Men with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight into ordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected of people, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be denied that millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particular point that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires and artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and before the millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding creative men.
It might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete—the theatre, for instance—and see how the situation lies, and where one would have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it.
The present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic.
If a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the best things that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best things held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to compare them with other things, and see that they are better than the other things, and that they are what they want.
Unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. If things are tried long enough with them they do. When they have been tried long enough with them they support them themselves.
The only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient capital.
The only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by having millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, and believe the public in time will believe in them.
The only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in the fine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit and temperament at least, an artist himself.
The only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every day in the spirit in which the artist works.
This means the artist in business.