He used his art to express great ethical ideas. He spoke again and again about these ideas. He was proud that his art was dedicated to their expression." I am sorry to say that he did say many things which would have endeared him to Tolstoi and Ruskin, and for which I respect him as a man, and which as an artist I deplore. I deplore his speaking of ethical ideas as the inspiration of his art, because I think they were only the inspiration of his life; and where he is weakest in his appeal as an artist is where he summons consciously to his aid ethical ideas which find their proper expression in religion or literature or life. Watts wished to ennoble art by summoning to its aid the highest conceptions of literature; but in doing so he seems to me to imply that art needed such conceptions for its justification, that the pure artist mind, careless of these ideas, and only careful to make for itself a beautiful vision of things, was in a lower plane, and had a less spiritual message. Now that I deny. I deny absolutely that art needs to call to its aid, in order to justify or ennoble it, any abstract ideas about love or justice or mercy. It may express none of these ideas, and yet express truths of its own as high and as essential to the being of man; and it is in spite of himself, in spite of his theories, that the work of Watts will have an enduring place in the history of art. You will ask then, "Can art express no moral ideas? Is it unmoral?" In the definite and restricted sense in which the words "ethical" and "moral" are generally used, art is, and must by its nature be unmoral. I do not mean "immoral," and let no one represent me as saying art must be immoral by its very nature. There are dear newspaper men to whom it would be a delight to attribute to me such a saying; and never to let me forget that I said it. When I say that art is essentially unmoral, I mean that the first impulse to paint comes from something seen, either beauty of color or form or tone. It may be light which attracts the artist, or it may be some dimming of natural forms, until they seem to have more of the loveliness of mind than of nature. But it is the aesthetic, not the moral or ethical, nature which is stirred. The picture may afterwards be called "Charity," or "Faith," or "Hope"--and any of these words may make an apt title. But what looms up before the vision of the artist first of all is an image, and that is accepted on account of its fitness for a picture; and an image which was not pictorial would be rejected at once by any true artist, whether it was an illustration of the noblest moral conception or not. Whether a picture is moral or immoral will depend upon the character of the artist, and not upon the subject. A man will communicate his character in everything he touches. He cannot escape communicating it. He must be content with that silent witness, and not try to let the virtues shout out from his pictures. The fact is, art is