Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what
not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they
can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially
shopkeepers and nothing else. Why do I try to sell my books and feel
regret at never seeing them pay their expenses if I am not a shopkeeper?
Of course I am, only I keep a bad shop—a shop that does not pay.
In like manner, the professed shopkeeper has generally a taint of the
artist somewhere about him which he tries to conceal as much as the
professed artist tries to conceal his shopkeeping.
The business man and the artist are like matter and mind. We can never
get either pure and without some alloy of the other.