This union of small self-esteem with a vast ambition is a paradox in the very soul of the painter; and when we look at the symbolic pictures in the light of this theory of his, it is interesting and typical to observe how consistently he pursues any intellectual rule that he laid down for himself. An æsthetic or ethical notion of this kind is not to him, as to most men with the artistic temperament, a thing to talk about sumptuously, to develop in lectures, and to observe when it happens to be suitable. It is a thing like his early rising or his personal conscience, a thing which is either a rule or nothing. And we find this insistence on universal symbols, this rejection of all symbols that are local or temporary or topical, even if the locality be a whole continent, the time a stretch of centuries, or the topic a vast civilization or an undying church--we find this insistence looking out very clearly from the allegories of Watts. It would [Illustration: THE COURT OF DEATH.] have been easy and effective, as he himself often said, to make the meaning of a picture clear by the introduction of some popular and immediate image: and it must constantly be remembered that Watts does care very much for making the meaning of his pictures clear. His work indeed has, as I shall suggest shortly, a far more subtle and unnamable quality than the merely hard and didactic; but it must not be for one moment pretended that Watts does not claim to teach: to do so would be to falsify the man’s life. And it would be easy, as is quite obvious, to make the pictures clearer: to hang a crucifix over the _Happy Warrior_, to give _Mammon_ some imperial crown or typical heraldic symbols, to give a theological machinery to _The Court of Death_. But this is put on one side like a temptation of the flesh, because it conflicts with this stupendous idea of painting for all peoples and all centuries. I am not saying that this extraordinary ambition is necessarily the right view of art, or the right view of life. I am only reiterating it as an absolute trait of men of the time and type and temper of Watts. It may plausibly be maintained, I am not sure that it cannot more truly be maintained, that man cannot achieve and need not achieve this frantic universality. A man, I fancy, is after all only an animal that has noble preferences. It is the very difference between the artistic mind and the mathematical that the former sees things as they are in a picture, some nearer and larger, some smaller and further away: while to the mathematical mind everything, every unit in a million, every fact in a cosmos, must be of equal value. That is why mathematicians go mad; and poets scarcely ever do. A man may have as wide a view of life as he likes, the wider the better; a distant view, a bird’s-eye view, if he will, but still a view and not a map. The one thing he cannot attempt in his version of the universe is to draw things to scale. I have put myself for a moment