there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture
and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong,
insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the
machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no
longer called upon to go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad
cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful
leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvellous things for their own
joy and the joy of everyone else. There will be great storages of force
for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will
convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Is this
Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth
even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing
a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery
will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made
by the individual. This is not merely necessary, but it is the only
possible way by which we can get either the one or the other. An
individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with
reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest,
and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the
other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or
a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to
do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates
into a low and ignoble form of craft. A work of art is the unique result
of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author
is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want
what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what
other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an
artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a
dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an
artist. Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has
known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of
Individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain
conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance
of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of
action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any
interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does
not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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