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the mass of the people, who are utter strangers to the advantages of the fine arts, would not experience any great inconvenience in consequence. But in truth, no such event is to be feared, for it is manifest that the arts would receive, in our system of equality, advancements of general utility, and a sublime impress conformable to the grand sentiments which an immense association of happy beings should necessarily give birth to. The citizens would be well-fed, wefl-clothed, well-amused, without inequality, without luxury; the Republic alone would be rich, magnificent, all-powerful.
Some crafts, it is true, whose productions only serve to relieve the ennui of a very small portion of parasites, and to pump enormous masses of money into their hands, should give place to others which would augment the well-being of the great mass of society. But where is the man who could regret this happy change? The sciences and the fine arts once relieved from the goad of ever-pressing, ever-crippling want, the man of genius would no longer have any other stimulus than the love of glory; and, soon shaking off the yoke of flattery, and of selfish Meceenas-like patrons, his only object would be the prosperity of the social body.
To frivolous poems, to architecture of bad taste, to pictures without interest, we should see succeed circuses, temples, and sublime porticos, whither the sovereign people (at present worse lodged than our brute animals are) would repair to imbibe, in the monuments and works of philosophy, the doctrine, the example, and the love of wisdom.
In this enchanting system, of whose charms I only pretend to sketch the outlines, we should witness the solution of the problem—to find a state in which each individual might, with the least trouble, enjoy the most commodious life. Thus the very-diversified productions of all would belong to the mass, who would afterwards distribute them for the greatest happiness of each. You see, then, citizen M. V., that it is not proposed to condemn men to abnegations, but, on the contrary, to diminish the privations of the mass. You ought also to see that in such a state the uprooting of avarice, having put an end to jealousies, cunning, and