John Ruskin - The Ethics of the Dust

L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labor was despised both by them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practiced it. Also, knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the rest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.

SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say "Everything great I can make small, and everything small great"?

L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have conceived. It is the character of pure and eyeless manual labor to conceive everything as subjected to it: and, in reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected, aggrandizing itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things. I heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men's College, the other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying, with grandly conducted emphasis, "They have made man greater, and the world less." His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of the world less. I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have been a pity—they were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the world made;—and whether, at present, those of them really felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses.

SIBYL. But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak things strong, and small things great?

L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true. For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighborhood—a very fine fair we thought it. You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner's "St. Catherine's Hill," you will see what it was like. There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like: and in the alleys of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion, very thoroughly. Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he made the wooden poles into iron ones, and put them across, like his own crooked legs, so that you always fall over them if you don't look where you are going; and he turned all the canvas into panes of glass, and put it up on his iron cross-poles; and made all the little booths into one great booth;—and people said it was very fine, and a new style of architecture; and Mr. Dickens said nothing was ever like it in Fairy-land, which was very true. And then the little Pthah set to work to put fine fairings in it; and he painted the Nineveh bulls afresh, with the blackest eyes he could paint (because he had none himself), and he got the angels down from Lincoln choir, and gilded their wings like his gingerbread of old times; and he sent for everything else he could think of, and put it in his booth. There are the casts of Niobe and her children; and the Chimpanzee; and the wooden Caffres and New-Zealanders; and the Shakespeare House; and Le Grand Blondin, and Le Petit Blondin; and Handel; and Mozart; and no end of shops, and buns, and beer; and all the little-Pthah-worshippers say, never was anything so sublime!

SIBYL. Now, do you mean to say you never go to these Crystal Palace concerts? they're as good as good can be.

L. I don't go to the thundering things with a million of bad voices in them. When I want a song, I get Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram and Counselor Pleydell to sing "We be three poor Mariners" to me; then I've no headache next morning. But I do go to the smaller concerts, when I can; for they are very good, as you say, Sibyl: and I always get a reserved seat somewhere near the orchestra, where I am sure I can see the kettle-drummer drum.

SIBYL. Now DO be serious, for one minute.

L. I am serious—never was more so. You know one can't see the modulation of violinists' fingers, but one can see the vibration of the drummer's hand; and it's lovely.

SIBYL. But fancy going to a concert, not to hear, but to see!

L. Yes, it is very absurd. The quite right thing, I believe, is to go there to talk. I confess, however, that in most music, when very well done, the doing of it is to me the chiefly interesting part of the business. I'm always thinking how good it would be for the fat, supercilious people, who care so little for their half- crown's worth, to be set to try and do a half-crown's worth of anything like it.

MARY. But surely that Crystal Palace is a great good and help to the people of London?

L. The fresh air of the Norwood hills is, or was, my dear; but they are spoiling that with smoke as fast as they can. And the palace (as they call it) is a better place for them, by much, than the old fair; and it is always there, instead of for three days only; and it shuts up at proper hours of night. And good use may be made of the things in it, if you know how: but as for its teaching the people, it will teach them nothing but the lowest of the lower Pthah's work—nothing but hammer and tongs. I saw a wonderful piece, of his doing, in the place, only the other day. Some unhappy metal-worker—I am not sure if it was not a metal- working firm—had taken three years to make a Golden eagle.

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