Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 070.djvu/342

336 Mr Ruskin's Works. [Sept. approving voice of God, the glorious symbol of Him, the evidence of His kind presence, or the obedience to His will by Him induced and supported,"—(p. 126.) Now it is a delicate task, when a man errs by the exaggeration of a great truth or a noble sentiment, to combat his error; and yet as much mischief may ultimately arise from an error of this description as from any other. The thoughts and feelings which Mr Ruskin has described, form the noblest part of our sentiment of the beautiful, as they form the noblest phase of the human reason. But they are not the whole of it. The visible object, to adopt his phraseology, does become a type to the contemplative and pious mind of the attribute of God, and is thus exalted to our apprehension. But it is not beautiful solely or originally on this account. To assert this, is simply to falsify our human nature.

Before, however, we enter into these types, or this typical beauty, it will be well to notice how Mr Ruskin deals with previous and opposing theories. It will be well also to remind our readers of the outline of that theory of association of ideas which is here presented to us in so very confused a manner. We shall then be better able to understand the very curious position our author has taken up in this domain of speculative philosophy.

Mr Ruskin gives us the following summary of the "errors" which he thinks it necessary in the first place to clear from his path:—

"Those erring or inconsistent positions which I would at once dismiss are, the first, that the beautiful is the true; the second, that the beautiful is the useful; the third, that it is dependent on custom; and the fourth, that it is dependent on the association of ideas."

The first of these theories, that the beautiful is the true, we leave entirely to the tender mercies of Mr Ruskin; we cannot gather from his refutation to what class of theorists he is alluding. The remaining three are, as we understand the matter, substantially one and the same theory. We believe that no one, in these days, would define beauty as solely resulting either from the apprehension of Utility, (that is, the adjustment of parts to a whole, or the application of the object to an ulterior purpose,) or to Familiarity and the affection which custom engenders; but they would regard both Utility and Familiarity as amongst the sources of those agreeable ideas or impressions, which, by the great law of association, became intimately connected with the visible object. We must listen, however, to Mr Ruskin's refutation of them:

"That the beautiful is the useful is an assertion evidently based on that limited and false sense of the latter term which I have already deprecated. As it is the most degrading and dangerous supposition which can be advanced on the subject, so, fortunately, it is the most palpably absurd. It is to confound admiration with hunger, love with lust, and life with sensation; it is to assert that the human creature has no ideas and no feelings, except those ultimately referable to its brutal appetites. It has not a single fact, nor appearance of fact, to support it, and needs no combating at least until its advocates have obtained the consent of the majority of mankind that the most beautiful productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of art, spades and millstones.

"Somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that the sense of the beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. For all that can be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly of much of their repulsiveness; whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that, because it is possible to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of lusciousness in grapes. …

"I pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas.

"Frequent has been the support and wide the acceptance of this supposition, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive sentences were ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction or a confusion of terms. Thus Alison, 'There are scenes undoubtedly more beautiful than Runnymede, yet, to those who recollect the great event that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on the imagination,'—where we are wonder-struck at the bold obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by