INTRODUCTORY 25

APHORISM 3. The arts of our day must not be luxurious, nor its metaphysics idle.²

I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery; and the weight of evil against which we have to contend, is increasing like the letting out of water.¹ It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us to approach the questions in which we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour, which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his life to contend.³

¹ [This book was written, it will be remembered, in the year of revolutions abroad and of the Chartist movement at home. Compare a similar reference, written at the same time, in ed. 2 of Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 31 n.]

² [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the edition of 1880, is from “The aspect of the years” to the end of § 6.]

³ [For some unpublished material for this Introductory chapter, see Appendix ii., p. 282.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]