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Unto This Last
John Ruskin
1860
Essays from the Cornhill Magazine 1860
reprinted as Unto This Last in 1862
"Friend, I do thee no wrong.
Didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take that thine is, and go thy way.
I will give unto this last even as unto thee."
"If ye think good, give me my price;
And if not, forbear.
So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver."
Preface
The for following essays were published eighteen months ago in the "Corhill
Magazine", and were reprobated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by
most of the readers they met with.
Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best, that is to say, the
truest, the rightest-worded, and most serviceable things I have ever written;
and the last of them, having had especial pains spent on it, is probably the
best I shall ever write.
'This,' the reader may reply, 'it might be, yet not therefore well
written.' Which, in no mock humility, admitting, I yet satisfied with the work,
though with nothing else that I have done; and purposing shortly to follow out
the subjects opened in these papers, as I may find leisure, I wish the
introductory statements to be within the reach of any one who may care to refer
to them. So I republish the essays as they appeared. One word only is changed,
correcting the estimate of a weight; and no word is added.
Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these papers, it is a matter
of regret to me that the most startling of all statements in them, - that
respecting the necessity of the organization of labour, with fixed wages, -
should have found its way into the first essay; it being quite one of the least
important, though by no means the least certain, of the positions to be
defended. The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to
give, as I believe for the first time in plain English, - it has often been
incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good Latin by
Cicero and Horace, - a logical definition of WEALTH: such definition being
absolutely needed for a basis of economical science. The most reputed essay on
that subject which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the
statement that 'writers on political economy profess to teach, or to
investigate,(1*) the nature of wealth,' thus follows up the declaration of its
thesis - 'Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purpose, of
what is meant by wealth.' ... 'It is no part of the design of this treatise to
aim at metaphysical nicety of definition.'
Metaphysicial nicety, we assuredly do not need; but physical nicety, and
logical accuracy, with respect to a physical subject, we as assuredly do.
Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House-law (Oikonomia), has
been Star-law (Astronomia), and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed
and wandering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the writer
had begun thus: 'Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common
purpose, of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a
star is not the object of this treatise'; - the essay so opened might yet have
been far more true in its final statements, and a thousand fold more
serviceable to the navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its
conclusion on the popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the
economist.
It was, therefore, the first object of these following papers to give an
accurate and stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that
the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral
conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence,
and even, for practical purpose, in the attainability of honesty.
Without venturing to pronounce - since on such matter human judgement is by no
means conclusive - what is, or is not, the noblest of God's works, we may yet
admit so much of Pope's assertion as that an honest man is among His best works
presently visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one; but not an
incredible or miraculous work; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is not a
disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy; but a consistent and
commanding force, by obedience to which - and by no other obedience - those
orbits can continue clear of chaos.
It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for the lowness, instead of
the height, of his standard: - 'Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how
much higher may men attain! Shall nothing more be asked of us than that we be
honest?'
For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in our aspirations to be
more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so
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