ThestructureofValues

Finally, the characteristics of Ruskin's conception of morality, which lies beneath the ideas of Beauty and Wealth, should be identified. Although he tried to define his own concepts of Beauty and Wealth with much effort, he took the ideas of morality for granted without further elaboration.

1. In his 1882 preface to Sesame and Lilies (1865), he writes that the book depends on the conviction that ‘there is such a thing as essential good, and as essential evil, in books, in art, and in character; - that this essential goodness and badness are independent of epochs, fashions, opinions, or revolutions' (vol. 18, 50). A belief in the universal moral values is Ruskin's fundamental attitude towards values long nourished by his religious parents at home.

2. Perhaps for the purpose of confirming the self-evident moral basis, Ruskin attaches an appendix to the end of Munera Pulveris and explains the ‘fortifying virtues' that should counter the doctrine of laissez-faire. This appendix reveals the entirety of the values of Life which he implicitly acknowledges. First, referring to the four cardinal virtues since the an­tiquity, ‘Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance', he remarks: ‘These cardinal and sentinel virtues are not only the means of protecting and prolonging life itself, but they are the chief guards, or sources, of the material means of life, and the governing powers and princes of economy' (vol. 17,285). But he warns against neglecting the Christian virtues such as ‘Faith, Hope and Charity'. When he inherited the idea of ‘Admiration, Hope, and Love' from Wordsworth and defined Life as ‘its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration', he had these inner virtues in mind.

3. In one of his lectures, The Political Economy of Art (1857), Ruskin talks about the fresco of the Allegory of Good Government drawn by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for the town hall of Siena (vol. 16, 54-6). This painting repre­sents the state of the good civic government by personification of various virtues, where a monarch is surrounded by the symbolic figures of six virtues (the four cardinal virtues plus Magnanimity and Peace), and three figures of virtues (Faith, Hope, and Charity) with wings right above the monarch. Ruskin consents to the status of the three virtues as the primary values in the artistic ‘composition’ of the political and economic system.

4. Ruskin’s work that deals exclusively with morality is The Ethics of the Dust (1866), a dialogue with schoolgirls. It is a peculiar parable of ethics against the background of mineralogy. By the ethics of dust he means a metaphor, in which particles of dust gather round to crystallize into various minerals. He teaches the formation of order in human society on the basis of what might be called the ethics of crystallization. The content of what he regards as morality is ‘virtue’. ‘The very word “virtue”’ means, not “conduct”, but “strength”, vital energy in the heart’ (vol. 18, 288). ‘The essential idea of real virtue is that of a vital human strength, which instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is right’ (vol. 18, 301). Referring to the view of a linguist, Ruskin argues that words begin­ning with ‘V’, for example, vital, virtuous, and vigorous, are interrelated. Thus, we arrive at the relationship between Life as a stock of capabilities and virtue as its evaluating value.

5. Three volumes of Fors Clavigera (1871-84), a collection of his open letters addressed to workers, are miscellanies of the ideas of his ideal society. Of all others, letter 67, a summary of his social ideas in the form of sixteen aphorisms, is noteworthy as it shows the place of morality in his entire plan of reform. For him, the most important measure for social reform is education. The gist of his view on educa­tion is as follows:

All education must be moral first; intellectual secondarily. Intellectual, before - (much more without) - moral education, is, in completeness, impossible; and in incompleteness, a calamity. (No. 12)

Moral education begins in making the creature to be educated, clean, and obedient. (No. 13)

Moral education consists next in making the creature practically serviceable to other creatures, according to the nature and extent of its own capacities.... Moral education is summed when the creature has been made to do its work with delight, and thoroughly; but this cannot be until some degree of intellectual education has been given also. (No. 14)

Intellectual education consists in giving the creature the faculties of admiration, hope, and love. These are to be taught by the study of beautiful Nature; the sight and history of noble persons; and the setting forth of noble object of action. (No. 15)

The words ‘admiration, hope, and love’, the key concepts of the ‘Wealth = Life = Beauty’ thesis, reappear here in aphorism no. 15 as the central task of education.

6. The essence of Ruskin’s view of education is not better described than by the following passage in Munera Pulveris: ‘True education has, indeed, no other function than the development of these faculties, and of the relative will. It has been the great error of modern intelligence to mistake science for education. You do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was not’ (vol. 17, 232). Ruskin’s precept of education is a corollary of his conception of Life as a stock of capabilities. Moral and intellectual education should raise capabilities and contribute to higher Life through economic and artistic activities.

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