NATURE 



353 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1884 



MR. R US KIN'S BOGIES 



PROFESSOR RUSKIN'S utterances are perhaps to 

 be taken least serioirsly when he is himself most 

 serious, and probably he was never more in earnest than 

 in his jeremiad on modern clouds, delivered at the 

 London Institution on the 4th and nth inst. Probably 

 none of the readers of Nature have been terrified by the 

 storm cloud of the nineteenth century, but should it be 

 otherwise we hasten at once to their relief. Twenty years 

 before the date fixed by Mr. Ruskin for the first appear- 

 ance of his portentous " plague-cloud," the writer of the 

 present article commenced a series of observations on the 

 forms and structures of clouds, followed a few years later 

 by such daily charts of wind and weather as could be 

 constructed from the data, somewhat meagre, that were 

 then accessible. As might be expected, cyclone and anti- 

 cyclone were then as they are now. The dimensions and 

 densities of the cloud layers have not altered, neither has 

 our moral degeneracy nor the increased smoke of our 

 manufacturing towns developed any new form of cloud. 

 Neither (until the phenomenal sunrises and sunsets of 

 the last three months) has Nature, in painting the clouds, 

 employed upon her palette any fresh tints, whatever 

 artists may have done. Further, we have not observed, 

 nor met with any one, except Mr. Ruskin, who has ob- 

 served, that the wind during the last thirteen years has 

 adopted a "hissing" instead of a "wailing" tone, or 

 that the pressure anemometer indicates that the motion 

 of the air has become more tremulous than heretofore. 



Admiration ought ungrudgingly to be bestowed on one 

 who has done good service as an art critic and as a con- 

 tributor to English literature. The sympathy, moreover, 

 which, denied to those who are in advance of their age, is 

 naturally accorded to the archaic type of mind, is en- 

 hanced by the attractiveness of a personality whose 

 idealism is as lofty as that of Mr. Ruskin. But we main- 

 tain that there is a further sentiment which contributed 

 to the applause which Mr. Ruskin's audiences bestowed 

 upon him. Speaking generally, "broadly and comfort- 

 ably," as he would say, Mr. Ruskin is not a representative 

 man, yet he represents a certain spirit of Philistinism (for it 

 merits this name), which is far from being unpopular, and 

 which shows itself in opposition to scientific culture. He 

 is the spokesman of that mental attitude which misinter- 

 prets the province of science and affects to misunderstand 

 the plainest utterances of the physicist. " The first 

 business," he says, "of scientific men is to tell you 

 things that happen, as, that if you warm water it will 

 boil." " The second and far more important business is 

 to tell you what you had best do under the circumstances 

 —put the kettle on in time for tea." "But if beyond this 

 safe and beneficial business they ever try and explain 

 anything to you, you may be confident of one of two 

 things— either that they know nothing (to speak of) about 

 it, or that they have only seen one side of it, and not only 

 have not seen, but usually have no mind to see, the other. 

 When, for instance, Prof. Tyndall explains the twisted 

 beds of the Jungfrau to you by intimating that the Mat- 

 terhorn is growing flat, or the clouds on the lee side of 

 Vol. XXIX. — No. 746 



the Matterhorn by the winds rubbing against the wind- 

 ward side of it, you may be pretty sure the scientific 

 people do not know much (to speak of) yet either about 

 the rock beds or the cloud beds. And even if the ex- 

 planation, so to call it, be sound on one side, windward 

 or lee, you may, as I said, be nearly certain it will not do 

 on the other. Take the very top and centre of scientific 

 interpretation by the greatest of its masters. Newton 

 explained to you— or at least was supposed to have ex- 

 plained—why an apple fell \sic\, but he never thought of 

 explaining the exactly correlative but infinitely more 

 difficult question how the apple got up there." One 

 would have supposed that even the lecturer must be 

 aware that modern science is at least as much occupied 

 with the last as with the first of these problems. Mr. 

 Ruskin has not yet done with Prof. Tyndall ;— in other 

 words, he can nowhere suppress his dislike of scientific 

 thought. " When I try to find anything firm to depend 

 on, I am stopped by the quite frightful inaccuracy of 

 the scientific people's terms, which is the consequence 

 of their always trying to write Latin-English, and so- 

 losing the grace of the one and the sense of the other." " I 

 am stopped dead because the scientific people use undu- 

 lation and vibration as synonyms. ' When,' said Prof. 

 Tyndall, ' we are told that the atoms of the sun vibrate 

 at different rates, and produce waves of different sizes, 

 your experience of water waves will enable you to form a 

 tolerably clear notion of what is meant.' 'Tolerably 

 clear,' your toleration must be considerable then. Do 

 you suppose a water wave is like a harp string ? Vibra- 

 tion is the movement of the body in a state of 

 tension, undulation that of a body absolutely lax. 

 In vibration not an atom of the body changes 

 its place in relation to another ; in undulation not 

 an atom of the body remains in the same place with 

 regard to another. In vibration every particle of the 

 body ignores gravitation or defies it ; in undulation every 

 particle of the body is slavishly submitted to it." And 

 more of the same sort. We should not weary the reader 

 with these quotations were it not too true that much of 

 the poetry which Mr. Ruskin adores, and much of the art 

 of which he is the apostle— not a little in short of the 

 poetry and art of our day— are full of this anti-scientific 

 Philistinism, whose ideal is ever in harsh contrast to the 

 real, and which from its antagonism to the facts of Nature 

 is the great producer of bogies. One has only to go 

 through any picture exhibition to see plenty of those 

 clouds which Mr. Ruskin persuades himself occur in 

 Nature, which, " irrespective of all siipervening colours 

 from the sun," are intrinsically "white, brown, grey, or 

 black " ; " argent or sable, baptised in white, or hooded 

 in blackness." 



We recommend those who sympathise with Mr. Ruskin 

 to study some of those little books which are beginning 

 to be the delight of our children. Such readers may never 

 attain the scientific spirit, yet they may possibly catch a 

 few chords of that great song in which there is complete 

 harmony between the Universe of Nature and that of 

 poetic and artistic sentiment, whose faint beginnings will 

 alone be heard in this plague-stricken century. 



Against cloud-classification the stars in their courses 

 have hitherto fought, and Mr. Ruskin in his continues- 

 the battle. Grievous are the wounds which he inflicts 



