Monsieur Sologub, the Russian poet, speaking recently on the future of art, seems to have indicated his view that after the war art will move away from the paths of naturalism; and he defines the naturalists as “people who describe life from the standpoint of material satisfaction.” With that definition I do not at all agree, but it is never good to argue about words. Confusion in regard to the meaning of terms describing art activity is so profound that it is well to sweep them out of our minds, and, in considering what forms art ought to take, go deep down to the criterion of communication between heart and heart. The only essential is, that vision, fancy, feeling should be given the concrete clothing that shall best make them perceptible by the hearts of others; the simpler, the more direct and clear and elemental the form, the better; and that is all you can say about it. To seek remote, intricate, and “precious” clothings for the imagination is but to handicap vision and imperil communication and appeal; the artists who seek them are not usually of much account. The greatness of Blake is the greatness of his simpler work. Though, in this connection, it is as much affectation to pretend that men are more childish than they are, as to pretend that they all have the subtlety of a Robert Browning. If the range of an artist’s vision, the essential truth of his fancy, and the heat of his feeling be great, then, obviously, the simpler, the more accessible the form he takes, the wider will be his reach, the deeper the emotion he stirs, the greater the value of his art. “What is wanted,” says Monsieur Sologub, “is true art.” Quite so! What is wanted in a work of art is an unforced natural and adequate correspondence between fancy and form, matter and spirit, so that one shall not be distracted by its naturalism, mysticism, cubism, whatnotism, but shall simply be moved in a deep impersonal way by perception of another’s vision. Two instances come into the mind: A picture of Spring, by Jean François Millet, in the Louvre. Therein, by simple selection, without any departure whatever from the normal representation of life, the very essence of Spring, the brooding and the white flash of it, the suspense and stir, the sense of gathered torrents, all the special emotion, which, every Spring of the year, is sooner or later felt by every heart, has been stored by the painter’s vision and feeling, and projected from his eyes and heart to other eyes and hearts. And: Those chapters in a novel of Monsieur Sologub’s compatriot, Turgenev—“Fathers and Children”—which describe with the simplest naturalism the death of Bazarov. There, too, is the heart-beat of emotion as universal as it well can be, rendered so vividly that one is not conscious at all of how it is rendered.