d within these protective limits, and the work of producing
common wealth, so far as it exists, is left to village communities or
other small units of social organisation. As the elements of steady
common consumption grow in number, the common organisation of activity
to supply them will grow, and where the supply has at first been left
to private enterprise, the abuse of power and growing inconvenience of
competition will drive them into public industry. But since the very
_raison d'etre_ of this increased social cohesiveness is to economise
and enrich the individual life, and to enable the play of individual
energy to assume higher forms out of which more individual
satisfaction may accrue more and more human effort will take shape in
industries which will be left to individual initiative and control,
the arts in which the freedom of personal spontaneity will find scope
in the expression of physical or moral beauty and fitness and the
attainment of intellectual truth. The infinite variety which these
forms of artistic expression may assume, fraught with the
individuality of the artist, will prevent them from ever passing into
"routine" or "common" industries, though even in the fine arts there
will be certain elements which, as they become part of the common
possession, will become relatively void of individual interest, and
will thus pass into a condition of routine activity. The idea of
continuity in human progress demands this admission. But since each
encroachment of routine into the "finer arts" is motived by a prior
shifting of the interest of the consumer into forms of higher
refinement, there will be a net gain and not a loss in the capacity of
individual exercise in artistic work. In every form of human activity
the progress of routine industry will be the necessary condition of
the expansion of individual freedom of expression. But while the
choice and control of each higher form of "industry" will remain
individualistic, in proportion as the moral bonds of society obtain
fuller conscious recognition, the work of the "artist" likewise will
be dedicated more and more to the service of his fellow-men. Thus will
the balance of the social and individual work in the satisfaction of
human wants be preserved, while the number of those wants increase and
assume different values with the progress of the social and individual
life.

FOOTNOTES:

[289] _Wealth of Nations_, p. 110.

[290] Spencer, _Contemporary Revie