III. GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE 185

baseness; the beholder not being revolted even by this, but comprehending that, as the seeming evil in the framework of creation did not invalidate its Divine authorship, so neither did the evil or imperfection in the symbol invalidate its Divine message. And thus, sometimes, the designer at last became wanton in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out the impurity and the savageness of his own heart, for the mere pleasure of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary by the religion of their beholder.

§ 65. It is not, however, in every symbolical subject that the fearful grotesque becomes embodied to the full. The element of distortion which affects the intellect when dealing with subjects above its proper capacity, is as nothing compared with that which it sustains from the direct impressions of terror. It is the trembling of the human soul in the presence of death which most of all disturbs the images on the intellectual mirror, and invests them with the fitfulness and ghastliness of dreams. And from the contemplation of death, and of the pangs which follow his footsteps, arise in men’s hearts the troop of strange and irresistible superstitions which, more or less melancholy or majestic according to the dignity of the mind they impress, are yet never without a certain grotesqueness, following on the paralysis of the reason and over-excitement of the fancy. I do not mean to deny the actual existence of spiritual manifestation; I have never weighed the evidence upon the subject;¹ but with these, if such exist, we are not here concerned. The grotesque which we are examining arises out of that condition of mind which appears to follow naturally upon the contemplation of death, and in which the fancy is brought into morbid action by terror, accompanied by the belief in spiritual presence, and in the possibility of spiritual apparition. Hence are developed its most sublime,

¹ [For Ruskin’s subsequent interest in it, see D. D. Home: His Life and Mission, 1888, pp. 213-215. The Ruskin letters there given are reprinted in a later volume of this edition.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]