separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now
it is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and
lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is pestilential air at the
bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right
freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey another man,
to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is
often the best kind of liberty?liberty from care. The man who says to one,
Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh,4 has, in most cases,
more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The move
ments of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by
the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened;
but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield
reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not
slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world.
There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is to say irrational or selfish:
but there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a
man is never so noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the
feeling pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised
by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him?the Irish peasant
who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust
through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant, who, 200 years ago,
at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his
chief?5?as each fell, calling forth his brother to the death, 'Another for Hec
2. Fanciful, imaginative. 5. An incident described in the preface to Sir Wal3. Devoid of anatomy (Ruskin's coinage). ter Scott's novel The Fair Maid of Perth (1828). 4. Matthew 8.9.
.
133 0 / JOHN RUSKIN
tor!' And therefore, in all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and
sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoic
ingly; and famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been
borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the
heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who received them,
and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls
withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an
unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered
with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes?this nature bade not?
this God blesses not?this humanity for no long time is able to endure. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized inven
tion of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly
speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: Divided into mere segments
of men?broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little
piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a
nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.
Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if
we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished?sand of
human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is?
we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that
rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all
in very deed for this?that we manufacture everything there except men; we
blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but
