Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/220

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188
VAL D'ARNO.

heavens. By no greatest happiness principle, greatest nobleness principle, or any principle whatever, will you make that in the least clearer than it already is;—forbear, I say, or you may darken it away from you altogether! 'Two things,' says the memorable Kant, deepest and most logical of metaphysical thinkers, 'two things strike me dumb: the infinite starry heaven; and the sense of right and wrong in man.' Visible infinites, both; say nothing of them; don't try to 'account for them;' for you can say nothing wise."

226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions in this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the metaphorical, but distinct, word 'χρῖσμα,' rather than the direct but obscure one 'piety;' mainly because the Master of your religion chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own life and person.

But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture, which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily printed paper, but on daintily painted clay,—if you will examine, that is to say, the scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases in their