the great hurt and hindrance of his relations with those who are. The
increasing intensity of his work tends to accentuate and not to
attenuate the dissimilarities between the different grades of society,
which act as an obstacle to the general reunion. We have clearly seen
the truth of this in the course of the twentieth century of the ancient
era, when the whole population was divided into trades-unions of the
different professions, which waged desperate warfare on one another, and
whose members in the bosom of each union hated one another as only
brothers can.

But for the scientist, the artist, the lover of beauty in all its forms,
to produce is a passion, to consume is only a taste. For every artist
has a dilettante double. But his dilettantism in respect to arts other
than his own only plays by comparison a secondary part in his life. The
artist creates through sheer delight, and he alone creates for such
motives.

We can now comprehend the depth of the truly social revolution which was
accomplished from the days when the aesthetic activity, by dint of ever
growing, ended by vanquishing utilitarian activity. Henceforth in place
of the relation of producer to consumer has been substituted, as
preponderating element in human dealings, the relation of the artist to
the art-lover. The ancient social ideal was to seek amusement or
self-satisfaction apart and to render mutual service. For this we
substitute the following: to be one's own servant and mutually to
delight one another. Henceforward, to insist once more, society reposes,
not on the exchange of services, but on the exchange of admiration or
criticism, of favourable or unfavourable judgments. The anarchical
regime of greed in all its forms has been succeeded by the autocratic
government of enlightened opinion which has become supreme. For our
worthy ancestors deceived themselves finely when they persuaded
themselves that social progress led to what they termed freedom of
thought. We have something better; we possess the joy and the strength
of the mind which attains a certainty of its own, founded, as it is, on
its only sure basis, the unanimity of other minds on certain essential
matters. On this rock we can rear the highest constructions of thought,
nay, the most gigantic systems of philosophy.

The error, at present recognised, of those ancient visionaries called
socialists was their failure to see that this life in common, this
intense social life, the