He would say to
himself, not How can I protect myself with this against the tyranny of
the struggle for life? not How can I invest this? but What can I do with
this? He would see it as Michelangelo saw the marble when he looked for
the shape within it. And then he would rise above the conception of mere
duty as something we do against our own wills, or of virtue as a luxury
of the spirit to which we escape in our little leisure from the
struggle for life. Virtue, duty, would be for him life itself; in
creation he would attain to that harmony of duty and pleasure which is
happiness.
If only we could see that the superfluous energy of mankind is something
out of which to make the happiness of mankind we should find our own
happiness in the making of it. There is still for us a gulf between
doing good to others and the delight of the artist, the craftsman, in
his work. The artist is one kind of man and the philanthropist another;
the artist is a selfish person whom we like, and the philanthropist an
unselfish person whom we do not like. What we need is to fuse them in
our use of capital, in our exercise of the superfluous energy of
mankind. There are single powerful capitalists who know this joy of
creation, who are benevolent despots, and yet are suspect to the poor
because of their great power. But it never enters the head of the
smaller investor that he, too, might create instead of merely investing;
that, instead of being a shareholder in a limited liability company, he
might be one of a creative fellowship, not merely earning dividends but
transforming cities, exalting things of use into things of beauty,
giving to himself and to mankind work worth doing for its own sake,
work in which all the obsolete conflicts of rich and poor could be
forgotten in a commonwealth.
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