394 SYMBIOGENESIS 



abolition of great inequalities (wrongly established), both 

 nationally and internationally. He looks forward prophetically 

 to the day when England will " cast all thoughts of possessive 

 wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first 

 arose ; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of 

 Golgonda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash 

 from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may 

 at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, 

 and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying: "These are my 

 Jewels." 



Like Gautama, Coleridge, Shelley and Tolstoy, he also 

 advises : 



Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride 

 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels; 



for there is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, 

 will not impress a new fairness upon the features : neither on them 

 only, but on the whole body, both the intelligence and the moral facul- 

 ties have operation ; for even all the movements and gestures, however 

 slight, are different in their modes according to the mind that governs 

 them; and on the gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows 

 a grace of action, and, through continuance of thivS, a grace of form, 

 which by no discipline may be taught or attained. 



How cruelly Ruskin, whose cardinal doctrine was that 

 reform from without must be complemented by reform from 

 within, and who held with Milton that peace has her victories 

 no less renowned than those of war, was ridiculed by many of 

 his contemporaries ! Yet how startling the influence of his 

 ideas upon recent progressive developments in the government 

 of the State ! Quite the reverse of the influence of Darwinian 

 ideas ! Every nation has its own dominant philosophy. Either 

 it is one of which Ruskin is typical, or it is one of which that 

 of Hobbes or of Nietzsche is typical. Either it contains the 

 germs of life or the germs of death. 



Huxley's instincts, on the other hand, inclined him 

 towards the "forceful" opinions of the fighting class. He 

 shared with these a kind of biological antagonism to 

 "sentimental " democrats who feel instinctively drawn towards 



