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Preface
The following addresses, though spoken at different times, are
intentionally connected in subject; their aim being to set one or two
main principles of art in simple light before the general student, and
to indicate their practical bearing on modern design. 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.
This is the vital law; lying at the root of all that I have ever tried
to teach respecting architecture or any other art. It is also the law
most generally disallowed.
I believe this must be so in every subject. We are all of us willing
enough to accept dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted
harmlessly into spare niches, or shrouded and coffined at once out of
the way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and supposing we
have learned something. But a sapling truth, with earth at its root and
blossom on its branches; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its way
through bars and sods; most men, it seems to me, dislike the sight or
entertainment of, if by any means such guest or vision may be avoided.
And, indeed, this is no wonder; for one such truth, thoroughly
accepted, connects itself strangely with others, and there is no saying
what it may lead us to.
And thus the gist of what I have tried to teach about architecture has
been throughout denied by my architect readers, even when they thought
what I said suggestive in other particulars. "Anything but that. Study
Italian Gothic?--perhaps it would be as well: build with pointed
arches?--there is no objection: use solid stone and well-burnt brick?--
by all means: but--learn to carve or paint organic form ourselves! How
can such a thing be asked? We are above all that. The carvers and painters
are our servants--quite subordinate people. They ought to be glad if we
leave room for them."
Well: on that it all turns. For those who will not learn to carve or
paint, and think themselves greater men because they cannot, it is
wholly wasted time to read any words of mine; in the truest and
sternest sense they can read no words of mine; for the most familiar I
can use--"form," "proportion," "beauty," "curvature," "colour"--are
used in a sense which by no effort I can communicate to such readers;
and in no building that I praise, is the thing that I praise it for,
visible to them.
And it is the more necessary for me to state this fully; because so-
called Gothic or Romanesque buildings are now rising every day around
us, which might be supposed by the public more or less to embody the
principles of those styles, but which embody not one of them, nor any
shadow or fragment of them; but merely serve to caricature the noble
buildings of past ages, and to bring their form into dishonour by
leaving out their soul.
The following addresses are therefore arranged, as I have just stated,
to put this great law, and one or two collateral ones, in less
mistakeable light, securing even in this irregular form at least
clearness of assertion. For the rest, the question at issue is not one
to be decided by argument, but by experiment, which if the reader is
disinclined to make, all demonstration must be useless to him.
The lectures are for the most part printed as they were read, mending
only obscure sentences here and there. The parts which were trusted to
extempore speaking are supplied, as well as I can remember (only with
an addition here and there of things I forgot to say), in the words, or
at least the kind of words, used at the time; and they contain, at all
events, the substance of what I said more accurately than hurried
journal reports. I must beg my readers not in general to trust to such,
for even in fast speaking I try to use words carefully; and any
alteration of expression will sometimes involve a great alteration in
meaning. A little while ago I had to speak of an architectural design,
and called it "elegant," meaning, founded on good and well "elected"
models; the printed report gave "excellent" design (that is to say,
design _excellingly_ good), which I did not mean, and should, even
in the most hurried speaking, never have said.
The illustrations of the lecture on iron were sketches made too roughly
to be engraved, and yet of too elaborate subjects to allow of my
drawing them completely. Those now substituted will, however, answer
the purpose nearly as well, and are more directly connected with the
subjects of the preceding lectures; so that I hope throughout the
volume the student will perceive an insistance upon one main truth, nor
lose in any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the responsibility
which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him; responsibility for
choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes of study, which
involve ultimately the development, or deadening, of every power he
possesses. I have tried to hold that choice clearly out to him, and to
unveil for him to its farthest the issue of his turning to the right
hand or the left. Guides he may find many, and aids many; but all these
will be in vain unless he has first recognised the hour and the point
of life when the way divides itself, one way leading to the Olive
mountains--one to the vale of the Salt Sea. There are few cross roads,
that I know of, from one to the other. Let him pause at the parting of
THE TWO PATHS.
THE TWO PATHS
_BEING_
LECTURES ON ART, AND ITS APPLICATION TO DECORATION AND
MANUFACTURE DELIVERED IN 1858-9.
Content of Preface [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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Read next: LECTURE I - THE DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER NATIONS
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