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thesis entitled

AESTHETIC VISION AS SOCIAL PROTEST
IN CARLYLE, RUSKIN AND MORRIS

presented by

Kurt Cobb

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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M.A. History

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MSU In An Affirmative Action/Ewe] Opportunity lnetltuion
mm:

 

AESTHETIC VISION AS SOCIAL PROTEST
IN CARLYLE, RUSKIN AND MORRIS

By

Kurt Cobb

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1996

SOC

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ABSTRACT

AESTHETIC VISION AS SOCIAL PROTEST
IN CARLYLE, RUSKIN AND MORRIS

By

Kurt Cobb

Three nineteenth century British authors--Thomas Carlyle, John
Ruskin and William Morris--taken together create a coherent aesthetic
response to nineteenth century British society. This paper starts with
their critique of work and moves outward to an aesthetic critique of
society as a whole. It concludes with an alternate vision proposed by
the authors of a society based on aesthetic principles. The two ideas
which govern the logic of this paper are 1) that nature is the aesthetic
guide for society and 2) that pleasure in labor is a necessary condition
for the creation of beauty. Nineteenth century working and living
conditions not only acted against the creation of beauty, but fostered

its destruction and created ugliness in its place.

 

'3" 'III!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A student can go through the entire educational system without
ever hearing the word beauty. This omission has impoverished education
and the world we live in. Against this and other omissions, my advisor,
Dr. Norman Pollack, has raised his voice. He refuses to let beauty
remain trapped in art and insists on bringing it both into the entire
world of things and people and into a description of their
relationships.

Dr. Pollack gave me both the insight and the freedom to produce
this thesis of ideas. His confidence in me and his love of ideas
allowed me to focus on important texts and to take the time necessary to
draw out their meaning carefully and precisely.

My wife, Olga, was the first to suggest teaching as a career for
me, and her instincts were proved absolutely correct once I started
teaching. She supported my return to school and gave me valuable advice
on how to navigate through graduate school. After I had finished the
first draft of this thesis, she gave me some excellent ideas on
reorganizing parts of it, and this helped to create a beginning and
ending that were much more forceful and clear.

My parents also gave me support, both emotional and financial,

without which I doubt I could have finished my graduate work.

iii

Finally, I owe thanks to perhaps the greatest living American
psychologist, James Hillman, whom I met only once, and who does not know

how much I am indebted to his work and insight.

iv

II
II
III

 

”as;

PREFACE

In a way the genesis of this paper goes back ten years to my first
encounter with the work of psychologist James Hillman. Since that time
I have read almost all of Hillman's work. I also had the good fortune
to attend a seminar on beauty which he led. The seminar and his written
work gave me two key insights which opened the way for my topic.

The first insight came in the seminar during which Hillman
lamented the decline of beauty in our century. He said that this
decline represents a kind of unconsciousness, as severe as any Victorian
sexual repression.1 In an age which regards itself (rightly or
wrongly) as psychologically self-aware, the material sensuous world has

become repressed. Hillman gives the example of marriage counseling to

illustrate his point:

Let's take a husband and wife in a modern suburb, and they
fight about drink and money and in-laws and love and little
habits. Then he goes to analysis and she goes to analysis
and they work on the relationship, and they are good sincere
patients who try--group therapy, team or office therapy,
family therapy, sex therapy--they get it all together as
human decent people. They may even go to Church. And still
there is a terrible misery going on, because the room in
which they’re set, its low ceiling, thin hollow doors, the
bed, the dishes, the TV programs, the magazines, the light
tubes, the furniture they have around them, and so on and so
on, the whole world of material things, verbal things,
institutional things in which their marriage is set is
nasty, brutish, ugly, cheap, shoddy, vicious--without soul
at all. Fake. How can they possibly straighten out their

 

1James Hillman, "Seminar on Beauty," Leslie College, Cambridge,
Mass., Jan. 24-26, 1990.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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situation if the whole stage including the lines in the
script are fake?2

But the repression manifests itself on a larger scale as well.
Hillman gives an architectural example:

Look at the world of buildings: look at all that has
been blown up and torn down, everything solid and well made
and with memory--now if that happened in the forties, and it
did happen--Dresden, Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw, all over--
it was called bombing and destruction, and we mourned the
loss of our cities. Now we call it development, and the
people who do it are called "developers" and "planners."
This is Orwell: 1984. Then it was terror: now, of course,
people aren't firebombed and killed, but the civilization--
the world of things that are their repositories of memory
and beauty and love--these are gone, and I think this is a
terror, an unconscious terror, an even worse terror to live
in a city that has been destroyed and yet looks marvelous
and new. The soul feels its loss but it can't tell what's
wrong. It's schizogenic. We are getting two signals at
once, because the actual destruction that is terrible is
given wonderful names like "development" [and] "urban
renewal"--and we wonder why the cities with their marvelous
buildings and developments are full of crime, as if it were
the fault of social factors or unemployment or fatherless
families. Well, the crime begins in those buildings, on the
drawing boards and planning commissions. One crime begats
another.3

In these examples Hillman shows that the aesthetic affects our
everyday lives in profound ways. This is so, he believes, because human
beings are first and foremost "sensuously imagining animals." Hillman
asks, "[W]hy not imagine a psychology that starts there, in the
aesthetic nature of human beings and the aesthetic nature of the world
which displays itself in sense events, to the senses, and the first

reaction is to live a thing as a sense image?"4

 

2James Hillman, Inter Views (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1983),
135-36.

3Hillman, Inter Views, 139-40.
4Hillman, Inter Views, 144-45.

vi

 

 

 

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I seek to expand this idea, to approach society as whole from an
aesthetic point of view. The three authors I study in this paper--
Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Morris--taken together make a
good start in that direction. They, too, see humans as profoundly
aesthetic creatures.

The second insight I owe to Hillman is his idea of the "work
instinct." He says, "I think there is a work instinct; it's what
developed human civilization, and I think this instinct in itself can be
disturbed, affected, pathologized."5 Part of that disturbance has to
do with the Old Testament view that work is a curse. "We moralize work
and make it a problem," Hillman says, "forgetting that hands 1235 to
work and that in the hands is the mind." Hillman wants to imagine work
as an "id" activity rather than a product of the superego, that is, as a
pleasurable activity which functions autonomously, rather than a painful

one performed under threat of punishment.6

Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris use this disturbance in the realm of
work as one of their starting points for an aesthetic analysis of
British society. They all believe that the "pathologies" of work form
part of the basis for wider social and economic problems. For Ruskin
and Morris the disturbance itself results from a degradation of the
aesthetic aspect of work.

These ideas flow in many directions in the writings of the three
authors, so many, in fact, that the scope of this thesis requires that I

be more suggestive than exhaustive in order to keep its length within

 

SHillman, Inter Views, 162.
6Hillman, Inter Views, 163.

vii

 

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the agreed bounds. Fortunately, the richness of the material allows me
to focus on just those writings in which the relationship between beauty
and the political, economic and social structures of nineteenth-century
British society is most fully developed and aptly described. Using
those writings I will focus on the authors' ideas: how these ideas fit
together; how they differ; and how, when taken together, they create a
coherent, if not complete, aesthetic response to the century.

I mention one problem in advance both to forewarn the reader and
to enable me to keep the focus in the main text on the authors' ideas.
To our modern sensibilities some of the authors' references to women
seem derogatory, and in this respect, both Carlyle and Ruskin exhibit
attitudes typical of their era. Morris, a dedicated socialist, believed
in the equality of women, but occasionally fell prey to his Victorian
conditioning.

If there is any message for us today in this paper, it is that
many of the problems which these authors discussed more than a century
ago persist; in some ways, they have only worsened. Yet, the message of
the authors was not one of despair: they hoped that with nature as our
guide humanity would find its way back to the path of pleasurable work,
beautiful creation and just relations, both among members of society and

between mankind and the earth itself.

viii

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................ . .............. 1
CHAPTER 1

NATURE: AESTHETIC GUIDE FOR SOCIETY ................................... 7

Medieval Origins ............................................. ....8

Organic Form.......... ...... .. ...... ..... ....................... 10

The Pasture, The Garden and the Forest .......................... 11
CHAPTER 2

WORK, PLEASURE AND BEAUTY ............................................. 16
CHAPTER 3

AN AESTHETIC CRITIQUE OF SOCIETY..... ................................. 25

The Degradation of Work ........................................ 25

The Impoverishment of the Aesthetic Imagination.... ............. 32

The Destruction of Beauty ............... . ....................... 37
CHAPTER 4

THE AESTHETIC POLITY..... ........ . .................................... 47

Political Governance ............................................ 48

Workers and Owners... .................... . ................... ...51

Commerce and Wealth........... ................................ ..S4

A New Probity ........ ...... .......... . .................... 55

A New Consumer Ethic....... ......... . ........... . ......... S7

The Accumulation of Wealth.. .............................. 60

Education..... ....... ........ .................... . .............. 61
CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION: AESTHETIC LIFE AND THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION .............. 65

WORKS CITED ........................................................... 71

ix

 

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INTRODUCTION

To inculcate a love of beauty is one of the main aims of education
in Plato's Republic. And, his philosopher-king is likened to "an artist
working after a divine plan."7 The main concern of the Republic, of
course, is justice. Here, in the work of the Western tradition's primal
political philosopher, the ideas of beauty and justice are inextricably
intertwined.

From Plato forward, however, the two ideas are not often discussed
together, and their relevance to one another sometimes seems obscure.

To Plato the "beautiful" and the "just" both proceed from the "Good."
Where there is beauty (that is, true beauty and not mere aestheticism),
there is also justice, and vice versa.8

The relationship between beauty and a just society is an important
theme for Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Morris, three
nineteenth century British social critics. They all link a better
society with a more beautiful society, and therefore represent a revival
of the connection first made by Plato.

These three writers enunciated a common aesthetic vision of

society as a protest against the industrialism and commercialism of

 

7Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. with an Introduction by
Francis MacDonald Cornford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941),

92, 209.

8Francis MacDonald Cornford, notes to The Republic of Plato, by
Plato (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 221.

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2
their age. In this paper, I examine four aspects of their protest with
a chapter devoted to each of the following aspects: 1) nature as an
aesthetic guide for society: 2) the link between work, pleasure and
beauty; 3) an aesthetic critique of British society; and 4) an outline
of a better society guided by aesthetic principles, an "aesthetic
polity," if you will.

Throughout these chapters I employ an expansive three-fold
definition of beauty. First, there is beauty in objects. This is the
static beauty in things ranging from everyday household items, to the
finest sculpture, to a rural landscape. Second, there is beauty in
action. This is the dynamic beauty in skillful action. It might
include something as breathtaking as a long, score-making pass on the
football field; as practiced and flowing as a ballet; or as fine and
studied as the movements of craftsman or a chef. Third, there is the
beauty of relationships, both in the reciprocal ties of affection and
loyalty between people and in the proper relationship between people and
nature. Following Plato, beauty emanates from such relationships when
they are just.

This broad definition provides the background for two key concepts
developed in Chapters One and Two which drive the logic of this paper:
1) the correlation of nature and beauty and 2) the dependence of beauty
in man-made work on pleasurable labor. The first concept is that nature
is the guide to what is beautiful. Nature itself embodies beauty, and
we create beauty when we give interpretation to nature's leafy
imprecision and meandering movement. Geometric design with its perfect

triangles, rectangles and circles relies on a mathematical precision not

 

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found in nature and is therefore opposed to such an aesthetic. The
second concept is that pleasure in labor is a necessary condition for
the creation of man-made beauty. The craftsman unavoidably invests his
design and workmanship with his emotional state; in this way, his
pleasure or lack of it gets reflected as the beauty or ugliness of his
creation. The pleasure in work depends on self-direction and variety.
Decoration which follows nature allows for infinite variety and
interpretation because nature itself is so varied. In following nature
the craftsman has many decisions to make about interpretation. He is
therefore obliged to direct his own work, and he finds ample opportunity
for variation in it. Chapter Three, an aesthetic critique of society,
and Chapter Four, an outline of a better society based on the principle

of beauty, grow directly from these key concepts.

If this paper can be said to have a central character, it would be
the craftsman. (The focus of Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris on the
craftsman creates a masculine bias in the language they use and also, of
necessity, in the language of this paper. However, their analysis, in
its essentials, could apply equally to women.) The craftsman is at his
peak while creating the organic sculptures and lines of Gothic
architecture. But, he reaches his nadir when he is turned into a
factory drudge in the nineteenth century world of mass production. The
three authors use the relentless degradation of the craftsman from the
Renaissance onward as the quintessential case for illustrating the
decline of beauty.

Taken together, the authors were witnesses to an entire century of

this decline: Carlyle lived from 1795 to 1881, Ruskin from 1819 to

 

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1900, Morris from 1834 to 1896. In this paper I am treating them
together because both their ideas and their lives were closely
intertwined. Carlyle and Ruskin were close friends and carried on a
lively and extensive correspondence. Ruskin considered himself a
disciple of and son to Carlyle.9 Morris, in turn, carried the torch
previously handed down to Ruskin by Carlyle. Morris wrote: "I cannot
help saying, by the way, how deadly dull the world would have been
twenty years ago but for Ruskin! It was through him that I learned to
give form to my discontent, which I must say was not by any means
vague." Morris considered Ruskin's The Nature of the Gothic to be "one
of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century."10

Each of these men recognized that the political, social and
economic arrangements of nineteenth-century British society produced a
particular aesthetic, a degraded one in their view, and one which
reflected the injustices of the age in its ugliness. In Carlyle this
message is inchoate and must be drawn out by implication. Ruskin and
Morris, however, were explicit about starting with an aesthetic
viewpoint and working out the implications for society. They felt that
Britain's dimmed and perverted view of art was as much to blame for its

social and economic problems as other factors. For example, Ruskin

believed the relationship between art and society was reflexive. Art

 

9Derrick Leon, Ruskin: The Great Victorian (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd., 1949), 368.

10William Morris, How I Became a Socialist, in News from Nowhere
and Other Writiggg, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer (New York:
Penguin, 1993), 381; idem, preface to The Nature of the Gothic, by John
Ruskin, in News from Nowhere and Other Writings, ed. with an
Introduction by Clive Wilmer (New York: Penguin, 1993), 367.

5

both mirrored and influenced society: "In her own life and growth [art]
partly implies, partly secures, that of the nation in the midst of which
she is practiced[.]"11 Morris was even more strident about the
importance of art in relation to social and economic problems. He was
explicit that the creation of beauty signalled the pleasure of the
creator in his work and that "the lack of this pleasure in daily
work...has made our towns and habitations sordid and hideous, insults to
the beauty of the earth which they disfigure, and all the accessories of
life mean, trivial, ugly--in a word, vulgar."12 Bad art, in its
broadest terms, resulted in a pleasureless and ugly existence. But,
good art, Morris believed, had a crucial role to play even for those in
the most desperate circumstances:

[I]t must be remembered that civilization has reduced the

workman to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he

scarcely knows how to frame a desire for any life much

better than that which he now endures perforce. It is the

province of art to set the true ideal of a full and

reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception

and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that

is, shall be as necessary to man as his daily bread[.]13

To see why Morris believes that art is as necessary as daily

bread, one must understand his very broad definition of art. It

includes a continuum from the humblest decorative or expressive effort

 

11John Ruskin, The Two Paths, being4Lectures on Art and its
Application to Decoration and Manufacture, in Sesame & Lilies,,The Two
Paths & The Kingigf the Golden River, ed. Ernest Rhys with an
Introduction by Oliver Lodge (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1909), 96.

12William Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," in Political
Writings: Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed.
with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes
Press, 1994), 84-85.

13Morris, How I Became a Socialist, 383.

 

 

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to the most refined painting, sculpture or poetry, and it is the

definition to keep in mind while reading this paper:

Art is man's embodied expression of interest in the life of
man; it springs from man's pleasure in his life; pleasure we
must call it, taking all human life together, however much
it may be broken by the grief and trouble of individuals;
and as it is the expression of pleasure in life generally,
in the memory of the deeds of the past, and the hope of
those of the future, so it is especially the expression of
man's pleasure in the deeds of the present; in his work.
[emphasis added]14

 

1['Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," 84.

CHAPTER 1

NATURE: AESTHETIC GUIDE FOR SOCIETY

Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris were unanimous in their opinion that
nature offered an aesthetic guide for society. For Carlyle nature was
an immense source of beauty:

The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal,
"Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do
they spin: yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep
of Beauty. "The lilies of the field,"--dressed finer than
earthly princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow-
field; a beautiful eye looking-out on you, from the great
inner Sea of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make these,
if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not
inwardly Beauty?15

Carlyle also believed that nature had a moral as well as aesthetic force
for nature's laws could not be ignored without penalty. He wrote:
Nature's Laws, I must repeat, are eternal: her small still
voice, speaking from the inmost heart of us, shall not,
under terrible penalties, be disregarded. No one man can
depart from the truth without damage to himself.16
For Ruskin the contemplation of nature in art enriched and enhanced the
life of society:
So long as Art is steady in the contemplation and exhibition

of natural facts, so long she herself lives and grows: and
in her own life and growth partly implies, partly secures,

 

15Thomas Carlyle, 0n Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in
History, ed. with an Introduction by Carl Niemeyer (Lincoln, Nebraska:
University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 81.

16Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, ed. with an Introduction by
Iiichard D. Altick (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 145.

7

 

 

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that of the nation in the midst of which she is practiced.
[emphasis added]17

Morris echoes Ruskin in viewing nature as a model for all that is made
by the hands of man: "[E]verything made by man's hands has a form,
which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord
with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and
thwarts her[.]"18 Nature's guidance in all art was essential for the

realization of beauty.

Medieval Origins

Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris all looked backwards to the medieval
period when seeking aesthetic models. In part, this was because it was
a time when the landscape was yet unspoiled. But, it was also a time
when the craftsman gave fullest expression to the natural aesthetic
which the three authors espoused. For each of them this period held
clues to the liberation of both art and society.

For Carlyle the medieval world was a simpler place, closer to
nature and thus more in tune with its laws. Carlyle's description of it
outlines many elements of the aesthetic which he is advancing:

Behold therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no

chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with mere vapourous

Fantasms, Rymer's Federa, and Doctrines of the

Constitution, but a green solid place, that grew corn and

several other things. The Sun shone on it; the vicissitude

of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn;
ditches were dug, furrow-fields ploughed, and houses built.

 

17Ruskin, The Two Paths, 95-96.

18William Morris, The Lesser Arts, in News from Nowhere and Other
idritings, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer (New York: Penguin,
1993).
234.

 

 

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Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by
night returned home weary to their several lairs.19

Carlyle's aesthetic is drawn from a time which is pastoral and
agricultural and which followed the rhythms of nature's diurnal cycle.

Ruskin's devotion to the medieval aesthetic took the form of the
now-famous paean to Gothic architecture, The Nature of the Gothic. In
this work he comments on the superior, highly aesthetic and culturally
progressive human society implied by Gothic architecture:

In that careful distinction of species, and richness of

delicate and undisturbed organization, which characterize

the Gothic design, there is the history of rural and

thoughtful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, and

devoted to subtle inquiry; and every discriminating and

delicate touch of the chisel, as it rounds the petal or

guides the branch, is a prophecy of the development of the

entire body of the natural sciences, beginning with that of

medicine, of the recovery of literature, and the

establishment of the most necessary principles of domestic

wisdom and national peace.
Like Carlyle's medieval Britain, Ruskin's description discloses a
society close to nature and its wisdom. It is also a conscious society
in which men are devoted to "subtle inquiry" into nature.

Morris extended Ruskin's thinking. Morris states that his own
lecture, Gothic Architecture, is a "contribution toward the revolt

against utilitarianism." In it he explains that:

[the] Harmonious Architectural unit, inclusive of the arts
inigeneral, is no mere dream....but it reached its fullest
development in the Middle Ages...[I]f we are ever to have

 

 

19Carlyle, Past and Present, 50; Altick notes that Rymer's Fcedera
is a "fifteen-volume collection of historical materials on Britain's
foreign relations, published 1704-13." Doctrines of the Constitution
relates to "various treatises on constitutional law."

20John Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, in Unto This Last and
Other Writings by John Ruskin, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer
(New York: Penguin, 1985), 104.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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architecture at all, we must take up the thread of tradition
there and nowhere else. [emphasis added]21

Thus, Gothic architecture not only provides a guide for good

architecture, but also for the "arts in general." Just how important

 

this idea is to Morris's aesthetic outlook will become apparent in the

following chapters.

Organic Form

The value of the Gothic aesthetic was its emphasis on organic
form. A main "constituent element of the Gothic mind" is "naturalism,"
according to Ruskin. That mind has a "love of natural objects for their
own sake" and wishes to "represent them frankly, unconstrained by
artistical laws [i.e., conventionsl."22 Thus, it is not surprising
that such a devotee to Gothic design as Ruskin would sum up his own
lifelong aesthetic task as follows: "The law which it has been my
effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence of all noble design, in
any kind, on the sculpture or painting of Organic Form."23 This
applied not only to such things as plants, animals and landscapes, but
also to the human body, human emotions as portrayed in art and "the
effect of colour and shade on all things[.]"24 These were all

"natural facts" and had their proper forms in art.

 

21William Morris, Gothic Architecture, in News from Nowhere and
Other Writings, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer (New York:
Penguin, 1993), 332.

22Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 99.
23Ruskin, The Two Paths, 83.

Z‘Ruskin, The Two Paths, 97.

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Natural facts were also important to Morris. He wanted "to clothe
our daily and domestic walls with ornament that reminds us of the
outward face of the earth, of the innocent love of animals, or of man
passing his days between work and rest as he does."25

In Carlyle we can see the seed of this outlook. Carlyle agreed
that nature and its forms are the basis of art. Speaking through his
main character in Sartor Resartus, Professor Teufelsdrfickh, he writes,
"'Nature alone is antique, and the oldest Art a mushroom[.]'"26

Carlyle also gives us a clue about his allegiance to the organic by his

use of the word, "disorganic." He refers to contemporary Britain as

"disorganic" equating disorganic with "quack-ridden," "hag-ridden,' and

"hell-ridden." He also describes the literary class as "disorganic"
and says that it is "the heart of all other anomalies, at once product
and parent," meaning that the disorganic state of this class both
reflects and has contributed to the unnatural, ugly and inhumane

conditions existing in Britain.27

The Pasture, the Garden and the Forest
Scenes from the pasture, the garden and the forest which appear in
the work of all three authors are offered as models for improving

contemporary conditions. In Carlyle and Ruskin these scenes refer to a

 

25William Morris, Some Hints on Pattern-Designing, in News from
Nowhere and Other Writings, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer
(New York: Penguin, 1993), 259.

26Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. with an Introduction by
Kerry McSweeney and Peter Sabor (New York: Oxford University Press,
1971), 80.

27Carlyle, Past and Present, 284: idem, On Heroes, 168.

12
lost past in which such scenes were the norm. But in Morris the scenes

are offered as future possibilities, resulting from a revolution which

overturns the existing order.

I have already shown that Carlyle's Britain of the year 1200 was
"a green solid place, that grew corn and several other things" with
"furrow-fields ploughed" and a schedule governed by circadian
rhythms.28 Carlyle extends this pastoral image later with clear

approval for the aesthetic it implies:

The wealth of a man is in the number of things which he
loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by! The
herdsman in his poor clay shealing, where his very cow and
dog are friends to him, and not a cataract but carries
memories for him, and not a mountain-top but nods old
recognition: his life [is] all encircled as in blessed

mother's-arms[.]2
It is the simple things which are lovely, and the most quotidian
events--encounters with a dog and cow and the sight of the mountain--
which are fulfilling. This untroubled, unspoiled and sparsely populated
landscape is a peaceable kingdom, where the streams

[t]he Ribble and Aire roll down, as yet unpolluted by dyers'

chemistry: tenanted by merry trouts and piscatory otters;

the sunbeam and the vacant wind's blast alone traversing

those moors. Side by side sleep the coal-strata and the
iron-strata for so many ages; no Steam-Demon has yet risen

smoking into being.30
This landscape had its forest, too, "for the country was still

dark with wood in those days; and Scotland itself still rustled shaggy

 

28Carlyle, Past and Present, 50.
29Carlyle, Past and Present, 278.

3oCarlyle, Past and Present, 71.

 

 

and leafi
spaces hI

Ru

writes:

The pas
Wild an

H
Similar
ConVent
himSeli
case 11

while

willia

/

13

and leafy, like a damp black American Forest, with cleared spots and

spaces here and there."31

Ruskin is as laudatory as Carlyle about this aesthetic for he

writes:

No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one rich
by joyful human labour; smooth in field; fair in garden;
full in orchard; trim, sweet, and frequent in homestead;
ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is sweet
that is silent; it is only sweet when full of low currents
of under sound--triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of
insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward trebles of
childhood. As the art of life is learned, it will be found
at last that all lovely things are also necessary;--the wild
flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the
wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the
tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only, but
also by the desert manna° by every wondrous word and
unknowable work of God. i

The pasture, the garden, and the fields are all included. Domestic and
wild animals, wild flowers and the forest are all enumerated.

Morris, in his romance, News From Nowhere, describes a vision
similar to that of Ruskin and Carlyle. In this work he uses a common
convention of the period: a man wakes up from a night's sleep to find
himself in a different time, in a waking dream, if you will. In this
case it is Britain of 2102, some 150 years after a revolution which
sweeps away the old order.

The pasture, garden and forest motifs appear here with regularity.

While eating lunch on the bank of the Thames, Morris's main character,

William Guest, takes note of the scene:

 

31Carlyle, Past and Present, 102.

32John Ruskin, Unto This Last: Four Essays on the First Principles
of Political Economy, in Unto This Last and Other Writings by John
Ruskin, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer (New York: Penguin,
1985): 226. .

 

 

 

trajectory

melting of
elbow-room
llammoncl, t
"'lBritaii
spoilt, w
and down
Separate
like the
eleVatin
It

for bot]

l4

[Tlhe wide meadows spread before us, and already the scythe
was busy amidst the hay. One change I noticed amidst the
quiet beauty of the fields--to wit, that they were planted
with trees here and there, often fruit-trees, and that there
was none of the niggardly begrudging of space to a handsome
tree which I remembered too well...To be short, the fields
were everywhere treated as a garden made for the pleasure as
well as the livelihood of all...[T]he slender stream of the
Thames [wound] below us between the garden of a country I
have been telling of: a furlong from us was a beautiful
little islet begrown of graceful trees; on the slopes
westward of us was a wood of varied growth overhanging the
narrow meadow on the south side of the river; while to the
north was a wide stretch of mead rising very gradually from
the river's edge.33

As a prospective vision it implied a change from the then current
trajectory of Britain's development. The revolution resulted in the
melting of the suburbs into the countryside and reclaiming of "space and
elbow-room" in the remaining towns as population spread out. As Mr.
Hammond, the lOS-year-old historian, explained to William Guest,
"'[Britain] is now a garden, where nothing is wasted and nothing is
spoilt, with the necessary dwellings, sheds, and workshops scattered up
and down the country, all trim and neat and pretty.'"34 And, in a
separate lecture, Morris imagines that even the city will become more
like the countryside with "streets as beautiful as the woods, as

]n35

elevating as the mountain-sides[.

This newly reopened expanse, both urban and rural, would make room

for both man and nature in balance, Morris believed. It represented a

 

33William Morris, News from Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest, in News
from Nowhere and Other Writings, ed. with an Introduction by Clive
Wilmer (New York: Penguin, 1993), 211.

31'Morris, News from Nowhere, 102, 105.

35William Morris, The Lesser Arts, 254.

 

 

 

 

aesthetic

have its g

 

15
redressing of the misunderstanding that nature was something outside of
mankind to be made a "slave" rather than accepted as a partner.36
To make nature a partner meant first and foremost that its

aesthetic guidance had to be brought to bear in work. There it could

have its greatest impact on society as a whole.

 

36Morris, News from Nowhere, 200.

 

 

I
fintbe
a neces.
outline
pleasur;
Carlyle'

W}
meaning

necessai

CHAPTER 2

WORK, PLEASURE AND BEAUTY

In this chapter I will show that both Ruskin and Morris believed
that beauty is the expression of pleasure in labor and that pleasure is
a necessary condition for the creation of that beauty. Then, I will
outline the conditions of work which both felt were consistent with
pleasurable labor. Finally, I will show some seeds of their thought in
Carlyle's thinking.

Whenever labor resulted in art--keeping in mind the broadest
meaning of the word--Morris believed that the labor producing it was
necessarily pleasurable:

[T]he chief source of art is man's pleasure in his daily

necessary work, which expresses itself and is embodied in

the work itself; nothing else can make the common

surroundings of life beautiful, and whenever they are

beautiful it is a sign that men's work has pleasure in it,

however they may suffer otherwise.37
The pleasure in labor "expresses itself and is embodied in the work
itself." To repeat from this paper's introduction: The craftsman
unavoidably invests his design and workmanship with his emotional state;
in this way, his pleasure or lack of it gets reflected as the beauty or
ugliness of his creation. Morris also states above that "nothing else

can make the common surroundings of life beautiful[.]" That is,

pleasure in labor is a necessary condition for producing beauty.

 

37Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," 84.

16

17

Although Ruskin never formulates the connection so explicitly, he
does say in The Nature of the Gothic that the "foundations of society
were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are
ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
their bread" [emphasis added].38 Later, he says that the evils of
industrialism "can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of
all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and
making them happy" and by creating a demand "for the products and
results of healthy and ennobling labour" [emphasis added].39 Thus, it
is no leap for Morris to claim in his preface to an edition of Ruskin's
The Nature of the Gothic that Ruskin was making the same connection he
was. Morris wrote:

Ruskin here teaches us that [beauty in] art is the

expression of man's pleasure in labour; that it is possible

for man to rejoice in his work, for, strange as it may seem

to us to-day, there have been times when he did rejoice in

it; and lastly, that unless man's work once again becomes a

pleasure to him, the token of which change will be that

beauty is once again a natural and necessary accompaniment

of productive labour, all but the worthless must toil in

pain, and therefore live in pain." [emphasis added]40

All of this begs the question of what makes work pleasurable.
First, writes Morris, "[nature] takes care to make the acts necessary to

the continuance of life in the individual and the race not only

endurable, but even pleasurable."l‘1 Work is naturally pleasurable.

 

38Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 86.
39Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 86.
40Morris, preface to The Nature of the Gothic, 367.

41William Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, in News from
Nowhere and Other Writipgg, ed. with an Introduction by Clive Wilmer
(New York: Penguin, 1993), 287.

18

To this Ruskin clearly gives his assent: "God has connected the labour
which is essential to the bodily sustenance with the pleasures which are
healthiest for the heart[.]"l'2

But, not any kind of work under any conditions will result in that
pleasure. Morris gives four conditions necessary for pleasurable work:
usefulness, short duration, variety, and pleasurable surroundings.l'3

Except for pastimes pursued privately, work must produce something
useful to society. For context it is worth noting that Morris felt that
most of what was being produced by industry at the time was simply
"rubbish."44 In his opinion the labor of most working men was taken
up with making useless objects--useless because they were poorly made

and therefore unserviceable or useless because they were pointless

trinkets or showpieces.

Thus, Morris reasoned that if the working men of England were all
set to making truly useful things, the workday could be considerably
shortened; yet, production could still meet everyone's genuine needs.
With this change his second condition, shorter work hours, could easily
be met.

Variety, his third condition, meant that ”[a] man might easily
learn and practise at least three crafts, varying sedentary occupation
with outdoor-occupation[.]" Morris believed that the desire for variety
in humans is so strong that "[tlo compel a man to do day after day the

same task, without any hope of escape or change, means nothing short of

 

42Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 105.
43Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 299-301.

44Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 294.

19
turning life into a prison-torment." In fact, this very desire for

variety is the origin of popular art which Morris insists has been

"killed by commercialism."45 He explained:

[Flrom the beginning of man's contest with Nature till the
rise of the present capitalistic system, [popular art] was
alive, and generally flourished. While it lasted,
everything that was made by man was adorned by man, just as
everything made by Nature is adorned by her. The craftsman,
as he fashioned the thing he had under his hand, ornamented
it so naturally and so entirely without conscious effort,
that it is often difficult to distinguish where the mere
utilitarian part of his work ended and the ornamental began.
Now the origin of this art was the necessity that the
workman felt for variety in his work, and though the beauty
produced by this desire was a great gift to the world, ygp
the obtaining variety and pleasure in the work by the
workman was a matter of more importance still, for it
stamped all labour with the impress of pleasure. [emphasis
added]45

The fourth condition for pleasure in work is pleasant
surroundings. In saying this Morris was thinking of a commercial system
that forced most workmen to live "in places so squalid and hideous that
no one could live in them and keep his sanity without losing all sense
of beauty and enjoyment of life." In short, "[mlen living amidst such
ugliness cannot conceive of beauty, and, therefore, cannot express
it."l'7 Unable either to conceive of or express beauty, they could not
find pleasure in their work, he reasoned.

One additional condition for pleasurable work which Morris implies
is a deliberate, unhurried pace. In comparing work in contemporary

Britain with work in the Middle Ages, Morris writes that "[our

 

asMorris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 299-301.
46Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 301.

47Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," 84.

20

forefathers] worked deliberately and thoughtfully as all artists do."
He adds that this unhurried pace even helped mitigate the long hours of
labor of the medieval workman: "As long as the workman could sit at
home, working easily and quietly, his long hours of labour mattered
little to him, and other evils could be borne."48

For Morris the issue of pleasurable work all boils down to one
word: hope. What is the difference between good work and bad work? he
asks. One embodies hope, and the other does not. The hope is threefold
and corresponds roughly to his conditions of pleasurable work: hope of
rest, hope of product, hope of pleasure in the work. By hope of rest he
means the hope that the work will come to an end and that when it does,
the leisure obtained will not merely allow the worker to recover his
strength, but also to pursue other pleasurable activities. This
corresponds to shortened hours of daily work. By hope of product, he
means one must really produce something and not just engage in mere
activity. This corresponds to his condition that work produce something
useful. Finally, by hope of pleasure, he means the pleasure in
"exercising the energies of [a man's] mind and soul as well as his body.
Memory and imagination help him as he works." This corresponds not only
to variety in work, but also to pleasant surroundings which provide

inspiration for the creation of beautiful things."9

 

48William Morris, "Unattractive Labour," in Political Writings:
Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed. with an
Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press,
1994), 90: Ibid., 91.

49Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 288-89.

21

All of Morris's expansive thinking finds its seed in Ruskin. Of
particular importance is Ruskin's distinction between the "servile" and
the "revolutionary" in work. Servile work is directed by a superior who
wishes the worker only to follow directions precisely. Servile work
aims at duplication and therefore, repetition. Its perfection "can only
be reached by exercising [the workman] in doing one thing, and giving
him nothing else to do."50 In revolutionary work the workman has been
assigned a task, but nevertheless directs its completion himself.

Gothic architecture is the best example of this because "there is
perpetual change both in design [the mental work] and execution [the
physical work], [and therefore] the workman must have been altogether
set free.” In other words, the workman has the opportunity for variety
in his work, and this coincides with one of Morris's conditions of
pleasurable labor.

Ruskin certainly agrees that the product of labor should be useful
as well as beautiful: "It should be one of the first objects of all
manufacturers to produce stuffs not only beautiful and quaint in design,
but also adapted for every-day service[.]"51

Ruskin also agrees that leisure (which may be said to correspond
to Morris's shortened working day) and pleasant surroundings are
essential for the creation of beauty and, by extension, the pleasure in

labor which it implies. He writes that under the then current

conditions in England

 

SORuskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 82-83, 93.

51Ruskin, The Two Paths, 158.

22

no designing or any other development of beautiful art will

be possible....Beautiful art can only be produced by people

who have beautiful things about them, and leisure to look at

them; and unless you provide some elements of beauty for

your workmen to be surrounded by, you will find that no

elements of beauty can be invented by them.52

Finally, Ruskin concurs with Morris that good work--that is, work
that retains its aesthetic value-~cannot be hurried: "But of one thing

you may be sure, that art which is produced hastily will also perish

hastily; and that what is cheapest to you now, is likely to be dearest

in the end."53

Reaching back to Carlyle we find that he, too, has a deep respect
for work. He writes, "[T]here is a perennial nobleness, and even
sacredness, in Work."54 For Carlyle work is not so much a route to
pleasure as it is to self-improvement because "man perfects himself by
working."55 But, he also sees that work has both religious and
aesthetic aspects. Carlyle writes that "all true Work is Religion," and
he quotes the monks of St. Edmunds who say that "'Laborare est Orare,
"56

Work is Worship.'" He also says, "[A] small Poet every Worker is.

By this he means that every worker is making art even if only on a

humble scale.

 

52Ruskin, The Two Paths, 153.
53John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, vol. 11, "A Joy For Ever;"
(and Its Price in the Market): Being:the Substance (with additions) of

Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art (Kent, England: George
Allen, 1880), 38-39.

5['Carlyle, Past and Present, 196.
55Carlyle, Past and Present, 196.

56Carlyle, Past and Present, 201, 205.

23
Carlyle shares Ruskin's and Morris's reverence for manual labor
and the work of the artist. Once again, Carlyle speaks through
Professor Teufelsdrdckh, the main character in Sartor Resartus:

"Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn
Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously
conquers the Earth, and makes her man's....A Second man I
honour, and still more highly [,the Artist]...These two, in
all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and

dust[.]"57

When these attitudes are combined with Carlyle's clear reverence
for the pastoral life and the variety in work and pleasant surroundingg
that it implies, it seems no leap to imagine that he felt that work

could and should be pleasurable. Not to be able to work, in Carlyle's

estimation, is "the one unhappiness of a man."58

Although Carlyle recognizes the generally poor quality of
manufactured goods,59 he doesn't imply that the products made are
wasteful as does Morris and Ruskin. That is, he doesn't question the
usefulness of manufactures, but rather questions whether society as a
whole is wasteful because of its chaotic, disorganized condition:

Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we
call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many
arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many
powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic,
altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a complaint,

as we all know.

Presumably, if society were better arranged it would not be so wasteful,

and if it were not so wasteful, shorter working hours with higher living

 

S7Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 172-73.
58Carlyle, Past and Present, 157.
59Carlyle, Past and Present, 143-44, 206.

60Carlyle, On Heroes, 158.

24
standards might be possible. Carlyle is not explicit about this, but it
is reasonable to assume this result given the premise he embraces.

Finally, while Carlyle is not explicit about the hurried pace of
modern life, and presumably of modern work, his love of the medieval
life and the descriptions he gives suggest that he believes the proper
pace for work would be unhurried and deliberate.

From all that Carlyle says, it is clear then that he lays a basis
for two conditions of pleasure in work as Morris and Ruskin saw them:
variety and pleasant surroundings. Carlyle also hints at a basis for a
third, shorter working hours, by lamenting the disorganized condition of
society. Furthermore, it seems also that work, under the right
conditions, can be ennobling and even pleasurable, especially if, as he
suggests, every worker is a "small poet." After all, the writing of
poetry is ordinarily thought of as a pleasurable activity. Carlyle's
thinking then provided a beginning from which Ruskin and Morris were
able to elaborate their ideas about work.

For all three authors work is central to human life. This
centrality makes their ideas about the aesthetic nature of work a good

starting point for their broader aesthetic critique of society which I

pursue in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3

AN AESTHETIC CRITIQUE OF SOCIETY

The authors' natural aesthetic and their explanation of the
relationship of work, beauty and pleasure form the basis for an
aesthetic critique of British society. In this chapter, I will discuss
three aspects of that critique: l) the degradation of work, 2) the
impoverishment of the aesthetic imagination and 3) the destruction of

beauty.

The Degradation of Work
Not surprisingly, working conditions in Britain in the nineteenth
century violated all the principles laid out as necessary for

pleasurable labor, according to Morris:

It is no exaggeration to say that our civilization has
destroyed the attractiveness of labour, and that by more
means than one: by lengthening the hours of labour: by
intensifying the labour during its continuance; by the
forcing of the workmen into noisy, dirty, crowded
factories...by the levelling [of] all intelligence and
excellence of workmanship by means of machinery, and
consequent gradual extinction of the skilled craftsman. All
this is the exact contrary of the conditions under which the
spontaneous art of past ages was produced.61

Work was long and fast-paced (intensified), it was carried on in
deplorable and miserable surroundings, and its mechanical nature
resulted in monotony rather than variety in work. The skilled craftsman

was becoming extinct because his varied and subtle abilities were no

 

61Morris, "Unattractive Labour," 89-90.

25

26

longer called for in the modern factory. And, the beauty that the
craftsman put into his handicrafts was replaced by the ugliness of mass
produced items.

As regards the usefulness of what was produced, Mr. Hammond, the
historian in News from Nowhere, acts as Morris's mouthpiece:

"[H]ow could they possibly attend to such trifles as the

quality of the wares they sold? The best of them were of a

lowish average, the worst were transparent makeshifts for

the things asked for, which nobody would have put up with if

they could have got anything else. It was a current jest of
the time that the wares were made to sell and not to

use[.]"62
Hence, the criterion of usefulness was also violated so frequently that
its violation was the rule.

The above quotation also suggests yet another reason for the
degradation of work, namely, that the selling of goods took precedence
over the making of them. Hammond again comments that in the nineteenth
century "'the only admitted test of utility in wares was the finding of
buyers for them--wise men or fools, as it might chance.'"63 As a
result, even the ornamentation of objects was adulterated as
ornamentation became part of "machine labour" and reduced to a mere
commodity, produced for sale and not for use.64 And, the pleasure
that the workman took in ornamenting and decorating his products was

lost since adorning them was now a burden rather than an inherent

blessing:

 

62Morris, News from Nowhere, 126.
63Morris, News from Nowhere, 126.

6['Morris, "Unattractive Labour," 89.

27
If you wish to have ornament, you must pay specially for it,
and the workman is compelled to produce ornament, as he is
to produce other wares. He is compelled to pretend
happiness in his work, so that the beauty produced by man's
hand, which was once a solace to his labour, has now become
an extra burden to him, and ornament is now but one of the
follies of useless toil[.]65

The compulsion of the profit system crushed any love of beauty and
reduced almost to zero the workman's ability to produce it. It drained
work of its pleasure by lowering work to a "mere bitter struggle for
life called competition for wages, and...[by subjecting the workman] to
a master who also is struggling for profit against other
competitors."66 In the end, Morris realized, not only the workers,
but also the managers and owners were compelled by incentives in the
system to degrade labor and degrade the laborer.

Ruskin agreed that labor and the laborer had been degraded. He
wrote that employers were making workers into mere tools which
"unhumanize[d] them."67 He gave the example of the manufacture of
glass beads. First, he calls such beads "utterly unnecessary." So, it
immediately meets Morris's first test of degraded work--the product is
useless. Also, "there is no design or thought employed in their
manufacture." This was especially important to Ruskin because it
indicated that the workmen were merely taking orders rather than

imparting their own ideas to the work. This took them down the scale

 

65Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 301.

66William Morris, "Art or No Art? Who Shall Settle It?", in
Political Writings: Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-
1890, ed. with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England:

Thoemmes Press, 1994), 19-20.

67Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 84.

28

from free expression and interpretation back to slavery.68 Just as
clearly, there was no variety in their work, a necessary condition for
pleasure, and this also degraded it. Ruskin describes their work this
way:

The men who chop up the rods [of glass from which the beads

are made] sit at their work all day, their hands vibrating

with perpetual and exquisitely timed palsy, and the beads

dropping beneath their vibration like hail. Neither they,

nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments,

have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human

faculty; and every young lady, therefore, who buys glass

beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much more

cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavouring
to put down.69

Ruskin was especially concerned about the lack of the use of
mental powers in contemporary work. He cited the example of cutting
precious stones saying it requires "little exertion of any mental
faculty; [but only] some tact and judgment in avoiding flaws, and so on,
but nothing to bring out the whole mind." He adds that merely cutting
jewels "for the sake of their value" is slave's work. In this example,
once again the mental powers needed for design are dormant, and there is
no variety in the work.70

Ruskin also believed that to work merely to meet demand in the
marketplace was degrading. But, rather than criticize the businessman
for promoting goods he knows to be substandard as Morris does, Ruskin
criticized the public taste. He then put responsibility back on the

manufacturer to lead rather than follow in matters of taste. By merely

 

68Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 88.
69Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 88.

7oRuskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 88.

29
pandering to public taste, Ruskin said that "no good design will ever be
possible to you [the manufacturer], or perceived by you."71 In short,
the manufacturer will not only produce inferior design, but will also .
eventually forget what good design is. All of this means that to the
degree that design is dictated by changing public fancy rather than the
craftsman's self-direction, his work will be degraded.

Ruskin takes up the question of competition for profits and wages
as does Morris, but again, Ruskin takes a slightly different tack.
First, he agrees with Morris that money gets in the way of good artistic
production. Ruskin discusses its effect on painting: "[Nlo good work
in this world was ever done for money, nor while the slightest thought
of money affected the painter's mind. Whatever idea of pecuniary values
enters into his thoughts as he works, will, in proportion to the
distinctness of its presence, shorten his power."72 But, while Morris
decries the employer's preoccupation with profits, Ruskin seems as much
concerned about the greed and ambition of the workman:

The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to

the strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the

anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place, or rank, but

in gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing the

ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which

circumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the

object of a workman's ambition should not be to become a

master; but to attain daily more subtle and exemplary skill
in his own craft[.]73

 

71Ruskin, The Two Paths, 158-59.
72Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 100.

73John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin, vol. 5, Time and Tide, By
Weare and Tyne (Sunnyside, Great Britain: George Allen, 1882), 8-9.

30
By implication, ambition for advancement would degrade work because
there would be less time and energy to attain "more subtle and exemplary
skill" as Ruskin would like.

Finally, Ruskin sees that work is degraded for two additional
reasons: 1) Work is so poorly organized, and 2) there is so little
loyalty of employer to employee. He uses the analogy of a household run
by a farmer's wife who could not figure out how to use her hired hands
properly and then complains because she is obliged to "give them their
dinner for nothing." This, Ruskin says, is "the kind of political
economy we practice too often in England."74 He suggests not only
better organization, but that the relationship between worker and
employer be made more sound and permanent:

[T]he real type of a well-organized nation must be

presented...by a farm in which all the servants were sons:

which implied, therefore, in all its regulations, not merely

the order of expediency, but the bonds of affection and

responsibilities of relationship; and in which all acts and

services were not only to be sweetened by brotherly concord,

but to be enforced by fatherly authority. [emphasis
added]75

The seed of this and other views held by Morris and Ruskin on the
degradation of work is again apparent in Carlyle's writing. To Carlyle
as well as Ruskin the unwillingness of employers to give workers job
security degrades the work itself by creating an atmosphere of mistrust,

anxiety, even mutiny. Workers not bound to the employer are apt to

 

7['Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 10-11.

75Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 15.

31

obstruct their employer, steal from him, and waste much time in

idleness.76

Carlyle, too, lamented the "Age of Machinery" which has made it so
that "[n]othing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and

calculated contrivance."77 Here, the craftsman is eliminated and the
machine replaces him. If all is done "by rule and calculated

contrivance[,]" then there is doubtless little creativity on the part of

the workman and no self-direction.78

Carlyle precedes Ruskin and Morris in his disdain for advertising

and notes its deleterious effect on quality:

The Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better
felt-hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat,
seven-feet high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it
through the streets; hoping to be saved thereby; He has not
attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed by the
Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could
very probably have done; but his whole industry is turned to

persuade us that he has made such!79
Efforts to promote products take away attention better focused on
workmanship and design.

The degradation of work even reached into the highest levels of
the fine arts and literature. Carlyle noted that poetry had become
mechanical: "The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry

or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and

 

76Carlyle, Past and Present, 276-77.

77Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times, in Thomas Carlyle: Selected
'Writings, ed. with an Introduction by Alan Shelston (New York: Penguin,
1971), 64.

78Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 79.

79Carlyle, Past and Present, 144.

32

fall,--which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people."80
Ruskin has above spoken about the effects of this degradation on the
painter. Morris explains another reason for this degradation. The
workshop of the fine artist, and by extension the literary artist, is
the world at large. The work of all higher artists is degraded as much
as that of industrial artists because they are "deprived of the
materials for their works in real life, since all around them is ugly

and vulgar."81

All of this degradation of work was gradually undermining the
conditions necessary to pleasure in labor. The inevitable outcome was a
decline in the beauty of labor's produce. That decline was also caused
by the impoverishment of the aesthetic imagination which accompanied

these degraded conditions.

The Impoverishment of the Aesthetic Imagination

Perhaps the most deep-seated effect of industrialization which the
three authors railed against was the impoverishment of the aesthetic
imagination. Carlyle derided the "Age of Machinery" for its mechanistic
influence on every area of life. Ruskin ridiculed the aesthetic
assumptions which accompanied industrial capitalism both by challenging
their validity and by taking them aesthetically to ridiculous, but
nevertheless logical extremes. Morris joined in the ridicule by using

analogy, describing life as it might be in the home if the same

 

8oCarlyle, Signs of the Times, 79.

81Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," 85.

33
aesthetic standards were exercised there as in society at large. I will
detail their arguments.

Carlyle saw the mechanistic aesthetic reaching far beyond the
economic life of Britain into the areas of education, religion, politics
and, of course, art. He complains that "nothing follows its spontaneous
course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods." For
instance, in education the old method is "an indefinable tentative
process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual
variation of means and methods, to attain the same end[.]" (This sounds
so very much like the approach of the medieval craftsman to his work, an
approach so lauded by Ruskin and Morris.) But, the new method of
education is "but a secure universal, straightforward business, to be
conducted in the gross, by proper mechanism, with such intellect as
comes to hand." It is mass education on the factory model which takes
no account of the individual circumstances and aims at a single level of
achievement. In religion, for example, he notes a Bible society which
is eXpanding at the time, but in the manner of a modern organization
with its public meetings, committees and prospectuses. To Carlyle this
Bible society is more "a machine for converting the Heathen."82
Carlyle also believes that much of government has become mechanical and
that the "the mighty interest taken in mere political arrangegents [is]
itself a sign of a mechanical age." The emphasis is on structure and

reform, not on character in leadership.83 It's no surprise that this

aesthetic makes its way into art as well. Carlyle asks: "Of our

 

82Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 64.

83Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 70.

34

'Theories of Taste,‘ as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite,
unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is
'explained,‘ made mechanically visible, from 'Association' and the like,
why should we say anything?"84

Ruskin, for his part, takes on two contemporary aesthetic
assumptions. First, he deplores the desire for perfection. He asks his
readers to look about their English rooms and "[e]xamine again all those
accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of
the seasoned wood and tempered steel." The perfectionism exhibited in
these "are signs of slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter
and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek."
He believes this because it is a sign that the work has been largely
done by machine; there is no self-direction, conscious design or variety
in such work, and this qualifies it as mere degradation. In Ruskin's
view "no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for
perfection is always a sigpiof a misunderstandipg of the ends of
ppp."85 Second, he attacks the love of order: "[Dlo not let us
suppose that love of order is love of art." It "allows us to yield our
faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix form for
everything, and forbid variation from it."86 Lack of variation and
rigid adherence to old forms not only degrade art but also the work that
produces it. They indicate that art has lost its vitality and is no

longer flexible enough to provide an avenue for the perpetual discovery

 

84Carlyle, Sigps of the Times, 79.
85Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 91.

86Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 93.

35
of truth, but only for the slavish imitation of the past.87 Ruskin
concedes that this love of order is appropriate in purely practical

matters and in many cases involving morality, but in art it cannot be

ceded the same primacy:

It is true that order, in its highest sense, is one of the
necessities of art, just as time is a necessity of music;
but love of order has no more to do with our right enjoyment
of architecture or paintingé than love of punctuality with
the appreciation of opera.

The lack of variety in mass production is another factor degrading
the aesthetic imagination. The endless stream of identical objects

works like a drug on aesthetic perception, according to Ruskin. He

writes:

If you see things of the same kind and of equal value very
frequently, your reverence for them is infallibly
diminished, your powers of attention get gradually wearied,
and your interest and enthusiasm worn out; and you cannot in
that state bring to any given work the energy necessary to
enjoy it.89

This emphasis on mass production implied a worrisome trajectory
for the development of British industry, one which Ruskin ridiculed by
taking to absurd extremes. What he criticizes is the inability to look
at a landscape as anything other than a set of resources to exploit. It
is yet another failure of the aesthetic imagination. He conjures up a
Britain 50 years in the future based on this outlook:

I will suppose your success absolute [in exploiting all the

land of Britain]: that from shore to shore the whole of the

island is to be set as thick with chimneys as the masts
stand in the docks of Liverpool: and there shall be no

 

87Ruskin, The Two Paths, 96.
88Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 93.

89Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 62.

point.

36

meadows in it; no trees; no gardens; only a little corn
grown upon the housetops, reaped and threshed by steam:

that you do not leave even room for roads, but travel either
over the roofs of your mills, on viaducts; or under their
floors, in tunnels: that, the smoke having rendered the
light of the sun unserviceable, you work always by the light
of your own gas: that no acre of English ground shall be
without its shaft and its engine; and therefore, no spot of
English ground left, on which it shall be possible to stand,
without a definite and calculable chance of being blown off
it, at any moment, into small pieces.90

Morris, too, conjures up an absurd hypothetical to illustrate a

If the aesthetic degradation of the lower classes were brought

into the homes of the rich, the rich would at once experience that

general degradation that exists beyond their view and pronounce it mad:

The misery and squalor which we people of civilization bear
with so much complacency as a necessary part of the
manufacturing system, is just as necessary to the community
at large as a proportionate amount of filth would be in the
house of a private rich man. If such a man were to allow
the cinders to be raked all over his drawing-room, and a
privy to be established in each corner of his dining-room,
if he habitually made a dust and refuse heap of his once
beautiful garden, never washed his sheets or changed his
tablecloth, and made his family sleep five in a bed, he
would surely find himself in the claws of a commission g2
lunatico. But such acts of miserly folly are just what our
present society is doing daily under the compulsion of a
supposed necessity, which is nothing short of madness.91

Given the depth of the poverty of Britain's aesthetic imagination,

Carlyle and Ruskin might have joined Morris in asking whether the

situation in contemporary Britain was only the logical result of a

process which started in the Renaissance. The Renaissance for Morris

marked the beginning of the end of art because it was the beginning of

the end of self-direction and variety in the work of the craftsman. He

 

goRuskin, The Two Paths, 152-53.

91Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 301.

37

mused that perhaps it was not that ideas about beauty changed in that
period, but that "beauty, however unconsciously, was no longer an object
of attainment with the men of that epoch" [emphasis added].92 Perhaps
this was also now true of Britain in the nineteenth century. In the
same vein, Carlyle earlier had written:

[I]t is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and the Good

[that is important]; but a calculation of the

Profitable....We are no longer instinctively driven to

apprehend, and lay to heart, what is Good and Lovely, but

rather to inquire, as onlookers, how it is produced, whence
it comes, whither it goes.9

The Destruction of Beauty

The effects of this poverty in the British aesthetic imagination
could be witnessed all over the nation: in the country and the city, in
the home and the public square, in the decorative and fine arts, and in
literature. From all these places, Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris summoned
examples.

Carlyle refers to the first deforestation of Britain which
resulted from an increase in grazing. Perhaps he was thinking of it as
a foreshadowing of the profit-mongering of his own century. "A
sorrowful waste of noble wood and umbragel" he calls it. "Why will men
destroy noble Forests, even when in part a nuisance, in such reckless

manner; turning loose four-footed cattle and Henry-the-Eighths into

them!" he asks.94

 

92Morris, Gothic Architecture, 344.
93Carlyle, Signs of the Times, 77.

94Carlyle, Past and Present, 102.

38
Carlyle considered Britain's industrial life "unregulated" and
"chaotic." Order is an important theme in Carlyle, and he felt that if
some order didn't come to that industrial life, Britain could only
expect to see the world reduced to "ashes and ruin."95 As it was, the
manufacturing towns were already filled with "soot and darkness."96
And, what came with that industrial life was overpopulation, making

Britain an "overcrowded little western nook of Europe." Britain was no

longer the open, sparsely peopled land which he described in Past and

Present.97

Carlyle also laments the state of the literary arts because of
what he considers their central role in society. He writes that the
"Man-of-Letters...must be regarded as our most important modern person.
He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. What he teaches, the whole
world will do and make." As mentioned above, the literary class has
become "disorganic," and, as such, is not serving its proper prophetic

role in society. He also says of poetry that "beauty is no longer the

god it warships."98

Ruskin also criticized the arts looking at them primarily through
architecture. He felt compelled to respond to the rash of Gothic and
Romanesque buildings that were springing up in Britain at the time. He

writes that they "merely serve to caricature the noble buildings of past

 

95Thomas Carlyle, Chartism, in Thomas Carlyle: Selected Writingg,
ed. with an Introduction by Alan Shelston (New York: Penguin, 1971),
223.

96Carlyle, Past and Present, 262.
97Carlyle, Chartism, 231.

98Carlyle, On Heroes, 155, 168; idem, Signs of the Times, 80.

39
ages, and to bring their form into dishonour by leaving out their
soul."99 Furthermore, for Ruskin it is a truism

that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours,
or stones, does ppp say the same thing over and over again;
that the merit of architectural, as of every other art,
consists in its saying new and different things; that to
repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in
marble than it is of genius in print.

Though some bad architecture was simply misguided, slavish
imitation (and poor imitation at that), behind other architectural
follies Ruskin saw more sinister motives. Ruskin felt that the public

should

not be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare
to Rochester or Dover [railroads] because the ironwork of
the bridge which carries them over the Thames is covered
with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with
ornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by
the builders that they may put the per-centage upon it into
their own ppckets; and, the rest of the money being thrown
into the floral form, there is an end of it, as far as the
shareholders are concerned. Millions upon millions have
thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on ornamental
arrangements of zig-zag bricks, black and blue tiles, cast-
iron foliage, and the like; of which millions, as I said,
not a penny can ever return into the shareholders' pockets,
nor contribute to public speed or safety on the line. It is
all sunk for ever in ornamental architecture, and (trust me
for this!) all that architecture is bad. [first emphasis
added11°1

It is as Ruskin tells us it would be: Where money is the main
consideration, art suffers.
Art not only suffers for financial reasons in large projects such

as railroads and buildings, but also in more humble realms. Ruskin

 

99Ruskin, The Two Paths, 84.
100Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 94.

101Ruskin, Time and Tide, 9s.

40
laments the "vast quantity of intellect and of labour consumed annually
in our cheap illustrated publications." That shabby work accustomed the
public to a low aesthetic level. The result was that "when we are tired
of one bad cheap thing, we throw it aside and buy another bad cheap
thing; and so keep looking at bad things all our lives." He compares a
relatively expensive woodcut with a set of cheap ones to illustrate his

point. He assumes that the more expensive woodcut costing a shilling is

"as good as art can be, so that you will never tire of looking at it;
and is struck on good paper with good ink, so that you will never wear
it out by handling it[.]" This he compares to twelve woodcuts for a
penny each which are so hastily and poorly designed that the owner will
soon tire of them. The woodcuts are also easily destroyed by mere
handling because they are made with inferior inks on poor quality paper.

The public, Ruskin says, does not generally see the expensive woodcut as

the true bargain.102

With specific reference to forcing artists and workmen to work
with impermanent, if not cheap, materials, Ruskin compares it to
"forcing our Michael Angelos to carve in snow." And, this very lack of
permanence discourages even the capable craftsman. Ruskin asks, "Do you
suppose any workman worthy [of] the name will put his brains into a cup,

or an urn, which he knows is to go to the melting-pot in half a score

years7.403

 

102Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 39-40.

103Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 36, 45.

41
Ruskin also sees that the countryside has been diminished by this
debased aesthetic. The sweet and beautiful pastoral life of the past
has been corrupted and destroyed by industrial life:

Just outside the [large manufacturing] town I came upon an
old English cottage, or mansion, I hardly know which to call
it, set close under the hill, and beside the river, perhaps
built somewhere in the Charles's times, with mullioned
windows and a low arched porch; round which, in the little
triangular garden, one can imagine the family as they used
to sit in old summer times, the ripple of the river heard
faintly through the sweetbriar hedge, and the sheep on the
far-off wolds shining in the evening sunlight. There,
uninhabited for many and many a year, it had been left in
unregarded havoc of ruin; the garden-gate still swung loose
to its latch; the garden blighted utterly into a field of
ashes, not even a weed taking root there; the roof torn into
shapeless rents; the shutters hanging about the windows in
rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had
gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and
thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into
unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and
the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth
perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of
their storm clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless
fields, fenced from each other, not by hedges, but by slabs
of square stone, like gravestones, riveted together with
iron.104

Not only was the property neglected, but it was besmirched by the
polluted water in the stream "black as ebony, and thick with curdling
scum" and the "unctuous, sooty slime" on the banks. The smoke from the
nearby city seemed as "storm clouds," and the slabs of stone dividing
the "grassless" fields were like gravestones marking the death of man's
relationship to nature as it was.

Ruskin further illustrated the damage done to nature by those who
can only see it as either an economic resource or a source of

entertainment. He notes not only the industrial blight, but also the

 

104Ruskin, The Two Paths, 153-54.

42
commercial blight of hotels and shops. That which remains of nature is
for thrills rather than quiet appreciation:

You have despised nature; that is to say, all the deep and
sacred sensations of natural scenery. The French
revolutionist made stables of the cathedrals of France; you
have made racecourses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your
ppg conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages
round their aisles, and eat off their altars. You have put
a railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen. You have
tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel; you have
destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is
not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with
bellowing fire; there is no particle left of English land
which you have not trampled coal ashes into--nor any foreign
city in which the spread of your presence is not marked
among its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops: the Alps
themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently,
you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you
set yourselves to climb, and slide down again, with "shrieks
of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human
articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the
quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush
home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble
with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction.1

Morris shares Ruskin's concern about the impact of this attitude.

He asks whether it makes sense to

cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down
ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few
square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide
the sun and poison the air with smoke and worse, and it's
nobody's business to see to it or mend it: that is all that
modern commerce, the counting-house forgetful of the
workshop, will do for us herein.

Elaborating this theme of nature as a source of profit, Ruskin
asks a presumably upper class audience attending one of his lectures

whether doubling or quadrupling their income "by digging a coal shaft in

 

105John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, in Sesame & Lilies, The Two
Paths & The King of the Golden River, ed. Ernest Rhys with an
Introduction by Oliver Lodge (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1909), 33-34.

106Morris, The Lesser Arts, 252.

43

the middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into heaps of coke,"
would be worth it. He answers for them:

I think not....Yet this is what you are doing with all

England. The whole country is but a little garden, not more

than enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you

would let them ill run there. And this little garden you

will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of

cinders, if you cani and those children of yours, not you,
will suffer for it. 07

Despite the distance that the upper classes felt from the ugliness
of the age, both Ruskin and Morris believed that ugliness did make its
way right into their homes. They simply failed to perceive it. The
ugliness didn't come from the squalor of their surroundings, but from an
aesthetic driven by desire for show and a misunderstanding about the
nature of art. Ruskin admonished his readers "never [to] imagine there
is reason to be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience
and sand-paper."108 He claimed that most of the money spent by the
upper classes was spent for reasons of pride:

Why are your carriages nicely painted and finished outside?

You don't see the outsides as you sit in them--the outsides

are for other people to see. Why are your exteriors of

houses so well finished, your furniture so polished and

costly, but for other people to see?109

Morris agreed saying the much of the art and decoration in wealthy homes

was useless except for the purpose of show:

To my mind it is only here and there (out of the kitchen)
that you can find in a well-to-do house things that are of
any use at all: as a rule all decoration (so called) that
has got there is there for the sake of show, not because
anybody likes it....[T]he silk curtains in my Lord's

 

107Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, 69-70.
108Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 89.

109Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 79.

44

drawing-room are no more a matter of art to him than the

powder in his footman's hair; the kitchen in a country

farmhouse is most commonly a pleasant homelike place, the

parlour dreary and useless.11

To those who said that a truly aesthetic environment for all
people was not possible, Morris reminded them that "most factories
sustain to-day large and handsome gardens, and not seldom parks and
woods of many acres in extent." But these garden-parks "are kept for
one member of the factory only," namely, the owner. Nevertheless the
"palaces" that grace such parks and everything around them are for the

"111 In News From Nowhere one of the

most part "beastly ugly.

characters explains why this should be so:
"[I]t was an essential condition of life of these rich men
that they should not themselves make what they wanted for
adornment of their lives, but should force those to make
them whom they forced to live pinched and sordid lives; and
that as a necessary consequence the sordidness and pinching,
the ugly barrenness of those ruined lives, were worked up
into the adornment of the lives of the rich[.]"112

This again confirms Morris's dictum that degraded working and living
conditions translate themselves into ugly design and workmanship. Work
done by people in such conditions can only lead to something other than
beauty, something other than art. And, once again the role that money
has played is a negative one. Even the rich cannot have art for all

their money in such a degraded society.

 

110Morris, The Lesser Arts, 251.

111William Morris, "A Factory As It Might Be," in Political
Writiggs: Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed.
with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes
Press, 1994), 33, 35.

112Morris, News from Nowhere, 212-213.

45

Of course, ordinary lower-class people suffered ugliness for
different reasons. Morris noted that their living quarters were no
better than "dog-hutches." He asks why the air should be "so stifled
and poisoned with smoke that over the greater part of Yorkshire (for
instance) the general idea must be that sheep are naturally black? and
why must Yorkshire and Lancashire rivers run mere filth and dye?"113
In both city and country alike things were growing uglier:

Even in the commonest things, such as fences in fields and

other simple agricultural appliances, except for a few

survivals, matters which have accidently clung to old

traditions, ugliness is the rule. An ordinary house, or

piece of furniture or of attire, is not only not beautiful,

it is aggressively and actively uglyi and we assume as a

matter of course that it must be so. 14
The factories were likewise "nightmare buildings" which "look what they
are, temples of overcrowding and adulteration and over-work, of unrest
in a word[.]"115 Even the schoolrooms (for those who had access to
them) were ugly, according to Ruskin. They contained nothing but "cheap
furniture and bare walls." The result was that "many a study appears
dull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk,
under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs."116

What beauty remains takes time and considerable money to obtain.

The rich, if they have any good taste, may get it by spending enough

 

113William Morris, "Why Not?", in Political Writings:
Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed. with an
Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press,
1994), 25-26.

114Morris, "Unattractive Labour," 88.
115Morris, "A Factory As It Might Be," 34.

116Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 108-09.

46
money. Those of moderate means may be able to obtain some of it, but
not without considerable trouble. But for the working man who has

neither time nor money, all beauty is beyond attainment, and he is

forced to live without it.117

The underlying theme of this aesthetic critique of society is lack
of restraint. "Development" and profit are pursued at all costs.
Because natural resources are largely the basis for this profit, it is
no wonder that the natural aesthetic prized by all three authors is
violated at every turn. In response, Ruskin sounds a warning about the
importance of understanding the limits of development:

Man can neither drink steam, nor eat stone. The maximum of
population on a given space of land implies also the
relative maximum of edible vegetable, whether for men or
cattle; it implies a maximum of pure air; and of pure water.
Therefore: a maximum of wood, to transmute air, and of
sloping ground, protected by herbage from the extreme heat
of the sun, to feed the streams. All England may, if it so
chooses, become one manufacturing town; and Englishmen,
sacrificing themselves to the good of general humanity, may
live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness,
and of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a
factory nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make
iron digestible by the million, nor substitute hydrogen for
wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever
feed them[.]118

Rather, it is restraint, coupled with an understanding of the true
source of life's joys, that underpins the hopes of Carlyle, Ruskin and
Morris for a new society, one that may rightly be called an "aesthetic

polity."

 

117Morris, "Unattractive Labour," 89.

118Ruskin, Unto This Last, 225.

CHAPTER 4

THE AESTHETIC POLITY

Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris all regarded beauty as a guiding, if
not ruling, principle in the affairs of society. Carlyle wrote quoting
Goethe: "'The Beautiful,‘ [Goethe] intimates, 'is higher than the Good;
the Beautiful includes in it the Good.'" Carlyle explains that what we
are supposed to love (the Beautiful) and what we are supposed to do (the
Good) are one and the same.119 Ruskin tells us that "[t]he
sensibility of the nation is indicated by the fineness of its
customs...By sensibility I mean its natural perception of beauty,
fitness, and rightness; or of what is lovely, decent, and
just...."120 For Ruskin beauty ranks high as a principle for a
society to follow, on the same plane with "tightness" by which he means
justice. For Morris the perception and creation of beauty is the prime
source of pleasure. He advocated reforms that would establish a radical
equality in all areas of society, an equality he felt would ensure the
enjoyment of beauty in work and leisure for all.121

Here again the authors link justice and beauty as Plato did. They

believe that new political, industrial, commercial and educational

 

119Carlyle, On Heroes, 81.

120John Ruskin, Munera Pulveris: Six Essays on the Elements of
Political Economy, in John Ruskin's Works, vol. 15 (Boston: Dana Estes &

Company, n.d.), 181.
121Morris, The Lesser Arts, 253-54.

47

48
arrangements would promote justice and underpin the conditions for the
creation and preservation of beauty in society and in nature. To the
extent such arrangements succeed in their tasks they might be said to be
"beautiful." This is in keeping with third part of the broad definition
of beauty offered in the introduction of this paper which says that
there is beauty in the reciprocal ties of affection and loyalty between
people. Following Plato, beauty emanates from such relationships when
they are just. To this view Carlyle gives explicit consent below;

surely, Ruskin and Morris would not disagree with such a label for their

own ideas.

Political Governance

In the matter of political governance Carlyle and Ruskin fall into
one camp and Morris into another. Both Carlyle and Ruskin feel that
people need strong, but enlightened leaders to govern them. Morris, a
radical socialist, called for complete equality among all members of
society and believed in decentralized self-government.

Carlyle was clear about the necessity for hierarchy for the
stability and cohesiveness of society. He wrote:

The relation of the taught to their teacher, of the loyal

subject to his guiding king, is under one shape or another,

the vital element of human Society; indispensable to it,

perennial in it; without which, as a body reft of its soul,

it falls down into death, and with horrid noisome

dissolution passes away and disappears.1

Carlyle prefers the model of the feudal baron who watched over the lives

of those under him "with rigour yet with love." He is even explicit

 

122Carlyle, Chartism, 191.

49

about the aesthetic dimension of this relationship saying that it was
"beautiful."123 This aesthetic dimension is further expanded when he
exclaims that the Chinese "make their Men of Letters their Governors!"
Carlyle wished to see the "man of intellect" in charge describing him as
"noblehearted...true, just, humane and valiant[.]" "Get pig for
governor," he writes, "all is got; fail to get him, though you had
Constitutions plentiful as blackberries, and a Parliament in every
village, there is nothing yet got!" For Carlyle, structure was less
important than character. The great man should guide the
citizenry.124

Ruskin, like Carlyle, believes that equality is impossible:

My continual aim has been to show the eternal superiority of

some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others,

and to show also the advisability of appointing such

persons, or person to guide, to lead, or on occasion even to

compel and subdue, their inferiors according to their own

better knowledge and wiser will.125
That guidance even takes the form of extensive surveillance of the
population by "overseers." Ruskin proposes this so that no one will
"suffer from unknown want, or live in unrecognized crime[.]" These
overseers would act with the "patient and gentle watchfulness" of "true

Christian pastors." High officers of state are to act as judges in

cases involving misconduct and as administrators who collect taxes to be

 

123Carlyle, Past and Present, 270.
12['Carlyle, On Heroes, 168-69.

125Ruskin, Unto This Last, 202.

50

used for public infrastructure and education. These officers would be
elected to office for life.126

Morris, as I said, was a radical socialist. He championed
complete equality of condition and stressed that there would be no
masters.127 His tentative scheme for government was a "system of
federalized communities" which would "take the place of rival
nationalities." Each community would carry on its own affairs. The
federal body would be the guardian of the "acknowledged principles of
society" so that labor could no longer be exploited for private
advantage and no "vindictive criminal laws" could be adopted by the
local communities. Intermediate districts formed because of "natural
circumstances such as language, climate and physical geography" might
also arise. The aim of the federation would be to reduce the
"complexity in political and administrative matters to a minimum."128
The hand of government would rest very lightly on the population. In
the utopian world which Morris creates in News From Nowhere, Mr. Hammond
explains to his time-traveling guest from the nineteenth century, "'[I]n

your sense of the word we have no government.'"129

 

126Ruskin, Time and Tide, 81-84.

127Morris, How I Became a Socialist, 379.

128William Morris, "Socialism Triumphant [Part Ila" in EQLEEEEEL
Writipgs: Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed.

with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes
Press, 1994), 612-13.

129Morris, News from Nowhere, 111.

51
Workers and Owners

Each author has a distinguishable view on the relationship of
workers to owners. Carlyle retains the relationship between master and
worker, but allows that ownership could conceivably be shared. For
Ruskin the hierarchy remains as well, but ownership stays vested in the
master. Morris would do away with the role of the master and vest
ownership of the means of production in the community as a whole. All
three authors, however, call for vast improvements in working conditions
and redistribution of the fruits of labor in an effort to make work and
living conditions more pleasurable and beautiful and therefore conducive
to the perception and creation of beauty.

Carlyle believes that a just wage and better working conditions
ought to be mandated by law.130 Wages should not be determined by
the "lawless anarchy of supply-and-demand" but by legislation. Better
working conditions and environmental controls should also be mandated by
legislation:

The Legislature, even as it now is, could order all dingy

Manufacturing Towns to cease from their soot and darkness;

to let in the blessed sunlight, the blue of Heaven, and

become clear and clean; to burn their coal-smoke, namely,

and make flame of it. Baths, free air, a wholesome

temperature, ceilings twenty feet high, might be ordained,
by Act of Parliament, in all establishments licensed as

Milis.131

Carlyle also believed that workers should be guided by "a superior
that should lovingly and wisely govern[.]" The wise governance of

workers includes permanent rather than at-will employment. Ownership of

 

13°Cariy1e, Chartism, 166.

131Carlyle, Past and Present, 262.

52

the enterprise might even be shared with the workers without, however,
disrupting the existing authority relationships.132

Ruskin, too, believes that those authority relationships should
not be disrupted. But, the masters would be expected to treat workers
more as "sons" than servants. As such their relationship would be
governed by "bonds of affection and responsibilities of relationship."
Ruskin certainly means that employment should be more secure, and not
managed by the "order of expediency."133

He also agrees with Carlyle that workers deserve better wages,
though Ruskin mandates no legislation but rather relies on moral suasion
to convince owners to pay more. The owners should also include
provision for the disabled and retired. If an owner does this, Ruskin
feels, he maintains his moral claim on the "surplus profits of the
business" which result from his superior organizational and intellectual
skills.134 Finally, Ruskin certainly believes that working
conditions need to improve so that every worker may lead the "healthiest
life."135

Morris would completely eliminate the distinction between workers
and owners. The people would hold machinery, factories, mines and land
"136

in common and administer them "for the benefit of the community.

The level of wages is moot since all products would be made for "use"

 

132Carlyle, Chartism, 166; idem, Past and Present, 274, 278.
133Ruskin, Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 15-16.
13['Ruskin, Time and Tide, 3, 7.

135Ruskin, Munera Pulveris, 215.

136Morris, "Why Not?", 25.

53
and not for sale, each person able to obtain what he needs from the

common stores.137

Working conditions would be nothing short of pleasing. Factories
would have beautiful gardens kept by the workers themselves, and inside
they would have properly adorned workshops. The factory would not only
be a place of production, but also of learning, recreation and social
life.138 The character of Mr. Hammond in News From Nowhere explains
that the proper role of machines in society is to do work which "'would
be irksome to do by hand.'" He adds, "'[I]n all work which it is a
pleasure to do by hand[,] machinery is done without.'" Morris adds
elsewhere that no one person would be required to do machine-tending
only. Everyone in the factory would take his turn.139 Outdoor and
farm labor would become one of the two or three occupations which all
men would have. At harvest such farm work might even take on the
complexion of a festival.140

In the choice of work, people would gravitate toward those

activities for which they had the best aptitude "since everyone likes to

do what he can do well." People, Morris believed, ought to be able to

 

137Morris, News from Nowhere, 127.
138Morris, "A Factory As It Might Be," 33-34; idem, "Why Not?", 26.

139Morris, News from Nowhere, 127; idem, "Work In A Factory As It
Might Be II," in Political Writings: Contributions to "Justice" and
"Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed. with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon
(Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1994), 40.

140William Morris, "Attractive Labour," in Political Writings:
Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed. with an
Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press,
1994), 94-95.

54

engage in work fitting for their capacities rather than fitting
themselves to whatever work is available.141

Besides the elimination of "unnecessary" manufactures, Morris felt
that the burden of labor could be greatly reduced if everyone worked.
Shortened working hours would give everyone greater leisure to pursue
pleasurable and creative activities. Here he was in agreement with
Ruskin who believed that the upper classes ought to do a "large portion”
of the agricultural work, not only out of fairness for the good of
society, but also for their own good. No one can doubt that Carlyle
felt the same way though he did not necessarily link this with greater
leisure for the lower classes. "A life of ease is not for any man[,]"

he wrote.142

Commerce and Wealth

For all three authors these altered relations between workers and
owners were but one side of the societal coin. They implied a vastly
different commercial system and a different attitude toward the
accumulation of wealth. First, they implied a new probity in the
dealings of sellers with buyers. Second, they implied a new consumer
ethic which would encourage this new probity and which would be
consistent with new and better industrial conditions. Finally, they

suggested that the accumulation of wealth for its own sake be

 

141Morris, "Attractive Labour," 94-95.

1['ZMorris, "Work In A Factory As It Might Be II," 40; Ruskin,
Munera Pulveris, 184; Carlyle, Past and Present, 155.

55
discouraged. Changes in these areas would be a prop to the production
and sale of beautiful, well-made goods by keeping the workman's, the

owner's and the consumer's focus on quality and beauty rather than

money.

A New Probity

A new probity among merchants would mean among other things more
attention to quality and beauty in the objects made for sale and the
muting or elimination of competition that might force a lowering of
standards.

Carlyle thought that this new probity might begin with less
emphasis on promotion and more on the quality of the product. He felt
that good workmanship speaks for itself: "[A man] is degrading himself
if he speak of his excellencies and prowesses, and supremacy in his
craft: his inmost heart says to him, 'Leave thy friends to speak of
these[.]'"143

Ruskin's views were more detailed. He wanted laws against the
adulteration of goods and vigorous enforcement of those laws. He
thought guilds should fix standards for quality; however, those
merchants and craftsmen who chose not to join the guild would not be
held liable for the quality standards. In this way, Ruskin believed,
people would be fairly warned that they were not necessarily getting a
good product if they bought from such sellers. He also felt that the
manufacturers had a duty "to form the market, as much as to supply it."

They should not chase every consumer preference in a race for market

 

1['3Carlyle, Past and Present, 144-45.

56

share and profit, but rather produce useful and beautiful goods with the
intention of educating the public's taste and increasing its ability to
discern good quality. In addition, he advocated price controls and
fixed salaries for merchants to curb what he felt was ruinous
competition. And, he believed that nations had no more right to
undersell one another than merchants. Finally, he opposed the
concentration of trade in too few hands as a patent injustice because it
inevitably led to underselling and thereby took "bread out the mouths of
all the other men in the town who are of the same trade."144

Morris's position on the role of the merchant was, of course,
colored by his desire for community ownership of the means of production
and distribution. There would, in effect, be no merchants or commerce
as such. Since there would be no competition, there would be no
advantage to keeping new processes and inventions secret or protected,
and these would be shared with all who wished to know them in the way
that say, new medical procedures are freely shared between medical
doctors today. Secondly, the decentralized scheme of government and
minimally mechanized manufacture which Morris advocates means that the
market for any factory or workshop would be more local than national or

international. Because of this, mass production, with the lowering of

standards it implies, would be de-emphasized.145

 

laaRuskin, Time and Tide 86, 88-89; idem, The Two Paths, 158-59;
idem, Time and Tide, 4-5, 147; idem, Two Lectures on the Political
Economy of Art, 125.

145William Morris, "Work In A Factory As It Might Be III," in
Political Writipgs: Contributions to "Justice" and "Commonweal" 1883-
1890, ed. with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon (Bristol, England:
Thoemmes Press, 1994), 43; idem, News from Nowhere, 101.

57
A New Consumer Ethdc

Both Ruskin and Morris formulated a new consumer ethic which they
proposed as a response to the conditions of their day. This new ethic
would serve as an agent of reform and lay the foundation for tastes and
habits appropriate to a more just and more beautiful society.

Ruskin believed that the first and most beneficial move a consumer
could make is to live on less:

It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nation to invent

a want. But the fact is, that the true benefit is in

extinguishing a want--in living with as few wants as

possible.

I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common

writers on political economy, in their stupefied missing of

this first principle of all human economy--individual or

political--to live, namely, with as few wants as possible,

and to waste nothing of what is given you to supply

them.146

Morris certainly agrees with this. His character, Mr. Hammond, in
News From Nowhere explains that in the new society, "'[Wle have now
found out what we want, so we make no more than we want[.]'"147 What
this means is that with fewer things to make there would be a slower
pace of work, and this would allow more attention to be paid to the
quality and beauty of each item.

To encourage the principles of work and beauty which Ruskin

advocates, he lays down three rules for purchases:

1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not
absolutely necessary, in the production of which Invention
has no share.

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but
only for some practical or noble end.

 

146Ruskin, Time and Tide, 143.

1l'7Morris, News from Nowhere, 127.

58

3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind,
except for the sake of preserving records of great
works.148

"Invention" means that the mind of the craftsman was exercised in the
design. Exact finishes require only mindless sanding and lacquering and
are done chiefly for show. Mere copying, of course, defeats the mind of
the craftsman turning him into a slave who follows orders.

Morris's guidelines echo Ruskin's. Morris abhors machine work

where it is unnecessary and eschews exact finishes:

We ought to get to understand the value of intelligent
work, the work of men's hands guided by their brains, and to
take that, though it be rough, rather than the unintelligent
work of machines or slaves, though it be delicate; to refuse
altogether to use machine-made work unless where the nature
of thing made compels it, or where the machine does what
mere human suffering would otherwise have to do: to have a
high standard of excellence in wares and not to accept
makeshifts for the real thing, but rather to go without; to
have no ornament merely for fashion's sake, but only because
we really think it beautiful, otherwise to go without it;
not to live in an ugly and squalid place (such as London)
for the sake of mere excitement or the like, but only
because our duties bind us to it[.]149

Even one's lodging ought to be chosen with beauty in mind and not the
desire for advancement and "excitement" as Morris says. Having a "high
standard of excellence in wares" is a sincere hope for Morris since he
believes that in the socialist society to come everyone will work and
thus have some acquaintance with what good workmanship means. In

addition, the factories and workshops would be places where people can

 

148Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 88.

149Morris, Some Hints on Pattern-Desigpipg, 282.

59
learn about how things are made (since there will be no trade secrets to
hide). In short, the consumer will be vastly better informed.150
Morris proposes three additional rules beyond this with the hope
that a broader audience, one beyond those immediately concerned with the

arts, will adopt them:

[1] To have as little as possible to do with middlemen, but
to bring together the makers and the buyers of goods as
closely as possible. [2] To do our best to further the
independence and reasonable leisure of all handicraftsmen.
[3] To eschew all bargains, real or imaginary (they are
mostly the latter), and to be anxious to pay and to get what
a piece of goods is really worth.15

Rules one and three may be seen as adjuncts to two since giving the
craftsman his due compensation directly will tend to increase his
independence and leisure. These rules would also reduce competition,
especially in price.

Ruskin again shows his thought to be antecedent for such rules; he
reiterates the necessity for conscious inquiry into the conditions of
the workman, sound purposes for all purchases, informed judgment about
quality and service, and a simple lifestyle:

In all buying, consider, first, what condition of existence
you cause in the producers of what you buy; secondly,
whether the sum you have paid is just to the producer, and
in due proportion, lodged in his hands; thirdly, to how much
clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you have
bought can be put; and fourthly, to whom and in what way it
can be most speedily and serviceably distributed; in all
dealings whatsoever insisting on entire openness and stern
fulfillment; and in all doings, on perfection and loveliness
of accomplishment; especially on fineness and purity of all
marketable commodity: watching at the same time for all

 

150Morris, "Work In A Factory As It Might Be III," 43.

151Morris, Some Hints on Pattern-Desigpipg, 282‘83-

60

ways of gaining, or teaching, powers of simple
pleasure[.]

The.Acculu1ation of Wealth

Finally, each of the three authors believes that wealth should be
redistributed, its accumulation restrained, or both. They wanted this
either because the then current distribution degraded the lower classes
making their lives miserable and ugly or because the pursuit of wealth
among manufacturers often led them to focus on price rather than quality
and beauty.

Carlyle wanted businessmen to find ways not of simply making goods
cheaper, but of making "a fairer distribution of the produce at its
present cheapness!" He admonishes the business class that wealth is as
much a burden as it is a blessing.153

Ruskin believes that absolute limits should be put on wealth
accumulation, not so much because wealth accumulation creates relative
inequality, but because of the positive effect such limits would have on
the ideals of the nation: "The temptation to use every energy in the
accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, and a higher ideal
of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the
national mind[.]" No doubt, he believes, justice and beauty would be
among them. He gives similar advice to the workman. Too much striving

degrades accomplishment in work and leads to the search for expedients

to hasten one's trajectory upward.

 

152Ruskin, Unto This Last, 227-28.

153Car1y1e, Past and Present, 268, 277-78.

61
In addition, Ruskin believes that in using property already owned,
people must be cognizant of the needs of the community, neither wasting

the productivity of the property or land nor fouling the air and water

to gain its produce.154

Morris's response to this issue is entirely predictable.
Community ownership of the means of production and distribution as
discussed above would address the problem of the accumulation and
distribution of wealth in a most radical way. Such arrangements would
give everyone opportunities for pursuing beauty in their leisure and

work by giving them control over both.

Education

Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris all agreed on the importance of
education and its reformative power. Carlyle called for wider education
to awaken the intellect of the mass of people, but for Ruskin and Morris
education would become the springboard to the aesthetic life for all.

By awakening the intellect of the people, Carlyle hoped to sharpen
their sense of order and thereby lead to a better order in society:

Intellect, insight, is the discernment of order in disorder;

it is the discovery of the will of Nature, of God's will;

the beginning of the capability to walk according to that.

With perfect intellect, were such possible without perfect

morality, the world would be perfect; its efforts unerringly

correct, its results continually successful, its condition

faultless. Intellect is like light; the Chaos becomes a
World under it: fiat lux.155

 

15['Ruskin, Time and Tide, 11; idem, Munera Pulveris, 187-88.

155Carlyle, Chartism, 223.

62
This task of cultivating the intellect of the uneducated is "the first

function a government [ought] to set about discharging." And, the first

task is literacy.156

Ruskin extends the task of education beyond getting people to do

the "right things" and into bringing them to an aesthetic enjoyment in

doing them:

[T]he entire object of true education is to make people not
merely Sp the right things, but enjoy the right things--not
merely industrious, but to love industry--not merely
learned, but to love knowledge--not merely pure, but to love
purity--not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after

justice.
The beauty of the world--in the form of handicraft, knowledge and
justice--draws a person toward it because it creates enjoyment. This is
because, as Ruskin believed, beauty is a sign of pleasure in the
activity creating it, and therefore the pursuit of beauty necessitates a
process which must be in some way pleasurable. To get people to enjoy
the right things was to align their moral and aesthetic lives.

Ruskin believed that transmitting a true understanding of the
nature of beauty, then, is of great importance in education:

[I]t is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we

love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all

our being. What we iiig determines what we gig, and is the

sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to
form character. [final emphasis added]158

 

156Carlyle, Chartism, 222.

157John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work,
Traffic and War, in John Ruskin's Works, vol. 15 (Boston: Dana Estes &
Company, n.d.), 46.

158Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, 47.

63

To make this possible Ruskin thought "[t]here ought to be free libraries
in every quarter of London, with large and complete reading-rooms
attached; so also free educational museums should open in every quarter
of London, all day long, until late at night, well lighted, well
catalogued, and rich in contents both of art and natural history." In
addition, all youths "should learn to do something finely and thoroughly
with [their] hands, so as to let [them] know what ippph meant; and what
stout craftsmanship meant" with the idea that all persons throughout
their lives would participate in crafts even if they didn't have the
capabilities of the master craftsman. Finally, the school environment
for these youths should be aesthetically pleasing because in such an
environment they will "feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with
beautiful and refined forms about [them] than with ugly ones."159

Morris agrees that young people should be taught handicrafts with
an eye toward fitting their training to their aptitudes and interests.
But youths would not be alone because "adults would also have
opportunities of learning in the same schools[.]" Not just handicrafts,
but science, literature, the fine arts and other things which the
community felt were necessary would also be taught. The community which
Morris refers to is, of course, the socialist community of the future.

Under socialism education would be universal.160

 

159Ruskin, Munera Pulveris, 188; idem, Time and Tide, 146-47; idem,
Two Lectures on the Political Economy of Art, 109.

160Morris, Useful Work versus Useless Toil, 300; idem, "The Dull
Level of Life," in Political Writipgs: Contributions to "Justice" and
"Commonweal" 1883-1890, ed. with an Introduction by Nicholas Salmon
(Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1994), 30.

64

The school should not be the only center of education, Morris
believed. The new socialist factory would be a center for
apprenticeship, and it would contain resources, such as a library, to
aid in lifelong learning for the adult. Also, the factory could be a
place for educating the public about how goods are made. Finally,
because the factory would no longer be a place associated with mere
drudgery, it might also become a place for musical and dramatic
presentations because of its role as a social center for the people who

work in it.161

The education suggested by all three authors when taken together
would make possible the dream: every person, an artist. It implies
that art is a continuum from the humblest domestic object or
entertainment all the way to finest painting or dramatic presentation.
Imagined this way, the work of every person becomes at least that of a
"small poet" as Carlyle suggests. If artistic expression is the basis
for pleasurable activity, then such educational schemes would offer the
possibility that all persons could come to enjoy pleasure in the
creation and perception of beauty and that artistic pursuits would not

be compartmentalized activities, but would entirely suffuse everyday

life and work.

 

161Morris, "Work In A Factory As It Might Be III," 42-44.

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION: AESTHETIC LIFE AND THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION

Nothing less than the fate of civilization was at stake for Thomas
Carlyle, John Ruskin and William Morris. All three believed that the
political, economic and social arrangements of their day were the basis
of great upheaval and suffering in British society. Although Carlyle,
as seen above, acknowledged the connection between the beautiful and the
good, Ruskin developed this link into a full-fledged historical theory
about the rise and fall of civilizations. Morris believed that the
degradation of art would only end with a complete overthrow of the
current system. In short, the aesthetic life of a civilization both
reflected and fatefully influenced the course of that civilization.

Carlyle believed that nature, the basis of his aesthetics and
morality, could not be defied without consequences. The terrible
suffering of British working people and blighted landscape of Britain
were the type of consequences he meant. And, this was not specifically
a British problem; Carlyle saw the crisis in England as "a microcosm of
the whole condition of man in the modern world."162

Ruskin believed that this condition was reflected in the art and

architecture of the age. The widespread imitation of classical and

neoclassical styles for Ruskin indicated a downward trajectory for

 

162Richard D. Altick, introduction to Past and Present, by Thomas
Carlyle, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), xiv.

65

66

contemporary civilization. The classical style focused on geometric
perfection, rather than natural beauty. It thus violated one of the
prime tenets of his aesthetic. This quest for perfection reduced the
workman to a mere unthinking "cog-wheel." This was a decline from
Gothic art and architecture in which the workman had been involved in
creating, on his own volition, variations and novelties in his work.
Such involvement meant that he exercised his full powers of
interpretation and execution.163 But an insistence on the
systematization of any style and adherence to rigid rules of
interpretation spells trouble not only for the workman, but also for the
nation in which he lives. Ruskin described the process this way:

[A] time has always hitherto come, in which, having thus

reached a singular perfection, [art] begins to contemplate

that perfection, and to imitate it, and deduce rules and

forms from it; and thus to forget her duty and ministry as

the interpreter and discoverer of Truth. And in the very

instant when this diversion of her purpose and forgetfulness

of her function take p1ace--forgetfulness generally

coincident with her apparent perfection--in that instant, I

say, begins her actual catastrophe; and by her own fall--so

far as she has influence--she accelerates the ruin of the

nation by which she is practiced.164

Moreover, since Ruskin claims that art both reflects and instructs
society and that "to teach taste is to form character," the character of
a nation's art also affects its virtues and the virtues of its citizens.
To illustrate this he separated artists into two categories: ”[T]hose

who seek for the pleasure of art, in the relations of its colours and

lines, without caring to convey any truth with it; and those who seek

 

163Ruskin, The Nature of the Gothic, 84; idem, The Two Paths, 84,
95.

16['Ruskin, The Two Paths, 96.

67

for the truth first, and then go down from the truth to the pleasure of
colour and line." By truth he means fidelity to the natural world. For
example, in Arab and Indian art he found an emphasis on pleasure first
without much concern for truth, if any. He states that "art whose end
is pleasure only is pre-eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations,
cruel in temper, savage in habits and conception[.]" But, art

dedicated to natural fact always indicates a peculiar

gentleness and tenderness of mind, and...all great and

successful work of that kind will assuredly be the

production of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men,

large in their Vive gf life, and full of various
intellectual power. 6

Hence, it is no small matter on which aesthetic road a nation or
civilization embarks.

Morris like Ruskin traced a decline in Western civilization back
to the Renaissance. Beauty was intrinsic to the work of the medieval
craftsman because of the organization and nature of his work. But the
commercial system which arose at the end of that age led to "a
transference of the interest of civilized men from the development of
the human and intellectual energies of the race to the development of
its mechanical energies." Morris warned that "[ilf this tendency is to
go along the logical road of development, it must be said that it will
destroy the arts of design and all that is analogous to them in
literature[.]" This was of great importance to Morris for the
destruction of art meant nothing less than the destruction of pleasure

in living. All that would remain would be "unrelieved anxiety"

 

165Ruskin, The Two Paths, 127.

68

associated with "profit-grinding" and degraded labor, and this would be
certain death for art if it continued.166

But Morris did not believe that capitalism would survive. As a
socialist he affirmed that revolution was inevitable and that it would
overturn the capitalist system worldwide replacing it with a highly
decentralized and radically egalitarian socialist society. The
revolution would halt the destruction of beauty, reform the nature of
work and shatter the barriers to the creation and ownership of art in
its broadest sense. So fervently did he believe in the necessity of
this revolution that he sometimes adopted a chiliastic tone reminiscent
of Carlyle:

For my part, having regard to the general happiness of the
race, I say without shirking that the bloodiest of violent
revolutions would be a light price to pay for the righting
of [the wrongs against men and art].16

Morris believed that "not only the worker, but the world in general,

will have no share in art till our present commercial society gives
place to real society--to Socialism."168
Carlyle, though no socialist, also believed a dramatic change was
in the offing. Speaking through Professor Teufelsdrockh, the main
character in Sartor Resartus, he writes: "'The World,' says [the

professor], 'as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and

waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker

 

166Morris, "Art or No Art? Who Shall Settle It?", 19-20; idem,
Gothic Architecture, 331-32; idem, "The Worker's Share of Art," 86-87.

167Morris, "Unattractive Labour," 89.

168Morris, "The Worker's Share of Art," 87.

69
combustion, as the case chances, will effectually enough annihilate the

past Forms of Society.'"169

The hope of great change is a theme in all three authors. Though
their aesthetic eye looked backward for guidance, their reformist eye
looked forward to a new society profoundly different in its values and
its structure from the one in which they lived. Some of the reforms
which they championed such as universal education, expansion of public
spending on infrastructure, social welfare programs including pensions
and disability pay, improved working conditions and shorter working
hours have all come to pass in industrialized countries. Yet, the
aesthetic which grew up around industrialism and its attendant
utilitarian philosophy still dominates the world. And, the deplorable
conditions which Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris witnessed in Britain in
their own century have been reproduced in ours on different shores in
Asia, Africa and Latin America. The same deskilled, slave-like,
repetitive work which nineteenth century manual laborers endured has
persisted and has been spreading rapidly throughout the so-called
developing world. And even in the industrialized world, "knowledge
workers" are facing a seductive electronic tedium imposed on them by the
computer.

A cursory glance at our city streets, our landscapes and our
neighborhoods will reveal that contemporary working and living
conditions have hardly created a new aesthetic paradise. Rather, as a
society, our aesthetic sensitivity has been so blunted that we live with

ugliness that sometimes exceeds the worst of Victorian England.

 

169Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 178.

70
Even in our hardened state we might take our aesthetic lives more
seriously, the three Victorians would say, if we only knew that what's

at stake is nothing less than the fate of our civilization.

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