Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/108

 followers, meant, in fact, a condemnation of civilised man, not misanthropy, indeed, but a conviction of the thorough corruption of men as they are—whatever we may hope for men as they are to be.

When, in the Modern Painters, Ruskin tried to extend his theory from the beauty of inanimate nature to the beauty of organised beings, he felt this difficulty. Some animals, and many men, are undoubtedly ugly. If they are symbolic of anything, it is of something the very opposite of divine—of sensuality, greed, and cruelty. In the language of his Evangelical days, Ruskin regards this as a result of the 'Adamite fall.' As the love of nature is essentially a part of religion, he naturally comes to a theory which identifies the 'æsthetic' with the moral or religious instinct, and scandalised many people who did not wish their love of art to be trammelled by any crotchets of morality. The change from the Ruskin of the Modern Painters to the Ruskin of the later days is, of course, marked by the development of this feeling. The vileness of man, instead of the beauties of nature, becomes his chief preoccupation. In the early volumes he is not only enthusiastic, but seems to count upon the enthusiasm