247



THE ARTIST IN THE GREAT STATE

BY ROGER FRY



IX

THE ARTIST IN THE GREAT STATE

I AM not a Socialist, as I understand that word, nor
can I pretend to have worked out those complex esti-
mates of economic possibility which are needed before
one can indorse the hopeful forecasts of Lady Warwick,
Mr. Money, and Mr. Wells. What I propose to do
here is first to discuss what efifect plutocracy, such as
it is to-day, has had of late, and is likely to have in
the near future, upon one of the things which I should
hke to imagine continuing upon our planet — ^namely,
art. And then briefly to prognosticate its chances
under such a r6gime as my colleagues have sketched.
As I understand it, art is one of the chief organs of
what, for want of a better word, I must call the
spiritual life. It both stimulates and controls those
indefinable overtones of the material life of man
which all of us at moments feel to have a quality
of permanence and reality that does not belong to
the rest of our experience. Nattire demands with
no tmcertain voice that the physical needs of the
body shall be satisfied first; but we feel that our real
human life only begins at the point where that is
accomplished, that the man who works at some

2SI



THE GREAT STATE

tincreative and uncongenial toil merely to earn
enough food to enable him to continue to work has
not, properly speaking, a human life at all.
