Functional socialism

82 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

For genius, tragedy; for us others, incalculable loss. On our conscience are ten thousand other poignant tragedies all down the history of science, art, literature and industry. Our own Victorian fathers, in the matter of finding and succouring genius, showed impenetrable stupidity. They complacently smiled at the invectives of Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, and Ruskin, regarding the gibes of Heine as very bad manners. Philistinism triumphant! In contrast, the functional hypothesis is that culture and industry must march in step. What, therefore, was perhaps excusable in our beefy ancestors who worshipped “common sense” may become a crime—or a blunder that 1s worse than a crime—in our new dispensation. We may indeed seriously inquire whether a functional organization is conceivable, not to say possible, unless inspired by a culture unknown even thirty years ago; but if the new order at first fails to nourish genius, the existing order will not have the tiniest pebble to throw at it. To-day, our best literature is so thoroughly commercialized that the best minds shrink from making contributions, which, when made, are, as often as not, rejected; in art, the Royal Academy is still supreme: in Fleet Street it is not ideas that are wanted, but—ad captandum: vulgusaids to circulation. Disheartening though all that is, it 1s in industry that inventive genius suffers most. A large proportion of good inventions are rejectedor bought and killed—not on their merits, but because they cut at the roots of vast financial interests. Others of value are shamelessly exploited, the in-