Of truth and theoretic faculties

John Ruskin

Estes and Lauriat, 1894

Preview this book »

From inside the book

Selected pages

Title Page

Table of Contents

Continued	21

PAGE	25

Works of Copley Fielding His hill feeling	27

70	54

OF THE FOREGROUND	55

The Ground of Cuyp	69

Beautiful instance of an exception to general rules	75

26	76

Repose how expressed in matter	257

The necessity to repose of an implied energy	258

Its universal value as a test of art	259

Instances in the Laocoon and Theseus	260

And in altar tombs	262

OF SYMMETRY OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE JUS TICE 1 Symmetry what and how found in organic nature	263

How necessary in art	264

Especially in religious art	265

Difficulty of properly dividing the subject	81

Compared with the work of Salvator	102

CHAPTER IIIOF WATER as PaintED BY TURNER	111

The boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it	117

Its united qualities	118

Relation of various circumstances of past agitation etc by the most trifling incidents as in the Cowes	119

In scenes on the Loire and Seine	120

Expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore	121

Turners painting of distant expanses of water Calm interrupted by ripple	122

His drawing of distant rivers	123

And of surface associated with mist	124

The abandonment and plunge of great cataracts How given by him	125

Difference in the action of water when continuous and when interrupted The interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed	126

But the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed	127

Turners careful choice of the historical truth	128

And of the interrupted torrent in the Mercury and Argus	129

Various cases	130

Character of shorebreakers also inexpressible	132

Their effect how injured when seen from the shore	133

With peculiar expression of weight	134

Peculiar action of recoiling waves	135

General character of sea on a rocky coast given by Tur ner in the Lands End	136

37 Open seas of Turners earlier times	137

Effect of sea after prolonged storm	138

Turners noblest work the painting of the deep open sea in the Slave Ship	140

Its united excellences and perfection as a whole	141

SECTION VI	142

Laws common to all forest trees Their branches do not taper but only divide	143

And care of nature to conceal the parallelism	144

And of the Italian school generally defy this law	145

Boughs in consequence of this law must diminish where they divide Those of the old masters often do not	146

Boughs must multiply as they diminish Those of the old masters do not	147

Boughdrawing of Salvator	148

All these errors especially shown in Claudes sketches and concentrated in a work of G Poussins	149

Impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by wind	150

Boughdrawing of Titian	151

Boughdrawing of Turner	152

Leafage Its variety and symmetry	153

Perfect regularity of Poussin	154

How contradicted by the treepatterns of G Poussin	155

How followed by Creswick	156

Perfect unity in natures foliage	157

How rendered by Turner	158

Universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves	159

Altogether unobserved by the old masters Always given by Turner	160

Foliage painting on the Continent	161

Foliage of J D Harding Its deficiencies	162

His brilliancy of execution too manifest	163

GENERAL REMARKS RESPECTING THE TRUTH	168

The feelings of different artists are incapable of full com	174

Modern criticism Changefulness of public taste	177

Duty of the press	178

And inconsistency with themselves	179

Morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works	180

Necessity of finishing works of art perfectly	181

Sketches not sufficiently encouraged	182

Necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim	183

What should be their general aim	185

Duty of the press with respect to the works of Turner	187

PART III	190

And of what importance considered	191

The doubtful force of the term utility	192

Its proper sense	193

The evil consequences of such interpretation How con nected with national power	194

How to be averted	195

Division of the pursuits of men into subservient and ob jective	198

How reversed through erring notions of the contempla tive and imaginative faculties	199

Object of the present section	200

OF THE THEORETIC FACULTY AS CONCERNED WITH PLEASURES OF SENSE 1 Explanation of the term theoretic	201

Use of the terms Temperate and Intemperate	202

Grounds of inferiority in the pleasures which are sub jects of intemperance	203

Evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hear ing	204

How the lower pleasures may be elevated in rank	205

Ideas of beauty how essentially moral	206

How degraded by heartless reception	207

OF ACCURACY AND INACCURACY IN IMPRES SIONS OF SENSE 1 By what test is the health of the perceptive faculty to be determined?	208

And in what sense may the terms Right and Wrong be attached to its conclusions ?	209

What power we have over impressions of sense	210

Depends on acuteness of attention	211

What duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense	212

How rewarded	213

Errors induced by the power of habit	214

The large scope of matured judgment	215

The danger of a spirit of choice	216

How certain conclusions respecting beauty are by reason demonstrable	217

With what liabilities to error	218

OF FALSE OPINIONS HELD CONCERNING BEAUTY 1 Of the false opinion that truth is beauty and vice versa	220

Of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness Compare Chap xii 5	221

But never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty	222

Of the false opinion that beauty depends on the associa tion of ideas	223

Association Is 1st rational It is of no efficiency as a cause of beauty	224

The dignity of its function	225

How it is connected with impressions of beauty	226

And what caution it renders necessary in the examina tion of them	227

OF TYPICAL BEAUTYFIRST OF INFINITY OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY 1 Impossibility of adequately treating the sub...	228

The child instinct respecting space	230

Whereto this instinct is traceable	231

Infinity how necessary in art	232

And connected analogies	233

How the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the ex pression of infinity	234

Among the Venetians	235

Other modes in which the power of infinity is felt	236

How constant in external nature	237

The beauty of gradation	238

How necessary in Art	239

Infinity not rightly implied by vastness	240

The glory of all things is their Unity	241

The several kinds of unity Subjectional Original Of sequence and of membership	242

Unity of membership How secured	243

Change and its influence on beauty	244

The love of change How morbid and evil	245

The conducing of variety towards unity of subjection	246

And towards unity of sequence	248

The value of apparent proportion in curvature	251

How by nature obtained	252

Apparent proportion in melodies of line	253

Constructive proportion Its influence in plants	254

And animals	255

Summary	256

OF PURITY OR THE TYPE OF DIVINE ENERGY 1 The influence of light as a sacred symbol	266

Originally derived from conditions of matter	267

Perfect beauty of surface in what consisting	268

Purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness	269

Energy how expressed by purity of matter	270

Spirituality how so expressed	271

Meaning of the terms Chasteness and Refinement	272

Moderation its nature and value	274

It is the girdle of beauty	275

How difficult of attainment yet essential to all good	276

GENERAL INFERENCES RESPECTING TYPICAL BEAUTY 1 The subject incompletely treated yet admitting of gen eral conclusions	277

But degrees of it for his sake admitted	278

OF VITAL BEAUTY FIRST AS RELATIVE 1 Transition from typical to vital Beauty	279

The perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty is charity	281

Only with respect to plants less affection than sym pathy	282

Which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants	283

This sympathy is unselfish and does not regard utility	284

Especially with respect to animals	285

And it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism	286

The second perfection of the theoretic faculty as con cerned with life is justice of moral judgment	287

How impeded	288

Or to perfection of type	294

The beauty of repose and felicity how consistent with	300

Ideal form to be reached only by love	313

Practical principles deducible	314

Portraiture ancient and modern	315

Secondly Sensuality	316

And prevented by its splendor	317

Rubens Correggio and Guido	318

Thirdly ferocity and fear The latter how to be distin guished from awe	319

Ferocity is joined always with fear Its unpardonable ness	320

Of passion generally	322

Recapitulation	324

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS RESPECTING THE THEO RETIC FACULTY 1 There are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found ...	325

What imperfection exists in visible things How in a sort by imagination removable	326

Which however affects not our present conclusions	327

Typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued Instances	328

How interrupted by false feeling	329

Greatness and truth are sometimes by the Deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men	330

The second objection arising from the coldness of Chris tian men to external beauty	331

Reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world These anxieties overwrought and criminal	332

Evil consequences of such coldness	333

OF THE THREE FORMS OF IMAGINATION PAGE 1 A partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted	334

The works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with re spect to this faculty	335

The definition of D Stewart how inadequate	336

This instance nugatory	337

The three operations of the imagination Penetrative associative contemplative	339

How connected with verbal knowledge	340

How used in composition	341

What powers are implied by it The first of the three functions of fancy	342

Imagination not yet manifested	343

Imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts	344

The grasp and dignity of imagination	345

Its limits	346

How manifested in treatment of uncertain relations Its deficiency illustrated	347

Laws of art the safeguard of the unimaginative	348

Are by the imaginative painter despised Tests of	349

Imagination never repeats itself	350

Relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic	351

Instances of absence of imagination Claude Gaspar Poussin 252	352

And Turner	353

spect to nature	354

The sign of imaginative work is its appearance of abso lute truth	355

OF IMAGINATION PENETRATIVE 1 Imagination penetrative is concerned not with the com bining but apprehending of things	356

Miltons and Dantes description of flame	357

The imagination seizes always by the innermost point	358

Signs of it in language	359

Distinction between imagination and fancy	360

Fancy how involved with imagination	362

Fancy is never serious	363

Imagination is quiet fancy restless	364

And suggestive of the imagination	365

This suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy	366

Imagination addresses itself to imagination	367

Instances from the works of Tintoret	368

The Annunciation	369

The Baptism of Christ Its treatment by various painters	370

By Tintoret	371

The Crucifixion	372

The Massacre of Innocents	374

Various works in the Scuola di San Rocco	375

The Last Judgment How treated by various painters	376

By Tintoret	377

The Imaginative verity how distinguished from realism	378

26 The imagination how manifested in sculpture	379

Michael Angelo	380

Recapitulation The perfect function of the imagina tion is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth	383

Imagination how vulgarly understood	385

How its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings	386

OF IMAGINATION CONTEMPLATIVE PAGN 1 Imagination contemplative is not part of the essence but only a habit or mode of the faculty	387

The ambiguity of conception	388

The third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative	390

Various instances	393

Morbid or nervous fancy	396

Except under narrow limits 1st Abstract rendering of form without color	397

Of color without form	398

Abstraction or typical representation of animal form	399

Either when it is symbolically used	400

VOL II	401

Exception in delicate and superimposed ornament	402

Abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative	403

Exaggeration Its laws and limits First in scale of representation	404

Secondly of things capable of variety of scale	405

Thirdly necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale	406

Recapitulation	407

The conceivable modes of manifestation of Spiritual Beings are four	408

Supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature compare Chap iv 16	409

No representation of that which is more than creature is possible	410

supernatural character expressed by modification of ac cessories	412

Landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli	413

Landscape of Perugino and Raffaelle	414

Color and Decoration Their use in representations of the Supernatural	415

Decoration so used must be generic	416

Ideal form of the body itself of what variety susceptible	417

Symmetry How valuable	418

Its scope how limited	419

Conclusion	420

Addenda	421

Common terms and phrases

aerial perspective Alps angle appear artist bank Battle of Marengo beauty beds blue boughs Canaletto cast character chiaroscuro Claude Claude's clear clouds color convex Copley Fielding curves dark delicate distance drawing duckweed edge effect evidence expression exquisite fall farther feeling fissures foam foliage foreground give gray green ground Hence hills horizontal impression instance John Varley lake landscape laws leaves less Leucippus light lines local color look mass mind moun mountain nature never Nicholas Poussin object observe old masters painter painting parallel peaks perfect pict picture Pitti palace precipice reflection rendering ridge ripple river Rivers of France rock Salvator's scenery seen shade shadow shadow falls sharp shore side slope snow space spray Stanfield stream summit surface tain thing tion torrent touch transparent trees truth Turner undulating Vandevelde vertical waves whole zigzagging river

Popular passages

Page 330 - And he took up his parable and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said...‎

Appears in 424 books from 1730-2008

Page 98 - I am afraid my uncle will think himself justified by them on this occasion, when he asserts, that it is one of the most difficult things in the world to put a woman right, when she sets out wrong.‎

Appears in 225 books from 1775-2008

Page 393 - Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks its motion in this hush of Nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, everywhere Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought.‎

Appears in 298 books from 1829-2008

Page 275 - That which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure, of working, the same we term a law.‎

Appears in 231 books from 1793-2008

Page 337 - That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In the Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war.‎

Appears in 214 books from 1805-2007

Page 361 - Alas, poor Yorick ! I knew him, Horatio ; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times ; and now how abhorred in my imagination it is ! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.‎

Appears in 274 books from 1733-2008

Page 141 - ... labours amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight — and cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea.‎

Appears in 121 books from 1843-2008

Page 105 - Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves,* at the instant that it breaks into foam...‎

Appears in 76 books from 1844-2008

Page 258 - Upon the margin of that moorish flood Motionless as a cloud the old man stood; That heareth not the loud winds when they call; And moveth altogether, if it move at all.‎

Appears in 161 books from 1815-2007

Page 362 - O Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's* waggon ! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids ; bold...‎

Appears in 350 books from 1788-2008

Bibliographic information

Title	Of truth and theoretic faculties Volume 2 of Modern Painters, John Ruskin
Author	John Ruskin
Edition	illustrated
Publisher	Estes and Lauriat, 1894
Original from	Harvard University
Digitized	4 Jan 2008

Export Citation	BiBTeX EndNote RefMan

About Google Books - Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Information for Publishers - Report an issue - Help - Google Home