204 THE STONES OF VENICE

intellect, and finally dealt with by the hands, under the direct guidance of these higher powers.¹

§ 8. And now observe, the first important consequence of our fully understanding this pre-eminence of the soul, will be the due understanding of that subordination of knowledge respecting which so much has already been said. For it must be felt at once, that the increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make the soul larger or smaller; that in the sight of God, all the knowledge man can gain is as nothing: but that the soul, for which the great scheme of redemption was laid, be it ignorant or be it wise, is all in all; and in the activity, strength, health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main difference, in His sight, between one man and another. And that which is all in all in God’s estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man’s labour; and to have the heart open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions and thoughts warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the other fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in this world. And therefore, finally, for this, the weightiest of all reasons, let us take no pride in our knowledge. We may, in a certain sense, be proud of being immortal; we may be proud of being God’s children; we may be proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by no human teaching: but not of what we have been taught by rote; not of the ballast and freight of the ship of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all the freight will only sink it faster, and strew the sea more richly with its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received what we moderns ridiculously call education,² but he knows more of everything, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did; but he is not for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to be heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul. There is

¹ [For remarks on the significance of § 7, and passages from Ruskin’s MSS. connected with it, see above, Introduction, p. xvii. Compare also Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 24.]

² [Ruskin’s reiterated assertion was that true education is an ethical process, not one of mental gymnastic; see, for instance, the letter on “True Education” in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, ii. 177, and Crown of Wild Olive, § 144; and compare Appendix 7 below, p. 261.]

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