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Show 121 ialf gymnasium," and he stated categorically that "the real beauty of the Alps is to be seen and seen only where all may see it, the child, the cripple, and the man of grey hairs." Thus he was linking the idea of aesthetic distance with the reverence of a Biblical point of view. "I will lift up my eyes to the hills" meant that one should lift up only the eyes. One did not climb cathedrals, and "the mountains of the earth are her natural cathedrals." Precisely because of the magnitude of Ruskin's contribution to the aesthetics of mountains in Modern Painters, Ruskin had to be answered. Further, Ruskin was himself a member of the Alpine Club. Tyndall attempted to answer Ruskin from the scientific perspective. Just as Agassiz felt that dangers had to be overcome by complete dedication to science if the mysteries surrounding alpine phenomena were to be solved, so Tyndall claimed that close observation was a necessary tool. The scientist had to learn to live on the glaciers and peaks if he were to understand them. But part of Ruskin's argument was that too much or too close contact with mountains was degrading, as peasants of the Alps seemed to demonstrate. This was the basis for his analysis of "Mountain Gloom." While Muir used his own enlightenment as an answer to Ruskin's theory, Tyndall observed that Bennen, the great alpine guide, was without a particle of the "mountaineering gloom," respecting the prevalence of which among the dwellers of the High Alps Mr. Ruskin discourses poetically,- but I am myself rather indredulous. |