The Soul of the Eye: Ruskin, Darwin, and the Nature of Vision

Abstract

John Ruskin’s quarrel with Darwinian theory is often represented as antiscientific and reactionary. Yet Ruskin’s attitude toward Darwinism, like Ruskin himself, was considerably more nuanced and complex, as many modern commentators have recognized. Ruskin was not scientifically ignorant, but he took issue with what he considered the dehumanizing tendencies of modern scientific research; modern science took no account of the soul, reducing all life to nothing more than “germ cells” (27.380). Evolutionary theory seemed to lower mankind, while his life’s work was directed at trying to raise it. Today Ruskin’s difficulties with Darwinism are often discussed in terms of natural theology, natural science, or aesthetics, and there is indeed much to be said on each of these counts: but it can be argued that the deepest roots of his resistance lie in his firmly held conviction of the moral and spiritual significance of sight: “To see clearly,” Ruskin famously declared in Modern Painters 3, “is poetry, prophecy, and religion, – all in one” (5.333). Conversely, “to see falsely is worse than blindness” (7.211). What Ruskin found most offensive in Darwinism was the flawed and potentially destructive vision that it seemed to invite.