gathered into the symphony of a throng, lost amid whirling mists of hell and converging towards the figure of the Thinker. The conception embraces centuries. Ugolino is there, and so are centaurs, female fauns, satyrs, and creatures dreamed of by Baudelaire, abstract personifications of vices--in particular, there is the extraordinary group of the miser dying of hunger over his treasure beside a prostitute _(Avarice and Lewdness)._ The Thinker, in his austere nudity and pensive strength, is at one and the same time the alarmed Adam, the implacable Dante, and the compassionate Virgil of this frightful unrestrained humanity, but he is, above all, the ancestor, the first man, simple and unconscious, looking down on what he has begotten. The symbolism and philosophy of the artist are independent of any religious doctrine; his spiritual ardour excels in setting free the symbols of the various creeds, and he is supported mainly by deep and incessant consultation of nature, and by his exceptional sense of expression in movements. He attains the decorative harmony of his work not by additions, but by systematic suppressions, as the Gothic artists and those of the Renascence did. [Illustration: THE THINKER] _The Gate of Hell_ is the outcome of studies made by Rodin from the Gothic sculptors, during his stay in Brussels. In this, and in _The Burghers of Calais_, he resumes the deep influence that he there underwent. As to the influence that the antique had upon him, that only showed itself later, in his smaller works in marble, and especially in the _Balzac_ and recent productions. The _Gate_ corresponds to the period in which Rodin's great aim was to create, through intensity of movement and originality of attitude and outline, a _new system of the dramatic_ in his art, which the taste of the day had frozen into a false "neo-Greek nobility," obtained by immobility, by inertia of outline, and by a fear of seeing too living a movement break the general harmony. To seek a fresh harmony in the very study of movement, to create, side by side with _static_ art, a _dynamic_ art, such, in a brief formula, was Rodin's idea. He was shortly to exhibit a work which was still more significant of the thoughts with which he was busy. For, though I have spoken at once of that famous _Gate,_ which is the _leit-motiv_ of Rodin's art, it must be remembered that in 1886 nothing was known of it but drawings. Only by degrees have groups and fragments of it been seen, and the work itself has never left the studio in the Rue de l'Université. It was _The Burghers of Calais_ which revealed most clearly to the public Rodin's capabilities in the way of style and of composing a whole work, and I will speak of the _Burghers_ in this chapter, although the work was not completed until 1892 and was not set up in Calais until 1895. [Illustration: DANAID] [Illustration: DANAID] [Illustration: THOUGHT]