48 THE STONES OF VENICE I. PRIDE OF SCIENCE

themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.* Her work is to portray the appearances of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they produce upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both, observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect, the other with truth of essence.¹ Art does not represent things falsely, but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man: and it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this, and only this,-what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart, what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger than the material creation.

§ 9. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than, the earth: † that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours, and 4 minutes. With all this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything of this kind. But the things which it does care to know are these: that in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, “which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His

* Or, more briefly, science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena. I use the word “art” here with reference to the fine arts only; for the lower arts of mechanical production I should reserve the word “manufacture.”

† (Written thirty years ago.-Note, 1886.)

¹ [This distinction was to be constantly reinforced in Ruskin’s works. See, for instance, Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvii. § 42, where Turner is spoken of as a “master in the science of aspect” as Bacon was in that of essence; and Ethics of the Dust, § 107, where the distinction is explained, and illustrated as being between form and force. See also the passages collected at Vol. IV. p. 158, on the relations of art and anatomy, and see generally The Eagle’s Nest, being “Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art.”]

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