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answer to that question. But we can come to Capitalism directly, and for the moment confine ourselves to a consideration of previous social structures. Has there ever been a civilised community in which every member has been able to satisfy his desire for Art?
If one asked this question of the man-on-the-magazine-staff, he would doubtless reply: "Oh, yes. Look at Athens, my dear sir. Every citizen an artist and a critic." But the gentlemen (and ladies) who voice these ecstatic sentiments forget that in Athens there were at least seven slaves to every free man. In order that the free citizen might devote himself to general culture, seven of his fellowmen were turned into "dumb drudges." The same thing was to be seen in Rome—unlimited leisure at the top of the social scale, unlimited toil and hardship at the bottom, whether the labourer was slave or nominally free man. The two great requisites for the free development of the artistic instinct—a not too-crushing burden of mechanical labour, and a fair amount of leisure time—were absent as far as the mass of the people were concerned. Art was the concern of the few, and the few were agreed that this was as it should be. Culture, as in our own day, was deliberate, and not spontaneous; and the Romans, like ourselves, laid far too much stress upon the particular in a man's art and too little on the general. With them, as with us, the vast majority of the population was cheated out of its rightful inheritance.
A very similar state of things may be observed in the other great civilisations of the past. In Egypt, in Mexico, in Assyria, in Babylonia, and in the East there has always been a helpless proletariat ground down by a master-class, and the artistic instincts of the majority have been stunted in infancy and stifled in later life. But there has been one period where these instincts have had, to a great extent, free play; and that period was the Middle Age in Western Europe. The reign of omnipotent capital had not yet come, and the worker was, within limits, his own master. He had certain dues to pay to those above him; but when these dues were paid, he was free to do what he liked with his own time. Trade was almost entirely local, and production was necessarily limited by the demands of the locality. Over-production would have been utterly purposeless. A man who turned out more articles than were wanted by his neighbours would never be able to get the surplus off his hands. The result was that, finding that he had more time at his disposal than was
