In other words, he would have permitted no merely statical elements to form any part of his solution, except in so far as they were obstructions to be got out of the way, but would have struck at once to the heart of the matter by trying to find out what the dynamical elements in it were, and getting a firm grasp of them and their relation-: as knowing well that all the rest were but mere dead surplusage which could be coerced and made to follow obsequiously the great lines of dynamic power. Or, to put it differently, he would not have treated the subject analytically or retrospectively, by looking at it from the stern of the boat as it were, but prospectively from the point of view of the projectors of economic enterprises who take their stand on the bridge as their point of outlook, and not only steer the boat but generalize the laws of the Science from that standpoint; thereby keeping the theory of the Science parallel with, and a living transcript of, the actual methods and operations of business men.

If the game of Wealth that was being played were to have a purely moral end in view, he would have laid out his principles and rules in one way; if the end, on the contrary, were to be the mere accumulation of wealth as such by individuals, he would have played his cards in a different way and on a different principle of combination; and if the question were of whether this mere money-getting end were to be purely national on the. one hand, or cosmopolitical and international (however much any particular nation might be injuriously affected by it) on the other, then again he would have handled the great dynamical factors in a yet different way. But in any case Carlyle would have kept his eye fixed on the central dynamic powers involved, in whatever confusion or complexity they lay, or with what obstructions soever they were entangled, and would not have rested until he had seen how they were to be handled so as to reach the end in view.

But with Ruskin all was different. In his enthusiasm to reach Carlyle's great aim of moralizing all the relations of Industry, instead of pointing out the successive economic expedients by means of which it was to be attained, as was expected of him after, the formidable and elaborate analytical preparations with which he set out, - he begins and ends by merely inworking his moralizings into the interstices of the details of the processes, in the hope apparently that if he could only once present the world with a harmonious picture and pattern of what would be the most ideal moral relations between landlord and farmer, farmer and labourer, capitalist and wage-earner, master and servant, rich and poor, and so on, on lines of the purest abstract justice, men might be induced to set about realizing it. And accordingly he begins by arranging his pieces in a hierarchy of values, as on a chess board, founded on the inequalities of men in ability, character, moral and aesthetic culture, spiritual elevation, and so on; and not, like Rousseau, as on a draught-board, where the pieces between whom the moral and economic relationships were to be wrought out, were all on an absolute equality of value.

This done, he would then attach to them the salaries or wages they were to receive, each and all definitely fixed; - so much for a prime-minister, so much for a general, a bishop, a lawyer, a doctor, the different grades of skilled workmen, common labourers, navvies, etc. With the pieces thus arranged on the board, and each given its proper value, the reader naturally expects the game to begin, but to his surprise he finds that there is no game to be played, that this arrangement is the game, and that these figures of Ruskin's are expected to remain where he has put them like the statues of saints in the niches of a cathedral, or say, rather, like the mixture of heroes, saints, extortioners, and malefactors, in Madame Tussaud's exhibition; and that if there is any game or problem to be solved, it is how to keep them there as they are! Ruskin accordingly exhausted all his ingenuity in trying to prove that once fixed in these their proper statical attitudes, all the apparatus of the old Economy which was devised to enable them to escape, and so to begin again their depredations on each other by playing the old game of general and reciprocal exploitation, - would have been checkmated and sealed up.

And the first argument he uses for this purpose is his demonstration of the difference, if men would only consider it, between real wealth and mere riches; the first being, like a perfect-fitting suit of clothes, a garment suitable in every way to the authority, dignity, culture, taste, spiritual or moral worth of the wearer; while the second is only a mere ignoble accumulation of base money coins, or documentary credits convertible at pleasure into coins, which, like counters, have no value or utility in themselves, but which, if you can only capture enough of them, can, like opera tickets, be used as instruments of extortion for the purpose of gaining mere base power over other people, whereby they may be forced to empty their purses, and (in the case of the working-men) part with their instruments of production and become your economic slaves. This was well and right nobly said by Ruskin, and is a real distinction; and he punctuates it still further when he demands from the capitalist an answer to the question; - why, if two men present themselves for work at your factory gates and you want to employ only one, you should make the fact of there being two, an excuse for beating down the wages of the one you select to a lower point than you would have done had there been only one applicant for work? A most pregnant question, and one which not only Ruskin but the world of working-men themselves, were they not 'mostly sheep,' would demand to have answered.