The Ethics of the Dust | Page 2

clearest exposition I
have ever yet given of the general conditions under which the Personal
Creative Power manifests itself in the forms of matter; and the analysis
of heathen conceptions of Deity, beginning at p. 217, and closing at p.
229, not only prefaces, but very nearly supersedes, all that in more
lengthy terms I have since asserted, or pleaded for, in "Aratra
Pentelici," and the "Queen of the Air."
And thus, however the book may fail in its intention of suggesting new
occupations or interests to its younger readers, I think it worth
reprinting, in the way I have also reprinted "Unto this Last,"--page for
page; that the students of my more advanced works may be able to refer
to these as the original documents of them; of which the most essential
in this book are these following.
I. The explanation of the baseness of the avaricious functions of the
Lower Pthah, p. 54, with his beetle-gospel, p. 59, "that a nation can
stand on its vices better than on its virtues," explains the main motive
of all my books on Political Economy.
II. The examination of the connection between stupidity and crime, pp.
87-96, anticipated all that I have had to urge in Fors Clavigera against
the commonly alleged excuse for public wickedness,--"They don't
mean it--they don't know any better."
III. The examination of the roots of Moral Power, pp. 145-149, is a
summary of what is afterwards developed with utmost care in my
inaugural lecture at Oxford on the relation of Art to Morals; compare in
that lecture, sections 83-85, with the sentence in p. 147 of this book,
"Nothing is ever done so as really to please our Father, unless we
would also have done it, though we had had no Father to know of it."
This sentence, however, it must be observed, regards only the general
conditions of action in the children of God, in consequence of which it

is foretold of them by Christ that they will say at the Judgment, "When
saw we thee?" It does not refer to the distinct cases in which virtue
consists in faith given to command, appearing to foolish human
judgment inconsistent with the Moral Law, as in the sacrifice of Isaac;
nor to those in which any directly-given command requires nothing
more of virtue than obedience.
IV. The subsequent pages, 149-158, were written especially to check
the dangerous impulses natural to the minds of many amiable young
women, in the direction of narrow and selfish religious sentiment: and
they contain, therefore, nearly everything which I believe it necessary
that young people should be made to observe, respecting the errors of
monastic life. But they in nowise enter on the reverse, or favorable side:
of which indeed I did not, and as yet do not, feel myself able to speak
with any decisiveness; the evidence on that side, as stated in the text,
having "never yet been dispassionately examined."
V. The dialogue with Lucilla, beginning at p. 96, is, to my own fancy,
the best bit of conversation in the book; and the issue of it, at p. 103,
the most practically and immediately useful. For on the idea of the
inevitable weakness and corruption of human nature, has logically
followed, in our daily life, the horrible creed of modern "Social
science," that all social action must be scientifically founded on vicious
impulses. But on the habit of measuring and reverencing our powers
and talents that we may kindly use them, will be founded a true Social
science, developing, by the employment of them, all the real powers
and honorable feelings of the race.
VI. Finally, the account given in the second and third lectures, of the
real nature and marvelousness of the laws of crystallization, is
necessary to the understanding of what farther teaching of the beauty of
inorganic form I may be able to give, either in "Deucalion," or in my
"Elements of Drawing." I wish however that the second lecture had
been made the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the
first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was
meant for a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the
kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with
blood, its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, and poisonous when
gathered; and the final captivity of its inhabitants within frozen walls of
cruelty and disdain. But the imagery is stupid and ineffective

throughout; and I retain this chapter only because I am resolved to
leave no room for any one to say that I have withdrawn, as erroneous in
principle, so much as a single sentence of any of my books written
since 1860.
One license taken in this book, however, though often permitted to
essay-writers