260 APPENDIX, 7

thought, to confess this boldly; to get rid of the expense of an Establishment, and the hypocrisy of a Liturgy; to exhibit its cathedrals as curious memorials of a bygone superstition, and abandoning all thoughts of the next world, to set itself to make the best it can of this.

But if, on the other hand, there does exist any evidence by which the probability of certain religious facts may be shown, as clearly, even, as the probabilities of things not absolutely ascertained in astronomical or geological science, let this evidence be set before all our youth so distinctly, and the facts for which it appears inculcated upon them so steadily, that although it may be possible for the evil conduct of after life to efface, or for its earnest and protracted meditation to modify, the impressions of early years, it may not be possible for our young men, the instant they emerge from their academies, to scatter themselves like a flock of wildfowl risen out of a marsh, and drift away on every irregular wind of heresy and apostacy.

Lastly, Our system of European education despises Politics.-That is to say, the science of the relations and duties of men to each other. One would imagine, indeed, by a glance at the state of the world, that there was no such science. And, indeed, it is one still in its infancy.¹

It implies, in its full sense, the knowledge of the operations of the virtues and vices of men upon themselves and society; the understanding of the ranks and offices of their intellectual and bodily powers in their various adaptations to art, science, and industry; the understanding of the proper offices of art, science, and labour themselves, as well as of the foundations of jurisprudence, and broad principles of commerce; all this being coupled with practical knowledge of the present state and wants of mankind.

What, it will be said, and is all this to be taught to schoolboys? No; but the first elements of it, all that are necessary to be known by an individual in order to his acting wisely in any station of life, might be taught, not only to every schoolboy, but to every peasant. The impossibility of equality among men;² the good which arises from their inequality; the compensating circumstances in different states and fortunes; the honourableness of every man who is worthily filling his appointed place in society, however humble; the proper relations of poor and rich, governor and governed; the nature of wealth, and mode of its circulation; the difference between productive and unproductive labour; the relation of the products of the mind and hand; the true value of works of the higher arts, and the possible amount of their production; the meaning of “Civilization,” its advantages and dangers; the meaning of the term “Refinement;” the possibilities of possessing refinement in a low station, and of losing it in a high one; and, above all, the significance of almost every act of a man’s daily life, in its ultimate operation upon himself and others;-all this might be, and ought to be, taught to every boy in the kingdom, so completely, that it should be just as impossible to introduce an absurd or licentious doctrine among our adult population, as a new version of the multiplication table. Nor am I altogether without hope that some day it may enter

¹ [See above, ch. iv. § 3, p. 197.]

² [A constant theme with Ruskin; see, for instance, Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. x. § 22 (“everlasting difference is set between one man’s capacity and another’s”); vol. v. pt. vi. ch. viii. § 18 (equality a source “of all evil”); Unto this Last, § 54 (“the impossibility of equality”); Munera Pulveris, § 121 (“talk of equality ... fog in the brains”); Time and Tide, §§ 141, 169, 170; and Fors Clavigera, Letters 9, 14, 61.]

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