If, before noting the points of difference between one branch and another of this modern art, we try to find the characteristics in which these branches resemble one another, and by which they collectively are distinguished from earlier developments, we find the most prominent one to be self-consciousness--not necessarily self-conceit, but the inward consciousness that they _are_, and the endeavor to realize just what they are. With these comes, when the art is conscientious, a desire to discover the noblest goal and to formulate the best methods of reaching it. Some, casting the horoscope for this struggling art of ours, find in these facts a great discouragement, believing that the vital germ of art is spontaneity--believing that there cannot again be a genuine form of art until there arise a fresh race of artists, unfed by the mummy-wheat of tradition, unfettered by the cere-cloths of criticism. Others, more sanguine, believe that spontaneity has done all it can, and that its place is in the future to be worthily filled by a wide eclecticism. Let us inquire what testimony as to the value of spontaneity and the influence of self-consciousness in art may be gathered from the methods and results of the past, and what from a contrast between the different contemporary schools in their methods and their results. Painting, as most prominently before our eyes and minds just now, will principally concern us. To the making of every work of art go three things and no more--the material worked upon, the hand that works, and the intellect or imagination which guides that hand. When the proportion is perfect between the three, the work of art is perfect of its kind. But in the different kinds of art the necessary proportion is not the same. In music, for example, the medium is at its lowest value, the imagination at its highest. In architecture, on the other hand, material is most important. Musicians use the vibration of string and atmosphere, sculptors use bronze and marble, painters use color and canvas, poets use rhythm and rhyme, as vehicles to express their ideas. The architect's ideas are for the sake of his material. He takes his material as such, and embellishes it with his ideas--creates beauty merely by disposing its masses and enriching its surface. But in all and each of these processes, whether mind predominate or matter, there comes in as a further necessary factor the actual technical manipulation. Poetic visions and a noble mother-tongue do not constitute a man a poet if he cannot treat that language nobly according to the technique of his art. Nor, though Ariel sing in his brain and the everlasting harp of the atmosphere wait for him, is he a musician if he have not a sensitive ear and a knowledge of counter-point. More notably yet does the hand--and in this as a technical term I include the other bodily powers which go to form technical skill,--more notably yet does the hand come in play with the painter.