of fiction takes the place of the gradual revealing of the future . Let us encourage t-he useful , 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 it lias been accomplished . Above all let us encourage the useful that wo may he allowed to make rapid progress ; without its universal and quick diffusion all who are unsupplied will drag back the advanced , and it is mipossibltfor one class to live long entirely unconnected with another . The link must soon be made , ei lie bthe violence of the one or by the wisdom viwiv / in \ i ¦ j
y savage I . / V Lilt . / ndVdal' v ; u unv' . r---- --- r and sympathy of the other , and the greatest cry < this age is to leave no man behind . The revelation of the useful has taught us the value of eve . Y on-The world has a new idea , but the principle is o , it is to do what is sot before us , and not to nun too high things which it is not fitted for uh y « i enjoy . Work up the materials of nature , slimy . ' . , , ' , ! , ¦ . 1 . - . < ... , vf ( in which no and hold of the gifts of Cod wh . cn . »
laws , lay ready given , under your feet . I ><> »» t » " ««»' ^ idleness and amusement , arc happiness , oi ¦ suable , even if U . ^ y tempt under tho orm beautiful ; for the work wauled i » oi a » ' «» " jt althouKh the great men of tli « «» rth her . 1 ] down by persecuting science ., destroying th < aU » . preventing education -all elements of I h whilst they have encouraged anything ^^ othwwi . se / wlnch is calculated to prevent the / wiwn < l /> iwe iA the people i ^ ~ -
.....,., > .. ..,... ness or limepeuucuc u »« .. r , . , have been led away by the / i ^ v « « *«» subject into dillu . seness , but V ^> llU ly ' , () * „ , „« , a train of though ., which will Ihj i . h « (; ' ^ . ^ ly leading to concluMionH wind , nh , » ^ , ^ £ for the , iKselul . and showing tho v . i "' coliutf it what is so much wuiHod m puciuty , ton" "
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethe .
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1166 0 ft * il * a »* t % [ Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 6, 1851, page 1166, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1912/page/18/
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