“I should say that such a man certainly got mixed, but that his work kept itself pure from the money consideration, as it were, in spite of him. A painter or actor, or even a novelist, is glad to get all he can for his work, and, such is our fallen nature, he does get all he knows how to get: but, when he has once fairly passed into his work, he loses himself in it. He does not think whether it will pay or not, whether it will be popular or not, but whether he can make it good or not.”
“Well, that is conceivable,” said the banker. “But wouldn’t he rather do something he would get less for, if he could afford it, than the thing he knows he will get more for? Doesn’t the money consideration influence his choice of subject?”
“Oddly enough, I don’t believe it does,” I answered, after a moment’s reflection. “A man makes his choice once for all when he embraces the aesthetic life, or, rather, it is made for him; no other life seems possible. I know there is a general belief that an artist does the kind of thing he has made go because it pays; but this only shows the prevalence of business ideals. If he did not love to do the thing he does, he could not do it well, no matter how richly it paid.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said the banker, and he added to the Altrurian: “So, you see, we are not so bad as one would think. We are illogically better, in fact.”
“Yes,” the other assented. “I knew something of your literature as well as your conditions before I left home, and I perceived that by some anomaly the one was not tainted by the other. It is a miraculous proof of the divine mission of the poet.”
“And the popular novelist,” the lawyer whispered in my ear, but loud enough for the rest to hear, and they all testified their amusement at my cost.
The Altrurian, with his weak sense of humor, passed the joke. “It shows no signs of corruption from greed, but I can’t help thinking that, fine as it is, it might have been much finer if the authors who produced it had been absolutely freed to their work, and had never felt the spur of need.”
“Are they absolutely freed to it in Altruria?” asked the professor. “I understood you that everybody had to work for his living in Altruria.”
“That is a mistake. Nobody works for his living in Altruria; he works for others’ living.”
“Ah, that is precisely what our working-men object to doing here,” said the manufacturer. “In that last interview of mine with the walking delegate he had the impudence to ask me why my men should work for my living as well as their own.”