In an address at the opening of the Art Loan Exhibition of Chester,
August 11, 1879, Mr. Gladstone said: "With the English those two things
are quite distinct; but in the oldest times of human industry--that is
to say amongst the Greeks--there was no separation whatever, no gap at
all, between the idea of beauty and the idea of utility. Whatever the
ancient Greek produced he made as useful as he could; and at the same
time, reward for work with him was to make it as beautiful as he could.
In the industrial productions of America there is very little idea of
beauty; for example, an American's axe is not intended to cut away a
tree neatly, but quickly. We want a workman to understand that if he can
learn to appreciate beauty in industrial productions, he is thereby
doing good to himself, first of all in the improvement of his mind, and
in the pleasure he derives from his work, and likewise that literally he
is increasing his own capital, which is his labor."
In his articles on "Ecce Homo" he expresses the hope "that the present
tendency to treat the old belief of man with a precipitate, shallow,
and unexamining disparagement, is simply a distemper, that inflicts for
a time the moral atmosphere, that is due, like plagues and fevers, to
our own previous folly and neglect; and that when it has served its work
of admonition and reform, will be allowed to pass away.
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