al: for art can
be second-rate yet genuine. Also, art must become less exclusively
professional. That will not be achieved by bribing the best artists to
debase themselves, but by enabling everyone to create such art as he
can. It is probable that most are capable of expressing themselves, to
some extent, in form; it is certain that in so doing they can find an
extraordinary happiness. Those who have absolutely nothing to express
and absolutely no power of expression are God's failures; they should be
kindly treated along with the hopelessly idiotic and the hydrocephalous.
Of the majority it is certainly true that they have some vague but
profound emotions, also it is certain that only in formal expression can
they realise them. To caper and shout is to express oneself, yet is it
comfortless; but introduce the idea of formality, and in dance and song
you may find satisfying delight. Form is the talisman. By form the
vague, uneasy, and unearthly emotions are transmuted into something
definite, logical, and above the earth. Making useful objects is dreary
work, but making them according to the mysterious laws of formal
expression is half way to happiness. If art is to do the work of
religion, it must somehow be brought within reach of the people who need
religion, and an obvious means of achieving this is to introduce into
useful work the thrill of creation.

But, after all, useful work must remain, for the most part, mechanical;
and if the useful workers want to express themselves as completely as
possible, they must do so in their leisure. There are two kinds of
formal expression open to all--dancing and singing. Certainly it is in
dance and song that ordinary people come nearest to the joy of creation.
In no age can there be more than a few first-rate artists, but in any
there might be millions of genuine ones; and once it is understood that
art which is unfit for public exhibition may yet be created for private
pleasure no one will feel shame at being called an amateur. We shall not
have to pretend that all our friends are great artists, because they
will make no such pretence themselves. In the great State they will not
be of the company of divine beggars. They will be amateurs who
consciously use art as a means to emotional beatitude; they will not be
artists who, consciously or unconsciously, use everything as a means to
art. Let us dance and sing, then, for dancing and singing are true arts,
useless materially, va