I listened to all this in surprise; I knew that the banker was a
cultivated man, a man of university training, and that he was a reader and
a thinker; but he had always kept a certain reserve in his talk, which he
now seemed to have thrown aside for the sake of the Altrurian, or because
the subject had a charm that lured him out of himself. "Well, now," he
continued, "the question is of the money consideration, which is the first
consideration with us all: does it, or doesn't it degrade the work, which
is the life, of those among us whose work is the highest? I understand
that this is the misgiving which troubles you in view of our conditions?"

The Altrurian assented, and I thought it a proof of the banker's innate
delicacy that he did not refer the matter, so far as it concerned the
aesthetic life and work, to me; I was afraid he was going to do so. But he
courteously proposed to keep the question impersonal, and he went on to
consider it himself: "Well, I don't suppose any one can satisfy you fully.
But I should say that it put such men under a double strain, and perhaps
that is the reason why so many of them break down in a calling that is
certainly far less exhausting than business. On one side, the artist is
kept to the level of the working-man, of the animal, of the creature whose
sole affair is to get something to eat and somewhere to sleep. This is
through his necessity. On the other side, he is exalted to the height of
beings who have no concern but with the excellence of their work, which
they were born and divinely authorized to do. This is through his purpose.
Between the two, I should say that he got mixed, and that his work shows
it."

None of the others said anything, and, since I had not been personally
appealed to, I felt the freer to speak. "If you will suppose me to be
speaking from observation rather than experience--" I began.