The excitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions;
the conditions will stretch, but not indefinitely. A man can write an
immortal sonnet on an old envelope, or hack a hero out of a lump of rock.
But hacking a sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious 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.