IV. CONCLUSION 203

though the eyeball be sightless, and can gain in strength when the hand and the foot are hewn off and cast into the fire; the moment this part of the man stands forth with its solemn “Behold, it is I,” then the work becomes art indeed, perfect in honour, priceless in value, boundless in power.

§ 7. Yet observe, I do not mean to speak of the body and soul as separable. The man is made up of both: they are to be raised and glorified together, and all art is an expression of the one by and through the other. All that I would insist upon is, the necessity of the whole man being in his work; the body must be in it. Hands and habits must be in it, whether we will or not: but the nobler part of the man may often not be in it. And that nobler part acts principally in love, reverence, and admiration,¹ together with those conditions of thought which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much error by considering the intellectual powers as having dignity in themselves, and separable from the heart; whereas the truth is, that the intellect becomes noble or ignoble according to the food we give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. It is not the reasoning power which, of itself, is noble, but the reasoning power occupied with its proper objects. Half of the mistakes of metaphysicians have arisen from their not observing this; namely, that the intellect, going through the same processes, is yet mean or noble according to the matter it deals with, and wastes itself away in mere rotatory motion, if it be set to grind straws and dust. If we reason only respecting words, or lines, or any trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a contemptible faculty; but reason employed on holy and infinite things, becomes herself holy and infinite. So that, by work of the soul, I mean the reader always to understand the work of the entire immortal creature, proceeding from a quick, perceptive, and eager heart, perfected by the

¹ [In one of his copies of the volume Ruskin has marked much of these sections (6, 7) as if in special approval, but he notes in the margin, “Hope missed here.”]

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