Page:Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome - William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax (1909).djvu/28

 14 When all life, domestic, religious, moral and political, is thus fallen into mere pretence, when all these branches of men's energy have come to professing aims which, when they have any, are not their real aims, and on which they will not and cannot act, when they do not know what they really are and are blind to their real destiny, how can it be possible that Art, the expression of the life of society, can be otherwise than a sham also? Here and there indeed the irrepressible genius of an individual expresses itself by dint of toil and anxiety undreamed of in better days, and produces works of art that are beautiful and powerful, however damaged by the souring effects of a desperate struggle against monstrous surroundings, and by the restlessness that comes of the over-exertion even of great powers. But otherwise the fine arts no longer exist for the people at large. How could they? The one reality of modern society is industrial slavery, far-reaching and intimate, supreme over every man's life, dominating every action of it from the greatest to the least: no man and no set of men