Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/26

 works of art full of a beauty or a grandeur which still astonishes us, by means of slave labour or by the devotion of members of a church who built, for example, the mediaeval cathedrals to the glory of God and for the sheer pleasure of building Him a noble house. In these days, economic power is much more widely spread and will be spread still more widely as wealth is better distributed; and we cannot expect to have a really beautiful country unless the greater number of the people know what beauty is and try to arrive at it. It is an open question whether this desire for beauty is a thing that can be taught, but we may be quite sure that we are not likely to get it as long as most of us are concerned only with the narrow problems of making a living, and have no chance of full development of our minds and perceptions. In other words, we want education and facilities for travel on a scale that we have not yet dreamt of. We want everybody with whom we come in contact to be really well taught and really well informed, not necessarily in the way of schooling and book-learning. Many of the most interesting people whom we come across are very deficient in both, but they have been able to have had wide and varied experience, to have