The very word art may become
associated not with specific transformation of things, making
them more significant for mind, but with stimulations of
eccentric fancy and with emotional indulgences. The separation
and mutual contempt of the "practical" man and the man of theory
or culture, the divorce of fine and industrial arts, are
indications of this situation. Thus interest and mind are either
narrowed, or else made perverse. Compare what was said in an
earlier chapter about the one-sided meanings which have come to
attach to the ideas of efficiency and of culture.
This state of affairs must exist so far as society is organized
on a basis of division between laboring classes and leisure
classes. The intelligence of those who do things becomes hard in
the unremitting struggle with things; that of those freed from
the discipline of occupation becomes luxurious and effeminate.
Moreover, the majority of human beings still lack economic
freedom. Their pursuits are fixed by accident and necessity of
circumstance; they are not the normal expression of their own
powers interacting with the needs and resources of the
environment. Our economic conditions still relegate many men to
a servile status. As a consequence, the intelligence of those in
control of the practical situation is not liberal. Instead of
playing freely upon the subjugation of the world for human ends,
it is devoted to the manipulation of other men for ends that are
non-human in so far as they are exclusive.
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