[September, 
556 Analyses of Books. 
passing. But when a “ ring” interposes between producer and 
consumer in a more sneaking but even more effectual manner, 
he persuades himself and tries to persuade others that the public 
are benefited ! . 
Many persons who read the pamphlet before us will learn with 
surprise — in this case a wholesome emotion — that “ supply and 
demand,” wealth, utility, capital, and labour, all the words, in 
short, which the economists spell with initial capitals, are mere 
anti-scientific figments, like the “ dormitiveness ” of opium talked 
of by Moliere’s physician. They will learn, also, what they ought 
to have known before, that to maximise production is not the 
ultimate end and aim of a rational community. They will find 
that Ruskin, in the true spirit of the Evolutionist philosophy, 
whose letter he often decries, denounces the modern falsehood of 
the equality of all men. He endorses Stuart Mill’s “ terrible 
diCtum that it is doubtful whether the use of machinery has yet 
lightened the day’s toil of a single human being.” 
Mr. Geddes writes, too truthfully: — “A modern city, however 
stupendous its wealth — on paper — has after all hardly any ulti- 
mate products to show save a sorry aggregate of ill-construCted 
houses, mean without and unhealthy within, and containing but 
little of permanent value ; for the rest hideous dirt and darkness, 
smoke and sewage everywhere (which Boards of Works, Metro- 
politan and other, will not purify), as if its inhabitants had abso- 
lutely framed an ideal of a short life and a dismal one, with which 
they are dull enough to rest content.” It will be found, in short, 
on a careful perusal of this pamphlet, especially if read in con- 
nection with Mr. Ruskin’s own later works, that he is no mad 
enthusiast, no dreamer, but “ the highest practical exponent of 
Darwin ! ” 
Our space is drawing to a close, but we must quote the author’s 
remarks on education, with almost every word of which we heartily 
agree : — “ For two distinct tendencies are at work in our modern 
universities and schools, the dominant one deliberately preferring 
memory of mere words to observation of faCts and reasoning 
therefrom, which should be supplied by discipline in science, and 
more memory of words for that co-ordination of hand and eye 
which is supplied by praaice in the arts, and substituting verbal 
test of competitive examination for praaical test in life. One is 
the school of Cram, evolving towards a Chinese ; the other the 
school of Culture, evolving towards a Greek (prae-Socratic) 
ideal, or more accurately towards Tartarean and Olympian ideals 
respeaively.” 
He who thinks and writes thus is a man after our own heart. 
