No More Learning

There is no doubt at all that this
is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country
gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or
enjoying cultivated leisure--which, and not labour, is the aim of
man--or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply
contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will he
doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that
civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless
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.

And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form
of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an
authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as
it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always,
and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art
to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd
vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what
they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy
after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are
wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular.