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ARISTO CRA CY AND E VOL UTION 



Book IV 

 Chapter 2 



and works of 

 art are wealth ; 

 and scientific 

 discovery is the 

 basis of 

 industrial pro- 

 gress ; 



but great 

 works of art 

 form but a 

 small part of 

 wealth ; 



ceptional faculties whose function it is to maintain 

 and increase the production of wealth ? With 

 regard to artistic creation, we are certainly bound to 

 admit that great works of art are wealth of a highly 

 important kind, and when a good picture is pro- 

 duced, as it often is, solely in obedience to the 

 painter's artistic impulse, we have a genuine example 

 of wealth produced in obedience to that kind of 

 motive whose efficiency the socialists desire to 

 establish. Further, with regard to the pursuit of 

 truth, as Mill points out in a passage that has been 

 already quoted, progress in speculative knowledge 

 is the basis of all other progress, and notably of 

 progress in the arts and processes of wealth- pro- 

 duction. It must, accordingly, be admitted that in a 

 certain sense all progress in wealth -production has 

 for its basis a kind of disinterested activity with 

 which the desire of possessing wealth has nothing 

 at all to do. And yet in spite of this, neither the 

 case of the artist nor of the philosopher warrants 

 the inference that the motives which are sufficient 

 for them will ever have a similar effect on the 

 faculties of the great wealth - producers. The 

 evidence, in fact, as soon as we have fully examined 

 it, will be found to point in a direction precisely 

 opposite. 



For, to begin with the case of the artist, it must 

 be remembered, in the first place, that works of art, 

 such as pictures painted by the artist's hand, form a 

 very small, though an important part of wealth, 

 and that they are hardly wealth at all from the 



