APPENDIX, 14 461

than those which are confessedly games of skill or chance, it is toward this goal of the happiness of labour that they must make. Science has in these latter days made such stupendous strides, and is attended by such a crowd of votaries, many of whom are doubtless single-hearted, and worship in her not the purse of riches and power, but the casket of knowledge, that she seems to need no more than a little humility to temper the insolence of her triumph, which has taught us everything except how to be happy. Man has gained mechanical victory over nature, which in time to come he may be able to enjoy, instead of starving amidst of it. In those days science also may be happy; yet not before the second birth of art, accompanied by the happiness of labour, has given her rest from the toil of dragging the car of commerce. Lastly, it may well be that the human race will never cease striving to solve the problem of the reason for its own existence; yet it seems to me that it may do this in a calmer and more satisfactory mood when it has not to ask the question, Why were we born to be so miserable? but rather, Why were we born to be so happy? At least it may be said that there is time enough for us to deal with this problem, and that it need not engross the best energies of mankind, when there is so much to do other-where.

But for this aim of at last gaining happiness through our daily and necessary labour, the time is short enough, the need so urgent, that we may well wonder that those who groan under the burden of unhappiness can think of anything else; and we may well admire and love the man who here called the attention of English-speaking people to this momentous subject, and that with such directness and clearness of insight, that his words could not be disregarded. I know, indeed, that Ruskin is not the first man who has put forward the possibility and the urgent necessity that men should take pleasure in labour, for Robert Owen showed how by companionship and goodwill labour might be made at least endurable; and in France Charles Fourier¹ dealt with the subject at great length, and the whole of his elaborate system for the reconstruction of society is founded on the certain hope of gaining pleasure in labour. But in their times neither Owen nor Fourier could possibly have found the key to the problem with which Ruskin was provided. Fourier depends not on art for the motive power of the realisation of pleasure in labour, but on incitements, which, though they would not be lacking in any decent state of society, are rather incidental than essential parts of pleasureable work; and on reasonable arrangements, which would certainly lighten the burden of labour, but would not procure for it the element of sensuous pleasure, which is the essence of all true art. Nevertheless, it must be said that Flourier and Ruskin were touched by the same instinct, and it is instructive and hopeful to note how they arrived at the same point by such very different roads.

Some readers will perhaps wonder that in this important chapter of Ruskin I have found it necessary to consider the ethical and political, rather

¹ [The social experiments of Robert Owen (1771-1858), included, it will be remembered, an “institution for the formation of character” (1814), and “villages of unity and co-operation” (1817). An essential part of the scheme of “phalansteries” sketched out by Fourier (1772-1837) in his Théorie des Quatre Mouvements (1808), was that by the organisation of labour in accordance with individual aptitudes no occupation should become irksome.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]