The Soul of Man Under Socialism | Page 9

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 in 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. The public
should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference. If a
man of science were told that the results of his experiments, and the
conclusions that he arrived at, should be of such a character that they
would not upset the received popular notions on the subject, or disturb
popular prejudice, or hurt the sensibilities of people who knew nothing
about science; if a philosopher were told that he had a perfect right to
speculate in the highest spheres of thought, provided that he arrived at
the same conclusions as were held by those who had never thought in
any sphere at all--well, nowadays the man of science and the
philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very few
years since both philosophy and science were subjected to brutal
popular control, to authority--in fact the authority of either the general
ignorance of the community, or the terror and greed for power of an
ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of course, we have to a very great
extent got rid of any attempt on the part of the community, or the
Church, or the Government, to interfere with the individualism of
speculative thought, but the attempt to interfere with the individualism
of imaginative art still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it is
aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.
In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the
public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have
been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read
it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets
because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they
leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which
the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular
authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such
badly-written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form,
such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The

popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at
once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy,
because the requirements of the public as far