An epic song is not, if you take the utilitarian view, as useful as the broth of a charity kitchen.

The noblest ideas will not sail a vessel in place of canvas.

It is quite true that the cotton-gin gives us calicoes for thirty sous a yard less than we ever paid before; but that machine and all other industrial perfections will not breathe the breath of life into a people, will not tell futurity of a civilization that once existed.

Art, on the contrary, Egyptian, Mexican, Grecian, Roman art, with their masterpieces--now called useless!--reveal the existence of races back in the vague immense of time, beyond where the great intermediary nations, denuded of men of genius, have disappeared, leaving not a line nor a trace behind them! The works of genius are the 'summum' of civilization, and presuppose utility.

Surely a pair of boots are not as agreeable to your eyes as a fine play at the theatre; and you don't prefer a windmill to the church of Saint-Ouen, do you?
Well then, nations are imbued with the same feelings as the individual man, and the man's cherished desire is to survive himself morally just as he propagates himself physically.