fail in the end to touch, if only fleetingly
with his lips, the waters of that river of passion which, by a miracle
of faith if not by a supreme creation of art, Humanity has caused to
issue forth from the wounded flesh of the ideal.

It is in his "Soul of Man"--perhaps the wisest and most eloquent
revolutionary tract ever written--that Wilde frees himself most
completely from the superficial eccentricities of his aesthetic pose,
and indicates his recognition of a beauty in life, far transcending
Tyrian dyes and carved cameos and frankincense and satin-wood
and moon-stones and "Silks from Samarcand."

It is impossible to read this noble defence of the natural distinction
and high dignity of our human days when freed from the slavery of
what is called "working for a living," without feeling that the boyish
bravado of his insolent wit is based upon a deep and universal
emotion. What we note here is an affiliation in revolt between the
artist and the masses. And this affiliation indicates that the
hideousness of our industrial system is far more offensive than any
ancient despotism or slave-owning tyranny to the natural passion for
light and air and leisure and freedom in the heart of man.

That Oscar Wilde, the most extreme of individualists, the most
unscrupulous of self-asserters, the pampered darling of every kind of
sophisticated luxury, should thus lift up his voice on behalf of the
wage-earners, is an indication that a state of society which seems
proper and inevitable to dull and narrow minds is, when confronted,
not with any mere abstract theory of Justice or Political rights, but
with the natural human craving for life and beauty, found to be an
outrage and an insult.

Oscar Wilde by pointing his derisive finger at what the gross
intelligence of our commercial mob calls the "honourableness of
work" has done more to clear our minds of cant than many
revolutionary speeches.

An age which breeds a world of uninteresting people whose only
purpose in life is working for their living is condemned on the face
of it. And it is just here that the association between your artist and
your "labouring man" becomes physiologically evident. The
labourer shows quite clearly that he regards his labour as a
degradation, a burden, an interruption to life, a necessary evil.

The role of the capitalist-hired preacher is to condemn him for this
and to regret the departure from the scene of that imaginary and
extremely ridicul