the wheat is, according to the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the
bitterer blight. And therefore, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to
desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner7
thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty
progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to
prefer mean victory to honorable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that
we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of success. But above all, in
our dealings with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check,
by severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead
to a noble issue; and, still more, how we withhold our admiration from great
excellencies, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make
and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual
labor, there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid
capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the worst;
and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or torpid. But they
cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take them in their feeble
ness, and unless we prize and honor them in their imperfection above the best
and most perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do with all our
laborers; to look for the thoughtful part of them, and get that out of them,
whatever we lose for it, whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with
it. For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with
7. Lesser.
.
132 8 / JOHN RUSKIN
much error. Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight
line, and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy and
carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect
precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think
about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own
head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one
he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to
his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He
was only a machine before, an animated tool. And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either
make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men
were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect
in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their
fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like com
passes, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be
given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and
strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul
must be bent upon the finger point, and the soul's force must fill all the invis
ible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely
precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being
be lost at last?a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world
is concerned; saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs
and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside human
ity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you
cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do any
thing worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come
