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BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Graph Data Science with Neo4j

Copyright © 2023 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt
Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Publishing Product Manager: Ali Abidi

Senior Editor: Nathanya Dias

Technical Editor: Rahul Limbachiya

Copy Editor: Safis Editing

Project Coordinator: Farheen Fathima

Proofreader: Safis Editing

Indexer: Hemangini Bari

Production Designer: Shankar Kalbhor

Marketing Coordinator: Vinishka Kalra

First published: January 2023

Production reference: 1310123

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham

B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-80461-274-3

www.packtpub.com

Contributors

About the author

Estelle Scifo is a Neo4j Certified Professional and Neo4j Graph Data Science
certified user. She is currently a machine learning engineer at GraphAware where
she builds Neo4j-related solutions to make customers happy with graphs.

Before that, she worked in several fields, starting out with research in particle
physics, during which she worked at CERN on uncovering Higgs boson properties.
She received her PhD in 2014 from the Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire
(Orsay, France). Continuing her career in industry, she worked in real estate,
mobility, and logistics for almost 10 years. In the Neo4j community, she is known
as the creator of neomap, a map visualization application for data stored in Neo4j.
She also regularly gives talks at conferences such as NODES and PyCon. Her
domain expertise and deep insight into the perspective of a beginner’s needs make
her an excellent teacher.
There is only one name on the cover, but a book is not the work of one
person. I would like to thank everyone involved in making this book a reality.
Beyond everyone at Packt, the reviewers did an incredible job of suggesting
some very relevant improvements. Thank you, all!
 I hope this book will inspire you as much as other books of this genre have
inspired me.

About the reviewers

Dr. David Gurzick is the founding chair of the George B. Delaplaine Jr. School of
Business and an associate professor of management science at Hood College. He
has a BS in computer science from Frostburg State University, an M.S. in computer
science from Hood College, a PhD in information systems from the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County, and is a graduate of Harvard’s business analytics
program. As a child of the internet, he grew up on AOL and programmed his way
through dot.com. He now helps merge technology and business strategy to enable
innovation and accelerate commercial success as the lead data scientist at
Genitive.ai and as a director of the Frederick Innovative Technology Center,
Inc (FITCI).

Sean William Grant is a product and analytics professional with over 20 years of
experience in technology and data analysis. His experience ranges from geospatial
intelligence with the United States Marine Corps, product management within the
aviation and autonomy space, to implementing advanced analytics and data
science within organizations. He is a graph data science and network analytics
enthusiast who frequently gives presentations and workshops on connected data.
He has also been a technical advisor to several early-stage start-ups. Sean is
passionate about data and technology, and how it can elevate our understanding
of ourselves.

Jose Ernesto Echeverria has worked with all kinds of databases, from relational
databases in the 1990s to non-SQL databases in the 2010s. He considers graph
databases to be the best fit for solving real-world problems, given their strong
capability for modeling and adaptability to change. As a polyglot programmer, he
has used languages such as Java, Ruby, and R and tools such as Jupyter with
Neo4j in order to solve data management problems for multinational corporations.
A long-time advocate of data science, he expects this long-awaited book to cover
the proper techniques and approach the intersections of this discipline, as well as
help readers to discover the possibilities of graph databases. When not working,
he enjoys spending time with friends and family.
Table of Contents

Preface
Part 1 – Creating Graph Data in Neo4j

Introducing and Installing Neo4j

Technical requirements
What is a graph database?
Databases
Graph database
Finding or creating a graph database
A note about the graph dataset’s format
Modeling your data as a graph
Neo4j in the graph databases landscape
Neo4j ecosystem
Setting up Neo4j
Downloading and starting Neo4j Desktop
Creating our first Neo4j database
Creating a database in the cloud – Neo4j Aura
Inserting data into Neo4j with Cypher, the Neo4j
query language
Extracting data from Neo4j with Cypher pattern
matching
Summary
Further reading
Exercises

Importing Data into Neo4j to Build a Knowledge

Graph

Technical requirements
Importing CSV data into Neo4j with Cypher
Discovering the Netflix dataset
Defining the graph schema
Importing data
Introducing the APOC library to deal with JSON
data
Browsing the dataset
Getting to know and installing the APOC plugin
Loading data
Dealing with temporal data
Discovering the Wikidata public knowledge
graph
Data format
Query language – SPARQL
Enriching our graph with Wikidata information
Loading data into Neo4j for one person
Importing data for all people
Dealing with spatial data in Neo4j
Importing data in the cloud
Summary
Further reading
Exercises
Part 2 – Exploring and Characterizing Graph Data
with Neo4j

Characterizing a Graph Dataset

Technical requirements
Characterizing a graph from its node and edge
properties
Link direction
Link weight
Node type
Computing the graph degree distribution
Definition of a node’s degree
Computing the node degree with Cypher
Visualizing the degree distribution with NeoDash
Installing and using the Neo4j Python driver
Counting node labels and relationship types in
Python
Building the degree distribution of a graph
Improved degree distribution
Learning about other characterizing metrics
Triangle count
Clustering coefficient
Summary
Further reading
Exercises

Using Graph Algorithms to Characterize a Graph

Dataset

Technical requirements
Digging into the Neo4j GDS library
GDS content
Installing the GDS library with Neo4j Desktop
GDS project workflow
Projecting a graph for use by GDS
Native projections
Cypher projections
Computing a node’s degree with GDS
stream mode
The YIELD keyword
write mode
mutate mode
Algorithm configuration
Other centrality metrics
Understanding a graph’s structure by looking for
communities
Number of components
Modularity and the Louvain algorithm
Summary
Further reading

Visualizing Graph Data

Technical requirements
The complexity of graph data visualization
Physical networks
General case
Visualizing a small graph with networkx and
matplotlib
Visualizing a graph with known coordinates
Visualizing a graph with unknown coordinates
Configuring object display
Discovering the Neo4j Bloom graph application
What is Bloom?
Bloom installation
Selecting data with Neo4j Bloom
Configuring the scene in Bloom
Visualizing large graphs with Gephi
Installing Gephi and its required plugin
Using APOC Extended to synchronize Neo4j and
Gephi
Configuring the view in Gephi
Summary
Further reading
Exercises
Part 3 – Making Predictions on a Graph

Building a Machine Learning Model with Graph

Features
Technical requirements
Introducing the GDS Python client
GDS Python principles
Input and output types
Creating a projected graph from Python
Running GDS algorithms from Python and
extracting data in a dataframe
write mode
stream mode
Dropping the projected graph
Using features from graph algorithms in a scikit-
learn pipeline
Machine learning tasks with graphs
Our task
Computing features
Extracting and visualizing data
Building the model
Summary
Further reading
Exercise

Automatically Extracting Features with Graph

Embeddings for Machine Learning
Technical requirements
Introducing graph embedding algorithms
Defining embeddings
Graph embedding classification
Using a transductive graph embedding algorithm
Understanding the Node2Vec algorithm
Using Node2Vec with GDS
Training an inductive embedding algorithm
Understanding GraphSAGE
Introducing the GDS model catalog
Training GraphSAGE with GDS
Computing new node representations
Summary
Further reading
Exercises

8
Building a GDS Pipeline for Node Classification Model
Training
Technical requirements
The GDS pipelines
What is a pipeline?
Building and training a pipeline
Creating the pipeline and choosing the features
Setting the pipeline configuration
Training the pipeline
Making predictions
Computing the confusion matrix
Using embedding features
Choosing the graph embedding algorithm to use
Training using Node2Vec
Training using GraphSAGE
Summary
Further reading
Exercise

Predicting Future Edges

Technical requirements
Introducing the LP problem
LP examples
LP with the Netflix dataset
Framing an LP problem
LP features
Topological features
Features based on node properties
Building an LP pipeline with the GDS
Creating and configuring the pipeline
Pipeline training and testing
Summary
Further reading

10

Writing Your Custom Graph Algorithms with the

Pregel API in Java
Technical requirements
Introducing the Pregel API
GDS’s features
The Pregel API
Implementing the PageRank algorithm
The PageRank algorithm
Simple Python implementation
Pregel Java implementation
Implementing the tolerance-stopping criteria
Testing our code
Test for the PageRank class
Test for the PageRankTol class
Using our algorithm from Cypher
Adding annotations
Building the JAR file
Updating the Neo4j configuration
Testing our procedure
Summary
Further reading
Exercises

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface
Data science today is a core component of many companies and organizations
taking advantage of its predictive power to improve their products or better
understand their customers. It is an ever-evolving field, still undergoing intense
research. One of the most trending research areas is graph data science (GDS),
or how representing data as a connected network can improve models.

Among the different tools on the market to work with graphs, Neo4j, a graph
database, is popular among developers for its ability to build simple and evolving
data models and query data easily with Cypher. For a few years now, it has also
stood out as a leader in graph analytics, especially since the release of the first
version of its GDS library, allowing you to run graph algorithms from data stored in
Neo4j, even at a large scale.

This book is designed to guide you through the field of GDS, always using Neo4j
and its GDS library as the main tool. By the end of this book, you will be able to
run your own GDS model on a graph dataset you created. By the end of the book,
you will even be able to pass the Neo4j Data Science certification to prove your
new skills to the world.
Who this book is for
This book is for people who are curious about graphs and how this data structure
can be useful in data science. It can serve both data scientists who are learning
about graphs and Neo4j developers who want to get into data science.

The book assumes minimal data science knowledge (classification, training sets,
confusion matrices) and some experience with Python and its related data science
toolkit (pandas, matplotlib, and scikit-learn).
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introducing and Installing Neo4j, introduces the basic principles of
graph databases and gives instructions on how to set up Neo4j locally, create your
first graph, and write your first Cypher queries.

Chapter 2, Using Existing Data to Build a Knowledge Graph, guides you through
loading data into Neo4j from different formats (CSV, JSON, and an HTTP API). This
is where you will build the dataset that will be used throughout this book.

Chapter 3, Characterizing a Graph Dataset, introduces some key metrics to

differentiate one graph dataset from another.

Chapter 4, Using Graph Algorithms to Characterize a Graph Dataset, goes deeper

into understanding a graph dataset by using graph algorithms. This is the chapter
where you will start to use the Neo4j GDS plugin.

Chapter 5, Visualizing Graph Data, delves into graph data visualization by drawing
nodes and edges, starting from static representations and moving on to dynamic
ones.

Chapter 6, Building a Machine Learning Model with Graph Features, talks about
machine learning model training using scikit-learn. This is where we will first use
the GDS Python client.

Chapter 7, Automating Feature Extraction with Graph Embeddings for Machine

Learning, introduces the concept of node embedding, with practical examples
using the Neo4j GDS library.

Chapter 8, Building a GDS Pipeline for Node Classification Model Training,

introduces the topic of node classification within GDS without involving a third-
party tool.

Chapter 9, Predicting Future Edges, gives a short introduction to the topic of link
prediction, a graph-specific machine learning task.
Chapter 10, Writing Your Custom Graph Algorithms with the Pregel API in Java,
covers the exciting topic of building an extension for the GDS plugin.

To get the most out of this book

You will need access to a Neo4j instance. Options and installation instructions are
given in Chapter 1, Introducing and Installing Neo4j. We will also intensively use
Python and the following packages: pandas, scikit-learn, network, and
graphdatascience. The code was tested with Python 3.10 but should work with
newer versions, assuming no breaking change is made in its dependencies. Python
code is provided as a Jupyter notebook, so you’ll need Jupyter Server installed and
running to go through it.

For the very last chapter, a Java JDK will also be required. The code was tested
with OpenJDK 11.

Software/hardware covered in the Operating system

book requirements

Neo4j 5.x Windows, macOS, or Linux

Python 3.10 Windows, macOS or Linux

Jupyter Windows, macOS or Linux

OpenJDK 11 Windows, macOS or Linux

You will also need to install Neo4j plugins: APOC and GDS. Installation instructions
for Neo4j Desktop are given in the relevant chapters. However, if you are not using
a local Neo4j instance, please refer to the following pages for installation
instructions, especially regarding version compatibilities:
APOC: https://neo4j.com/docs/apoc/current/installation/

GDS: https://neo4j.com/docs/graph-data-science/current/installation/
If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type
the code yourself or access the code from the book’s GitHub repository
(a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any
potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from GitHub at
https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Graph-Data-Science-with-Neo4j. If there’s an
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Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names,
filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter
handles. Here is an example: “Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk
image file as another disk in your system.”

A block of code is set as follows:

CREATE (:Movie {
id: line.show_id,
title: line.title,
releaseYear: line.release_year
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the
relevant lines or items are set in bold:

LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS

FROM 'file:///netflix/netflix_titles.csv' AS line
WITH split(line.director, ",") as directors_list
UNWIND directors_list AS director_name
CREATE (:Person {name: trim(director_name)})
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ mkdir css
$ cd css

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen.
For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example:
“Select System info from the Administration panel.”

TIPS OR IMPORTANT NOTES

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Part 1 – Creating Graph Data in Neo4j
In this first part, you will learn about Neo4j and set up your first graph database.
You will also build a graph dataset in Neo4j using Cypher, the APOC library, and
public knowledge graphs.

This part includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Introducing and Installing Neo4j

Chapter 2, Using Existing Data to Build a Knowledge Graph

Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
and I shall not practically bestir myself in this land-scheme for a year to
come, at least; nor then, except as a rest from my main business: but the
money and land will always be safe in the hands of your trustees for you,
and you need not doubt, though I show no petulant haste about the matter,
that I remain

Faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
 LETTER XII.

Denmark Hill,
23rd December, 1871.

My Friends,

You will scarcely care to read anything I have to say to you this evening—
having much to think of, wholly pleasant, as I hope; and prospect of
delightful days to come, next week. At least, however, you will be glad to
know that I have really made you the Christmas gift I promised—£7,000
Consols, in all, clear; a fair tithe of what I had: and to as much perpetuity as
the law will allow me. It will not allow the dead to have their own way,
long, whatever licence it grants the living in their humours: and this seems
to me unkind to those helpless ones;—very certainly it is inexpedient for
the survivors. For the wisest men are wise to the full in death; and if you
would give them, instead of stately tombs, only so much honour as to do
their will, when they themselves can no more contend for it, you would find
it good memorial of them, such as the best of them would desire, and full of
blessing to all men for all time.

English law needs mending in many respects; in none more than in this. As
it stands, I can only vest my gift in trustees, desiring them, in the case of my
death, immediately to appoint their own successors, and in such continued
succession, to apply the proceeds of the St. George’s Fund to the purchase
of land in England and Scotland, which shall be cultivated to the utmost
attainable fruitfulness and beauty by the labour of man and beast thereon,
such men and beasts receiving at the same time the best education
attainable by the trustees for labouring creatures, according to the terms
stated in this book, Fors Clavigera.

These terms, and the arrangement of the whole matter, will become clearer
to you as you read on with me, and cannot be clear at all, till you do;—here
is the money, at any rate, to help you, one day, to make merry with, only, if
you care to give me any thanks, will you pause now for a moment from
your merrymaking, to tell me,—to whom, as Fortune has ordered it, no
merrymaking is possible at this time, (nor, indeed, much at any time;)—to
me, therefore, standing as it were astonished in the midst of this gaiety of
yours, will you tell—what it is all about?

Your little children would answer, doubtless, fearlessly, “Because the Child
Christ was born to-day:” but you, wiser than your children, it may be,—at
least, it should be,—are you also sure that He was?

And if He was, what is that to you?

I repeat, are you indeed sure He was? I mean, with real happening of the
strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened near Him,
showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood still over His head?
You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and wish it were so with me; but I
have been so puzzled lately by many matters that once seemed clear to me,
that I seldom now feel sure of anything. Still seldomer, however, do I feel
sure of the contrary of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove
that it was visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible:
and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the weakest
grounds, than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I envy not at all
are those who imagine they believe it, and do not.

For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and without any
manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or a dream full of
meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised fable, but the record of
an impression made, by some strange spiritual cause, on the minds of the
human race, at the most critical period of their existence;—an impression
which has produced, in past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet
achieved by an intellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the
determination of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of ages to come.

Will you give some little time therefore, to think of it with me to-day, being,
as you tell me, sure of its truth? What, then, let me ask you, is its truth to
you? The Child for whose birth you are rejoicing was born, you are told, to
save His people from their sins; but I have never noticed that you were
particularly conscious of any sins to be saved from. If I were to tax you
with any one in particular—lying, or thieving, or the like—my belief is you
would say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind.

Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me—“That is because we have been
saved from our sins; and we are making merry, because we are so perfectly
good.”

Well; there would be some reason in such an answer. There is much

goodness in you to be thankful for: far more than you know, or have learned
to trust. Still, I don’t believe you will tell me seriously that you eat your
pudding and go to your pantomimes only to express your satisfaction that
you are so very good.

What is, or may be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat? Shall we consider, a
little, what, at all events, it was to the people of its time; and so make
ourselves more clear as to what it might be to us? We will read slowly.

“And there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out in the field,
keeping watch over their flocks by night.”

Watching night and day, that means; not going home. The staying out in the
field is the translation of a word from which a Greek nymph has her name
Agraulos, “the stayer out in fields,” of whom I shall have something to tell
you, soon.

“And behold, the Messenger of the Lord stood above them, and the glory of
the Lord lightened round them, and they feared a great fear.”

“Messenger.” You must remember that, when this was written, the word
“angel” had only the effect of our word—“messenger”—on men’s minds.
Our translators say “angel” when they like, and “messenger” when they
like; but the Bible, messenger only, or angel only, as you please. For
instance, “Was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had
received the angels, and sent them forth another way?”
Would not you fain know what this angel looked like? I have always
grievously wanted, from childhood upwards, to know that; and gleaned
diligently every word written by people who said they had seen angels: but
none of them ever tell me what their eyes are like, or hair, or even what
dress they have on. We dress them, in pictures, conjecturally, in long robes,
falling gracefully; but we only continue to think that kind of dress angelic,
because religious young girls, in their modesty, and wish to look only
human, give their dresses flounces. When I was a child, I used to be
satisfied by hearing that angels had always two wings, and sometimes six;
but now nothing dissatisfies me so much as hearing that; for my business
compels me continually into close drawing of wings; and now they never
give me the notion of anything but a swift or a gannet. And, worse still,
when I see a picture of an angel, I know positively where he got his wings
from—not at all from any heavenly vision, but from the worshipped hawk
and ibis, down through Assyrian flying bulls, and Greek flying horses, and
Byzantine flying evangelists, till we get a brass eagle, (of all creatures in the
world, to choose!) to have the gospel of peace read from the back of it.

Therefore, do the best I can, no idea of an angel is possible to me. And

when I ask my religious friends, they tell me not to wish to be wise above
that which is written. My religious friends, let me write a few words of this
letter, not to my poor puzzled workmen, but to you, who will all be going
serenely to church to-morrow. This messenger, formed as we know not,
stood above the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord lightened round them.

You would have liked to have seen it, you think! Brighter than the sun;
perhaps twenty-one coloured, instead of seven-coloured, and as bright as
the lime-light: doubtless you would have liked to see it, at midnight, in
Judæa.

You tell me not to be wise above that which is written; why, therefore,
should you be desirous, above that which is given? You cannot see the glory
of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see it as bright
as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You might, at least, forty
Christmases since: but not now.
You know I must antedate my letters for special days. I am actually writing
this sentence on the second December, at ten in the morning, with the
feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the last three weeks the
days have been one long drift of ragged gloom, with only sometimes five
minutes’ gleam of the glory of God, between the gusts, which no one
regarded.

I am taking the name of God in vain, you think? No, my religious friends,
not I. For completed forty years, I have been striving to consider the blue
heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon and the stars which He hath
ordained: but you have left me nothing now to consider here at Denmark
Hill, but these black heavens, the work of your fingers, and the blotting of
moon and stars which you have ordained; you,—taking the name of God in
vain every Sunday, and His work and His mercy in vain all the week
through.

“You have nothing to do with it—you are very sorry for it—and Baron
Liebig says that the power of England is coal?”

You have everything to do with it. Were you not told to come out and be
separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the evil
work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share with, to be
damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin by putting them
out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of them with you
there. But return to your night vision, and explain to me, if not what the
angel was like, at least what you understand him to have said,—he, and
those with him. With his own lips he told the shepherds there was born a
Saviour for them; but more was to be told: “And suddenly there was with
him a multitude of the heavenly host.”

People generally think that this verse means only that after one angel had
spoken, there came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but it means far
another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you find creation
summed thus:—“So the heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of
them.” Whatever living powers of any order, great or small, were to inhabit
either, are included in the word. The host of earth includes the ants and the
worms of it; the host of heaven includes,—we know not what;—how
should we?—the creatures that are in the stars which we cannot count,—in
the space which we cannot imagine; some of them so little and so low that
they can become flying poursuivants to this grain of sand we live on; others
having missions, doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on
them.

But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the powers of
the outer world which have any concern with ours became in some way
visible now: having interest—they, in the praise,—as all the hosts of earth
in the life, of this Child, born in David’s town. And their hymn was of peace
to the lowest of the two hosts—peace on earth;—and praise in the highest
of the two hosts; and, better than peace, and sweeter than praise, Love,
among men.

The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner of the
hosts of heaven, have written something which they suppose this Song of
Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves, in state, after successful
battles. But you hear it, those of you who go to church in orthodox quarters,
every Sunday; and will understand the terms of it better by recollecting that
the Lordship, which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this,
over all creatures, or over the two Hosts. In the Apocalypse it is “Lord, All
governing”—Pantocrator—which we weakly translate “Almighty”; but the
Americans still understand the original sense, and apply it so to their god,
the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their Father which is in
Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word “Sabaoth” again means all “hosts”
or creatures; and it is an important word for workmen to recollect, because
the saying of St. James is coming true, and that fast, that the cries of the
reapers whose wages have been kept back by fraud, have entered into the
ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of
the men at St. Catherine’s Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they
live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai.

You see, farther, I have written above, not “good will towards men,” but
“love among men.” It is nearer right so; but the word is not easy to translate
at all. What it means precisely, you may conjecture best from its use at
Christ’s baptism—“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
For, in precisely the same words, the angels say, there is to be “well-
pleasing in men.”

Now, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of acting for God’s
glory, and giving God praise. Might you not, for the present, think less of
praising, and more of pleasing Him? He can, perhaps, dispense with your
praise; your opinions of His character, even when they come to be held by a
large body of the religious press, are not of material importance to Him. He
has the hosts of heaven to praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is
likely, than you; but you hear that you may be pleasing to Him, if you try:—
that He expected, then, to have some satisfaction in you; and might have
even great satisfaction—well-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The
sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose about
your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden; some of them
will think it well laid out,—others ill. You are not solicitous about their
opinions; but you like them to love each other; to build their nests without
stealing each other’s sticks, and to trust you to take care of them.

Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world you would leave off
telling its Master your opinions of Him, and, much more, your quarrelling
about your opinions of Him; but would simply trust Him, and mind your
own business modestly, He might have more satisfaction in you than He has
had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one years, or than He seems
likely to have in the eighteen hundred and seventy-second. For first, instead
of behaving like sparrows and robins, you want to behave like those birds
you read the Gospel from the backs of,—eagles. Now the Lord of the
garden made the claws of eagles for them, and your fingers for you; and if
you would do the work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would,
without doubt, have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to
have claws—not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto’s Injustice
has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so you set to work to
make yourselves manifold claws,—far-scratching;—and this smoke, which
hides the sun and chokes the sky—this Egyptian darkness that may be felt
—manufactured by you, singular modern children of Israel, that you may
have no light in your dwellings, is none the fairer, because cast forth by the
furnaces, in which you forge your weapons of war.

A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed, once saw
the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace; but not with envy
of the country.

Your English power is coal? Well; also the power of the Vale of Siddim was
in slime,—petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities fell there;
and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men.

Emmanuel! God with us!—how often, you tenderly-minded Christians,

have you desired to see this great sight,—this Babe lying in a manger? Yet,
you have so contrived it, once more, this year, for many a farm in France,
that if He were born again, in that neighbourhood, there would be found no
manger for Him to lie in; only ashes of mangers. Our clergy and lawyers
dispute, indeed, whether He may not be yet among us; if not in mangers, in
the straw of them, or the corn. An English lawyer spoke twenty-six hours
but the other day—the other four days, I mean—before the Lords of her
Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council, to prove that an English
clergyman had used a proper quantity of equivocation in his statement that
Christ was in Bread. Yet there is no harm in anybody thinking that He is in
Bread,—or even in Flour! The harm is, in their expectation of His Presence
in gunpowder.

Present, however, you believe He was, that night, in flesh, to any one who
might be warned to go and see Him. The inn was quite full; but we do not
hear that any traveller chanced to look into the cow-house; and most likely,
even if they had, none of them would have been much interested in the
workman’s young wife, lying there. They probably would have thought of
the Madonna, with Mr. John Stuart Mill, (‘Principles of Political Economy,’
8vo, Parker, 1848, vol. ii., page 321,) that there was scarcely “any means
open to her of gaining a livelihood, except as a wife and mother;” and that
“women who prefer that occupation might justifiably adopt it—but, that
there should be no option, no other carrière possible, for the great majority
of women, except in the humbler departments of life, is one of those social
injustices which call loudest for remedy.”

The poor girl of Nazareth had less option than most; and with her weak “be
it unto me as Thou wilt,” fell so far below the modern type of independent
womanhood, that one cannot wonder at any degree of contempt felt for her
by British Protestants. Some few people, nevertheless, were meant, at the
time, to think otherwise of her. And now, my working friends, I would ask
you to read with me, carefully, for however often you may have read this
before, I know there are points in the story which you have not thought of.

The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born to them “in
David’s village.” We are apt to think that this was told, as of special interest
to them, because David was a King.

Not so. It was told them because David was in youth not a King; but a
Shepherd like themselves. “To you, shepherds, is born this day a Saviour in
the shepherd’s town;” that would be the deep sound of the message in their
ears. For the great interest to them in the story of David himself must have
been always, not that he had saved the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or
written Psalms, but that he had kept sheep in those very fields they were
watching in; and that his grandmother1 Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by.

And they said hastily, “Let us go and see.”

Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not of worshipping?
Even when they do see the Child, it is not said that they worshipped. They
were simple people, and had not much faculty of worship; even though the
heavens had opened for them, and the hosts of heaven had sung. They had
been at first only frightened; then curious, and communicative to the
bystanders: they do not think even of making any offering, which would
have been a natural thought enough, as it was to the first of shepherds: but
they brought no firstlings of their flock—(it is only in pictures, and those
chiefly painted for the sake of the picturesque, that the shepherds are seen
bringing lambs, and baskets of eggs). It is not said here that they brought
anything, but they looked, and talked, and went away praising God, as
simple people,—yet taking nothing to heart; only the mother did that.

They went away:—“returned,” it is said,—to their business, and never seem

to have left it again. Which is strange, if you think of it. It is a good
business truly, and one much to be commended, not only in itself, but as
having great chances of “advancement”—as in the case of Jethro the
Midianite’s Jew shepherd and the herdsman of Tekoa; besides that keeper of
the few sheep in the wilderness, when his brethren were under arms afield.
But why are they not seeking for some advancement now, after opening of
the heavens to them? or, at least, why not called to it afterwards, being, one
would have thought, as fit for ministry under a shepherd king, as fishermen,
or custom-takers?

Can it be that the work is itself the best that can be done by simple men;
that the shepherd Lord Clifford, or Michael of the Green-head ghyll, are
ministering better in the wilderness than any lords or commoners are likely
to do in Parliament, or other apostleship; so that even the professed Fishers
of Men are wise in calling themselves Pastors rather than Piscators? Yet it
seems not less strange that one never hears of any of these shepherds any
more. The boy who made the pictures in this book for you could only fancy
the Nativity, yet left his sheep, that he might preach of it, in his way, all his
life. But they, who saw it, went back to their sheep.

Some days later, another kind of persons came. On that first day, the
simplest people of his own land;—twelve days after, the wisest people of
other lands, far away: persons who had received, what you are all so
exceedingly desirous to receive, a good education; the result of which, to
you,—according to Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the page of the chapter on the
probable future of the labouring classes, opposite to that from which I have
just quoted his opinions about the Madonna’s line of life—will be as
follows:—“From this increase of intelligence, several effects may be
confidently anticipated. First: that they will become even less willing than
at present to be led, and governed, and directed into the way they should go,
by the mere authority and prestige of superiors. If they have not now, still
less will they have hereafter, any deferential awe, or religious principle of
obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them.”

It is curious that, in this old story of the Nativity, the greater wisdom of
these educated persons appears to have produced upon them an effect
exactly contrary to that which you hear Mr. Stuart Mill would have
“confidently anticipated.” The uneducated people came only to see, but
these highly trained ones to worship; and they have allowed themselves to
be led, and governed, and directed into the way which they should go, (and
that a long one,) by the mere authority and prestige of a superior person,
whom they clearly recognize as a born king, though not of their people.
“Tell us, where is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have come to
worship him.”

You may perhaps, however, think that these Magi had received a different
kind of education from that which Mr. Mill would recommend, or even the
book which I observe is the favourite of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
—‘Cassell’s Educator.’ It is possible; for they were looked on in their own
country as themselves the best sort of Educators which the Cassell of their
day could provide, even for Kings. And as you are so much interested in
education, you will, perhaps, have patience with me while I translate for
you a wise Greek’s account of the education of the princes of Persia;
account given three hundred years, and more, before these Magi came to
Bethlehem.

“When the boy is seven years old he has to go and learn all about horses,
and is taught by the masters of horsemanship, and begins to go against wild
beasts; and when he is fourteen years old, they give him the masters whom
they call the Kingly Child-Guiders: and these are four, chosen the best out
of all the Persians who are then in the prime of life—to wit, the most wise
man they can find, and the most just, and the most temperate, and the most
brave; of whom the first, the wisest, teaches the prince the magic of
Zoroaster; and that magic is the service of the Gods: also, he teaches him
the duties that belong to a king. Then the second, the justest, teaches him to
speak truth all his life through. Then the third, the most temperate, teaches
him not to be conquered by even so much as a single one of the pleasures,
that he may be exercised in freedom, and verily a king, master of all things
within himself, not slave to them. And the fourth, the bravest, teaches him
to be dreadless of all things, as knowing that whenever he fears, he is a
slave.”

Three hundred and some odd years before that carpenter, with his tired
wife, asked for room in the inn, and found none, these words had been
written, my enlightened friends; and much longer than that, these things had
been done. And the three hundred and odd years (more than from
Elizabeth’s time till now) passed by, and much fine philosophy was talked
in the interval, and many fine things found out: but it seems that when God
wanted tutors for His little Prince,—at least, persons who would have been
tutors to any other little prince, but could only worship this one,—He could
find nothing better than those quaint-minded masters of the old Persian
school. And since then, six times over, three hundred years have gone by,
and we have had a good deal of theology talked in them;—not a little
popular preaching administered; sundry Academies of studious persons
assembled,—Paduan, Parisian, Oxonian, and the like; persons of erroneous
views carefully collected and burnt; Eton, and other grammars, diligently
digested; and the most exquisite and indubitable physical science obtained,
—able, there is now no doubt, to extinguish gases of every sort, and explain
the reasons of their smell. And here we are, at last, finding it still necessary
to treat ourselves by Cassell’s Educator,—patent filter of human faculty.
Pass yourselves through that, my intelligent working friends, and see how
clear you will come out on the other side.

Have a moment’s patience yet with me, first, while I note for you one or
two of the ways of that older tutorship. Four masters, you see, there were
for the Persian Prince. One had no other business than to teach him to speak
truth; so difficult a matter the Persians thought it. We know better,—we.
You heard how perfectly the French gazettes did it last year, without any
tutor, by their Holy Republican instincts. Then the second tutor had to teach
the Prince to be free. That tutor both the French and you have had for some
time back; but the Persian and Parisian dialects are not similar in their use
of the word “freedom”; of that hereafter. Then another master has to teach
the Prince to fear nothing; him, I admit, you want little teaching from, for
your modern Republicans fear even the devil little, and God, less; but may I
observe that you are occasionally still afraid of thieves, though as I said
some time since, I never can make out what you have got to be stolen.

For instance, much as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this

Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of it, I know an English gentleman
who was offered the other day a picture of it, by a good master,—Raphael,
—for five-and-twenty pounds; and said it was too dear: yet had paid, only a
day or two before, five hundred pounds for a pocket-pistol that shot people
out of both ends, so afraid of thieves was he.2

None of these three masters, however, the masters of justice, temperance, or

fortitude, were sent to the little Prince at Bethlehem. Young as He was, He
had already been in some practice of these; but there was yet the fourth
cardinal virtue, of which, so far as we can understand, He had to learn a
new manner for His new reign: and the masters of that were sent to Him—
the masters of Obedience. For He had to become obedient unto Death.

And the most wise—says the Greek—the most wise master of all, teaches
the boy magic; and this magic is the service of the gods.

My skilled working friends, I have heard much of your magic lately. Sleight
of hand, and better than that, (you say,) sleight of machine. Léger-de-main,
improved into léger-de-mécanique. From the West, as from the East, now,
your American and Arabian magicians attend you; vociferously crying their
new lamps for the old stable lantern of scapegoat’s horn. And for the oil of
the trees of Gethsemane, your American friends have struck oil more finely
inflammable. Let Aaron look to it, how he lets any run down his beard; and
the wise virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine la Pétroleuse,
with her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster,
and completes the worship of her Christ.

Christmas, the mass of the Lord’s anointed;—you will hear of devices

enough to make it merry to you this year, I doubt not. The increase in the
quantity of disposable malt liquor and tobacco is one great fact, better than
all devices. Mr. Lowe has, indeed, says the Times of June 5th, “done the
country good service, by placing before it, in a compendious form, the
statistics of its own prosperity.… The twenty-two millions of people of
1825 drank barely nine millions of barrels of beer in the twelve months: our
thirty-two millions now living drink all but twenty-six millions of barrels.
The consumption of spirits has increased also, though in nothing like the
same proportion; but whereas sixteen million pounds of tobacco sufficed for
us in 1825, as many as forty-one million pounds are wanted now. By every
kind of measure, therefore, and on every principle of calculation, the
growth of our prosperity is established.”3

Beer, spirits, and tobacco, are thus more than ever at your command; and
magic besides, of lantern, and harlequin’s wand; nay, necromancy if you
will, the Witch of Endor at number so and so round the corner, and raising
of the dead, if you roll away the tables from off them. But of this one sort of
magic, this magic of Zoroaster, which is the service of God, you are not
likely to hear. In one sense, indeed, you have heard enough of becoming
God’s servants; to wit, servants dressed in His court livery, to stand behind
His chariot, with gold-headed sticks. Plenty of people will advise you to
apply to Him for that sort of position: and many will urge you to assist Him
in carrying out His intentions, and be what the Americans call helps, instead
of servants.

Well! that may be, some day, truly enough; but before you can be allowed
to help Him, you must be quite sure that you can see Him. It is a question
now, whether you can even see any creature of His—or the least thing that
He has made,—see it,—so as to ascribe due worth, or worship to it,—how
much less to its Maker?

You have felt, doubtless, at least those of you who have been brought up in
any habit of reverence, that every time when in this letter I have used an
American expression, or aught like one, there came upon you a sense of
sudden wrong—the darting through you of acute cold. I meant you to feel
that: for it is the essential function of America to make us all feel that. It is
the new skill they have found there;—this skill of degradation; others they
have, which other nations had before them, from whom they have learned
all they know, and among whom they must travel, still, to see any human
work worth seeing. But this is their speciality, this their one gift to their
race,—to show men how not to worship,—how never to be ashamed in the
presence of anything. But the magic of Zoroaster is the exact reverse of this,
to find out the worth of all things and do them reverence.

Therefore, the Magi bring treasures, as being discerners of treasures,

knowing what is intrinsically worthy, and worthless; what is best in
brightness, best in sweetness, best in bitterness—gold, and frankincense,
and myrrh. Finders of treasure hid in fields, and goodliness in strange
pearls, such as produce no effect whatever on the public mind, bent
passionately on its own fashion of pearl-diving at Gennesaret.

And you will find that the essence of the mis-teaching, of your day,
concerning wealth of any kind, is in this denial of intrinsic value. What
anything is worth, or not worth, it cannot tell you: all that it can tell is the
exchange value. What Judas, in the present state of Demand and Supply,
can get for the article he has to sell, in a given market, that is the value of
his article:—Yet you do not find that Judas had joy of his bargain. No
Christmas, still less Easter, holidays, coming to him with merrymaking.
Whereas, the Zoroastrians, who “take stars for money,” rejoice with
exceeding great joy at seeing something, which—they cannot put in their
pockets. For, “the vital principle of their religion is the recognition of one
supreme power; the God of Light—in every sense of the word—the Spirit
who creates the world, and rules it, and defends it against the power of
evil.”4

I repeat to you, now, the question I put at the beginning of my letter. What
is this Christmas to you? What Light is there, for your eyes, also, pausing
yet over the place where the Child lay?

I will tell you, briefly, what Light there should be;—what lessons and
promise are in this story, at the least. There may be infinitely more than I
know; but there is certainly, this.

The Child is born to bring you the promise of new life. Eternal or not, is no
matter; pure and redeemed, at least.
He is born twice on your earth; first, from the womb, to the life of toil; then,
from the grave, to that of rest.

To His first life He is born in a cattle-shed, the supposed son of a carpenter;

and afterwards brought up to a carpenter’s craft.

But the circumstances of His second life are, in great part, hidden from us:
only note this much of it. The three principal appearances to His disciples
are accompanied by giving or receiving of food. He is known at Emmaus in
breaking of bread; at Jerusalem He Himself eats fish and honey to show that
He is not a spirit; and His charge to Peter is “when they had dined,” the
food having been obtained under His direction.

But in His first showing Himself to the person who loved Him best, and to
whom He had forgiven most, there is a circumstance more singular and
significant still. Observe—assuming the accepted belief to be true,—this
was the first time when the Maker of men showed Himself to human eyes,
risen from the dead, to assure them of immortality. You might have thought
He would have shown Himself in some brightly glorified form,—in some
sacred and before unimaginable beauty.

He shows Himself in so simple aspect, and dress, that she, who, of all
people on the earth, should have known Him best, glancing quickly back
through her tears, does not know Him. Takes Him for “the gardener.”

Now, unless absolute orders had been given to us, such as would have
rendered error impossible, (which would have altered the entire temper of
Christian probation); could we possibly have had more distinct indication of
the purpose of the Master—born first by witness of shepherds, in a cattle-
shed, then by witness of the person for whom He had done most, and who
loved Him best, in the garden, and in gardener’s guise, and not known even
by His familiar friends till He gave them bread—could it be told us, I
repeat, more definitely by any sign or indication whatsoever, that the
noblest human life was appointed to be by the cattle-fold and in the garden;
and to be known as noble in breaking of bread?
Now, but a few words more. You will constantly hear foolish and ignoble
persons conceitedly proclaiming the text, that “not many wise and not many
noble are called.”

Nevertheless, of those who are truly wise, and truly noble, all are called that
exist. And to sight of this Nativity, you find that, together with the simple
persons, near at hand, there were called precisely the wisest men that could
be found on earth at that moment.

And these men, for their own part, came—I beg you very earnestly again to
note this—not to see, nor talk—but to do reverence. They are neither
curious nor talkative, but submissive.

And, so far as they came to teach, they came as teachers of one virtue only:
Obedience. For of this Child, at once Prince and Servant, Shepherd and
Lamb, it was written: “See, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. He
shall not strive, nor cry, till he shall bring forth Judgment unto Victory.”

My friends, of the black country, you may have wondered at my telling you
so often,—I tell you nevertheless, once more, in bidding you farewell this
year,—that one main purpose of the education I want you to seek is, that
you may see the sky, with the stars of it again; and be enabled, in their
material light—“riveder le stelle.”

But, much more, out of this blackness of the smoke of the Pit, the blindness
of heart, in which the children of Disobedience blaspheme God and each
other, heaven grant to you the vision of that sacred light, at pause over the
place where the young Child was laid; and ordain that more and more in
each coming Christmas it may be said of you, “When they saw the Star,
they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”

Believe me your faithful servant,

JOHN RUSKIN.

1 Great;—father’s father’s mother. ↑

2 The papers had it that several gentlemen concurred in this piece of business; but they
put the Nativity at five-and-twenty thousand, and the Agincourt, or whatever the explosive
protector was called, at five hundred thousand. ↑
3 This last clause does not, you are however to observe, refer in the great Temporal
Mind, merely to the merciful Dispensation of beer and tobacco, but to the general state of
things, afterwards thus summed with exultation: “We doubt if there is a household in the
kingdom which would now be contented with the conditions of living cheerfully accepted
in 1825.” ↑
4 Max Müller: ‘Genesis and the Zend-Avesta.’ ↑
Table of Contents

1. LETTER I. 1
II. LETTER II. 1
III. LETTER III. 1
IV. LETTER IV. 1
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 Colophon
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Metadata

Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen

Title: and Labourers of Great Britain (Volume
1 of 8)
Author: John Ruskin (1819–1900) Info
Language: English
Original
1871
publication date:
Keywords: Aesthetics
Conduct of life
Labor
Social conditions
Social problems
Working class
Library of
08011225
Congress:
OCLC/WorldCat: 3852549
Open Library
OL7025221M
(Book):
Open Library
OL88627W
(Work):

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2019-05-02 Started.

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10, 10,
[Not in source] . 1
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17 , . 1
18 [Not in source] ” 1
11 pressnt present 1
15 [Not in source] , 1
13 candle-sticks candlesticks 1
9 majectic majestic 1
12 speakingly speaking 2
Abbreviations

Overview of abbreviations used.

Abbreviation Expansion
M.P. Member of Parliament
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