U is for..... Unto This Last. #AtoZChallenge2016

 Unto This Last

"I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."

— Matthew 20 (King James Version)

Last week we visited Brantwood which was the home of John Ruskin. Ruskin was an "art critic in the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy."

He is described by the Ruskin Museum as... "One of the great visionaries of the 19th century." Ruskin wrote "Unto this last" a critique of political economy, in 1860 marking his increasing focus on social and political issues.

"Ruskin's critique of economic man centres on the simplicity and the artificial nature of the construct. First, the concept only identifies the materialistic and base needs of human beings and neglects the importance of higher moral values and needs. He illustrates convincingly that all commercial transactions have an underlying moral and social aspect. Indeed, he makes a prescient case for fair trade and ethical investment in his defence of the moral and legal restraints — such as usury laws — governing pre-industrial economies. The powerful conclusion he draws is that real wealth is not money or gold. Real wealth is life, because only people working with nature can create those use values necessary to support and advance life."-
Taken from the winter 2009 edition of the NEF’s ‘Radical Economics’ http://www.neweconomics.org

This series of essays by Ruskin inspired Ghandi who wrote:

‘Unto This Last’, I translated it later into Gujarati entitling it ‘Sarvodaya’ (the welfare of all). I believe that I discovered some of my deepest convictions reflected in this great book of Ruskin and that is why it so captured me and made me transform my life."

— Mahatma Gandhi

John Ruskin in 1863

Ruskin's Seat at Brantwood - April 2016 

 

The Linton Room at Brantwood - stained glass showing geology of "Old Man" across the lake

Brantwood - April 2016

"There is No Wealth but Life. 

Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, of admiration. 

That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.” 

- John Ruskin, Unto This Last 1860

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? John Ruskin
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnruskin400204.html