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Page 21
I am as sure of one thing as that I am living and breathing, and it
is this: that the dishonesty in the daily arts of life, complaints
of which are in all men's mouths, and which I can answer for it does
exist, is the natural and inevitable result of the world in the
hurry of the war of the counting-house, and the war of the
battlefield, having forgotten--of all men, I say, each for the
other, having forgotten, that pleasure in our daily labour, which
nature cries out for as its due.
Therefore, I say again, it is necessary to the further progress of
civilisation that men should turn their thoughts to some means of
limiting, and in the end of doing away with, degrading labour.
I do not think my words hitherto spoken have given you any occasion
to think that I mean by this either hard or rough labour; I do not
pity men much for their hardships, especially if they be accidental;
not necessarily attached to one class or one condition, I mean. Nor
do I think (I were crazy or dreaming else) that the work of the
world can be carried on without rough labour; but I have seen enough
of that to know that it need not be by any means degrading. To
plough the earth, to cast the net, to fold the flock--these, and
such as these, which are rough occupations enough, and which carry
with them many hardships, are good enough for the best of us,
certain conditions of leisure, freedom, and due wages being granted.
As to the bricklayer, the mason, and the like--these would be
artists, and doing not only necessary, but beautiful, and therefore
happy work, if art were anything like what it should be. No, it is
not such labour as this which we need to do away with, but the toil
which makes the thousand and one things which nobody wants, which
are used merely as the counters for the competitive buying and
selling, falsely called commerce, which I have spoken of before--I
know in my heart, and not merely by my reason, that this toil cries
out to be done away with. But, besides that, the labour which now
makes things good and necessary in themselves, merely as counters
for the commercial war aforesaid, needs regulating and reforming.
Nor can this reform be brought about save by art; and if we were
only come to our right minds, and could see the necessity for making
labour sweet to all men, as it is now to very few--the necessity, I
repeat; lest discontent, unrest, and despair should at last swallow
up all society--If we, then, with our eyes cleared, could but make
some sacrifice of things which do us no good, since we unjustly and
uneasily possess them, then indeed I believe we should sow the seeds
of a happiness which the world has not yet known, of a rest and
content which would make it what I cannot help thinking it was meant
to be: and with that seed would be sown also the seed of real art,
the expression of man's happiness in his labour,--an art made by the
people, and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the
user.
That is the only real art there is, the only art which will be an
instrument to the progress of the world, and not a hindrance. Nor
can I seriously doubt that in your hearts you know that it is so,
all of you, at any rate, who have in you an instinct for art. I
believe that you agree with me in this, though you may differ from
much else that I have said. I think assuredly that this is the art
whose welfare we have met together to further, and the necessary
instruction in which we have undertaken to spread as widely as may
be.
Thus I have told you something of what I think is to be hoped and
feared for the future of art; and if you ask me what I expect as a
practical outcome of the admission of these opinions, I must say at
once that I know, even if we were all of one mind, and that what I
think the right mind on this subject, we should still have much work
and many hindrances before us; we should still have need of all the
prudence, foresight, and industry of the best among us; and, even
so, our path would sometimes seem blind enough. And, to-day, when
the opinions which we think right, and which one day will be
generally thought so, have to struggle sorely to make themselves
noticed at all, it is early days for us to try to see our exact and
clearly mapped road. I suppose you will think it too commonplace of
me to say that the general education that makes men think, will one
day make them think rightly upon art. Commonplace as it is, I
really believe it, and am indeed encouraged by it, when I remember
how obviously this age is one of transition from the old to the new,
and what a strange confusion, from out of which we shall one day
come, our ignorance and half-ignorance is like to make of the
exhausted rubbish of the old and the crude rubbish of the new, both
of which lie so ready to our hands.
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