s business, and making a hero
out of an envelope is almost out of the sphere of practical politics.
This fruitful strife with limitations, when it concerns some airy
entertainment of an educated class, goes by the name of Art. But
the mass of men have neither time nor aptitude for the invention of
invisible or abstract beauty. For the mass of men the idea of artistic
creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present
discussions--the idea of property. The average man cannot cut clay into
the shape of a man; but he can cut earth into the shape of a garden; and
though he arranges it with red geraniums and blue potatoes in alternate
straight lines, he is still an artist; because he has chosen. The
average man cannot paint the sunset whose colors be admires; but he can
paint his own house with what color he chooses, and though he paints it
pea green with pink spots, he is still an artist; because that is his
choice. Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every
man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is
shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a
graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly
with limits that are strict and even small.

I am well aware that the word "property" has been defied in our time by
the corruption of the great capitalists. One would think, to hear people
talk, that the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of
property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they
are enemies of their own limitations. They do not want their own land;
but other people's. When they remove their neighbor's landmark, they
also remove their own. A man who loves a little triangular field ought
to love it because it is triangular; anyone who destroys the shape, by
giving him more land, is a thief who has stolen a triangle. A man with
the true poetry of possession wishes to see the wall where his garden
meets Smith's garden; the hedge where his farm touches Brown's. He
cannot see the shape of his own land unless he sees the edges of his
neighbor's. It is the negation of property that the Duke of Sutherland
should have all the farms in one estate; just as it would be the
negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem.

*****

VII. THE FREE FAMILY

As I have said, I propose to take only one central instance; I will take
the institution called the private house or home; th