FOR AND AGAINST

After sewing, cooking. After the elegance of the dress, that of food. These are two beautiful elegabilities.
The stomach, too, likes to be well dressed and taste, good taste, goes from shimmering silks to a fine and chosen dish... It is obvious that it is more elegant to eat well than to eat badly and that a dish that is disheveled, neglected, of low quality and poorly cut is an adornment neither for the mind nor for the body.
We can only applaud without reserve the various competitions opened, at the Exhibition of work, between the best of craftsmen and workers. Dressmakers, cooks, diamond cutters, cabinetmakers compete in skill, ability, science and intelligence... They all show that they are artists, true artists. They prove that what we call, rather foolishly, manual work, can also be an intellectual labor.

It would be high time, in this regard, to put an end to this ridiculous, pretentious and pedantic prejudice which tends to underestimate all so-called manual work, all work done with the hands, in favor of work proudly described as intellectual...

Certainly, the labor of a Montaigne, a Pascal or a Pasteur will always be above a task-based labor. Certainly, thought; always, should take precedence over skill and application... Only, there is thought and thought. There is work and work...

We seem to grant, at this time, a supremacy of principle to all that is so-called intellectual work, that is to say to all that is written, to all that is elaborated with paper and ink, to all that is composed on an office table... It would be good to distinguish...

The least ephebe who scribbles a hazy essay claims to do "work of thought". A vaudevillian who, with sofas and words from an almanac, constructs three comic acts, speaks with vanity of his "work", of his profession as a "writer", an "author", an intellectual... Come on! Come on!... It would be a matter of being a little serious!

Many "intellectuals" only do manual work. They are workers and who strive to earn their bread. They are therefore perfectly estimable and honorable. But they are no more "intellectuals" than good, diligent laborers. It is with a pen and ink that they "work", that they make "novels" or "theater"... But there is neither art nor thought in their fabrications...

There is art, on the other hand, and there is thought, and there is intelligence in such manual work executed with taste and science, in such a pretty dress, in such a piece of furniture, in such a trinket, in such a piece of machinery... And there is much more spirit, certainly, everyone will agree on this point in a creamy sauce, elaborated by a great chef, than in the last entire book of the little Machin, "intellectual", candidate for the Mécène prize...

MAURICE PRAX.