ot that the feeling for art existed in the
agriculturist as well as in the burgher, and, notwithstanding that the
expression of artistic feeling varies according to the difference in
culture, in the main it remains the same. In vain did the community
guarantee the common necessaries of life, in vain did it suppress all
education that would tend to develop individuality, in vain did it
eliminate all reading save the Bible. Individual tastes broke forth, and
caused general discontent; quarrels arose when somebody proposed to buy
a piano or scientific instruments; and the elements of progress flagged.
The society could only exist on condition that it crushed all individual
feeling, all artistic tendency, and all development.

Will the anarchist Commune be impelled by the same direction?--Evidently
not, if it understands that while it produces all that is necessary to
material life, it must also strive to satisfy all manifestations of the
human mind.

II

We frankly confess that when we think of the abyss of poverty and
suffering that surrounds us, when we hear the heartrending cry of the
worker walking the streets begging for work, we are loth to discuss the
question: How will men act in a society, whose members are properly fed,
to satisfy certain individuals desirous of possessing a piece of Sevres
china or a velvet dress?

We are tempted to answer: Let us make sure of bread to begin with, we
shall see to china and velvet later on.

But as we must recognize that man has other needs besides food, and as
the strength of Anarchy lies precisely in that that it understands _all_
human faculties and _all_ passions, and ignores none, we shall, in a few
words, explain how man can contrive to satisfy all his intellectual and
artistic needs.

We have already mentioned that by working 4 or 5 hours a day till the
age of forty-five or fifty, man could easily produce _all_ that is
necessary to guarantee comfort to society.

But the day's work of a man accustomed to toil does not consist of 5
hours; it is a 10 hours' day for 300 days a year, and lasts all his
life. Of course, when a man is harnessed to a machine, his health is
soon undermined and his intelligence is blunted; but when man has the
possibility of varying occupations, and especially of alternating manual
with intellectual work, he can remain occupied without fatigue, and even
with pleasure, for 10 or 12 hours a day. Consequently, the man who will
have done the 4