The Use and Function of Man by John Ruskin

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1886

The Use and Function of Man

By John Ruskin

MAN'S use and function is to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. Whatever enables us to fulfill this function is in the pure and first sense of the word useful to us; pre-eminently, therefore, whatever sets the glory of God more brightly before us. But things that only help us to exist are in a secondary and mean sense useful, or, rather, if they be looked for alone, they are useless and worse; for it would be better that we should not exist than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence.—Ruskin.