Finally, in making schemes for the endowment of original mental activity, we must not ignore the possibility of a perversion that has already played its part in the histories of painting and music, and that is the speculative financing of promising candidates for these endowments. If we are going to make research, criticism, and creation "worth while" we must see to it that in reality we are not simply making it worth while for Solomons and Moses to "spot" the early promise, to stimulate its modesty, to help it to its position, and to draw the major profits of the enterprise. The struggling young man of exceptional gifts who is using his brains not to make his position but to do his destined work, is by that at a great disadvantage in dealing with the business man, and it is to the interest of the community that he should be protected from his own inexperience and his own self- distrust. The average Whitechapel Jew could cheat a Shakespeare into the workhouse in no time, and our idea is rather to make the world easy for Shakespeares than to hand it over to the rat activities of the "smart" business man.
Freedom of Contract is an idea no one outside a debating society dreams of realizing in the state. We protect tenants from landlords in all sorts of ways, our law overrides all sorts of bargains, and in the important case of marriage we put almost all the conditions outside bargaining and speculative methods altogether by insisting upon one universal contract or none. We protect women who are physically and economically weak in this manner, not so much for their own good as the good of the race. The state already puts literary property into a class apart by limiting its duration. At a certain point, which varies in different circumstances, copyright expires. It is possible for an author, whose fame comes late, to be present as a row of dainty volumes in half the comfortable homes in the world, while his grandchildren beg their bread. The author's blood is sacrificed to the need the whole world has of cheap access to his work. And since we do him this injury for the sake of our intellectual life, it is surely not unreasonable to interfere for his benefit also if that subserves the greater end.
Now there are two ways at least in which the author may be and should be protected from the pressure of immediate necessities. The first of these is to render his copyright in his work inalienably his, to forbid him to make any bargain by which the right to revise, abbreviate, or alter what he has written passes out of his hands, and to make every such bargain invalid. He would be free himself to alter or to endorse alterations, but to yield no carte blanche to others. He would be free also to make whatever bargain he chose for the rights of publication. But, and this is the second proposal, no bargain he made should be valid for a longer period than seven years from the date of its making. Every seven years his book would come back into his control, to suppress, revise, resell, or do whatever he liked to do with it. Only in one way could he escape this property, and that would be by declaring it void and making his copyright an immediate present to the world. And upon this proposal it is possible to base one form— and a very excellent form—of paying for the public service of good writing and so honouring men of letters and thought, and that is by buying and, more or less, completely extinguishing their copyrights, and so converting them into contemporary classics.
Throughout these papers a disposition to become concrete has played unchecked. Always definite proposals have been preferred to vague generalizations, and here again it will be convenient to throw out an almost detailed scheme—simply as an illustration of the possibilities of the case. I am going to suggest to the reader that to endow a thousand or so authors, as authors, would be a most wise and admirable proceeding for a modern statesman, and I would ask him before he dismisses this suggestion as absurd and impossible, to rest contented with no vague rejection but to put to himself clearly why the thing should under present conditions be absurd and impossible. Always in the past the need of some organ for the establishment and preservation of a common tone and substance of thought in the state has been recognized; commonly this organ has taken the form of a Church, a group of Churches (as in America) or an educational system (as in China). But all previous schemes of social and political organization have been static, have aimed at a permanent state. Our modern state we know can only live by adaptation, and we have to provide not a permanent but a developing social, moral and political culture. Our new scheme must include not only priests and teachers but prophets and seekers. Literature is a vitally necessary function of the modern state.
Let us waive for the moment the subtle difficulty that arises when we ask who are the writers of literature, the guides and makers of opinion, the men and women of wisdom, insight, and creation, as distinguished from those who merely resonate to the note of the popular mind; let us assume that this is determined, and let us make a scheme in the air to support these people under such conditions as will give us their best. Suppose the thing done boldly, and that for every hundred thousand people in our population we subsidize an author—if we can find as many. Suppose we give him some sort of honour or title and the alternative of going on writing under copyright conditions—which many popular favourites would certainly prefer—or of giving up his copyrights to the public and receiving a fixed income, a respectable mediocre income, £800 or £1000 for example.
That means four hundred or more subsidized authors for Great Britain, which would work out, perhaps, as eighteen or twenty every year, and a proportionate number for America and the Colonial States of the British Empire. Suppose, further, that from this general body of authors we draw every year four or five of the seniors to form a sort of Academy, a higher stage of honour and income; this would probably give something under a hundred on this higher stage. Taking the income of the two stages as £1000 and £2000 respectively, this would work out at about £500,000 a year for Great Britain—a quite trivial addition to what is already spent on educational work. A scheme that would provide for widows and children whose education was unfinished, and for the official printing and sale of correct texts of the books written, would still fall within the dimensions of a million pounds. I am assuming this will be done quite in addition to the natural growth of Universities and Colleges, to the evolution of great text-books and criticism, and to the organization and publication of special research in science and letters. This is to be an endowment specifically for unspecialized literature, for untechnical philosophy that is, and the creative imagination.