Nor can there be any doubt that the collective brain enriches culture and stimulates the spirit. The intelligentsia generally looks down on commerce as irredeemably philistine, conventional and lowering in its taste. But for anybody who thinks great art and great philosophy have nothing to do with commerce, let him visit Athens and Baghdad to ask how Aristotle and al-Khwarizmi had the leisure time to philosophise. Let him visit Florence, Pisa and Venice and inquire into how Michelangelo, Galileo and Vivaldi were paid. Let him go to Amsterdam and London and ask what funded Spinoza, Rembrandt,
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