374 THE STONES OF VENICE

reading Aristotle, whose system is so false, so forced, and so confused, that the study of it at our universities is quite enough to occasion the utter want of accurate habits of thought, which so often disgraces men otherwise welleducated.¹ In a word, Aristotle mistakes the Prudence or Temperance which must regulate the operation of the virtues, for the essence of the virtues themselves; and striving to show that all virtues are means between two opposite vices, torments his wit to discover and distinguish as many pairs of vices as are necessary to the completion of his system, not disdaining to employ sophistry where invention fails him.

And, indeed,² the study of classical literature, in general, not only fostered in the Christian writers the unfortunate love of systematizing, which gradually degenerated into every species of contemptible formulism,³ but it accustomed them to work out their systems by the help of any logical quibble, or verbal subtlety, which could be made available for their

¹ [To some inquiries from his father about this passage, Ruskin replied as follows:-

“5th September [1853].-... You ask when I began to suspect Aristotle. When I was at Oxford I read him first, and liked the study so much that it was the only book I took up thoroughly, and had I gone up for honours, my principal success, if any, would have been in my philosophy, as Gordon will tell you. I once knew nearly the half of Aristotle’s Ethics word for word, by heart, and deliberately set myself to learn the whole but gave it up, finding the difficulty increase in proportion to the quantity I knew. I saw there were some flaws in the thing then, and marked one or two, but did not see the fallacy of the system. When, however, I began the Rhetoric, I thought it so weak and foolish that I began to suspect the Ethics. They were, I think, the only Greek book I carried with me on our long journey to Italy [1840-1841], when I took in hand to write a new system of ethics in the form of a corrected and amplified Aristotle. After doing three or four chapters, at Naples, I got puzzled, and out of my depth, and after getting ill again at Albano, I threw the thing aside, and from that time to this I have hardly read anything [on philosophy] but Plato and Bacon, who gradually drew me into clear water and into my depth again, and at last showed me that the ethics were a mere bog of glittering mud, which fact I mean to prove and maintain. I have the chapters still, written at Naples, and quantities of abstracts of the Ethics, which will serve me conveniently for reference.”

For Ruskin’s opinion of Aristotle, see also Vol. I. pp. xxxv. n., 419, and Modern Painters, vol. iv. Appendix 3.]

² [Here, again, Ruskin was not in after years sure of this section. Against the paragraph “And, indeed ...,” he wrote in his only copy “Examine.”]

³ [Here, again, the MS. has “formalism” (cf. above, § 48) but ed. 1 “formulism,” a word first used by Carlyle in his Heroes (1840).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]