The vastness of the task Ruskin had undertaken is now plain to us and was pathetic for him. _Munera Pulveris_ contains the definitions of the new science. No more of it has ever appeared in systematic scientific form. It is touching to find the inspired artist reformer stopped again and again in his great attempt to write a complete guide to public action, by some subject needing special research. “I will treat of this when I come to” coinage or education, or whatever it might be; ever promising, ever hoping, if so be by a _tour de force_ of genius he might storm the city of Mansoul; whereas, it needed all the corps of economic researchers, mining here and there into truth, making a breach here and there into the wall of the unknown, working on Parliamentary Returns and tables of statistics, on records of public registrars and clearing house reports, by patient inquiry to achieve a little at a time. Ruskin wrote for thirty years after the epoch-making date of 1860; and it is even now our task to systematize, if we can, his scattered contributions to practical Economy.
We may be glad, in John Ruskin’s case, as in that of lesser prophets, that the greatness of men is measured, not like chains, by their weakest link, but rather like tides, by the highest they reach.
The teaching of Ruskin is generally piecemeal and unsystematic, but, happily, there is one exception to this. In collecting his _Cornhill_ papers for publication as _Unto This Last_ he wrote a Preface summarizing his practical proposals at their “worst.” They are as follows:
1. Government Schools, in certain cases compulsory, wherein a child shall be taught
(_a_) The laws of health, and healthful exercises.
(_c_) The calling by which he is to live.
Compulsory popular education was established ten years after this demand, and it was long overdue. It was quite central in Mill’s programme and in that of the school of Cobden and Bright. Only Herbert Spencer, in obstinate and inflexible individualism, disapproved of State Schools, and only the Anglican and Catholic Churches, in their own interest, blocked the way. As to what is taught there, we are slowly learning Ruskin’s lessons about physical and moral training, and in the continuation schools and the technical schools are advancing to trade instruction also; though we are far behind Munich and other German cities in this regard. More will be found on this on pp. 175-8 in Chap. VI. The recent orders of the Board of Education distinctly recognize some difference of subjects for urban, rural and sea-side children.