“The Thinker” is not only naked, but also flayed. Its anatomy is executed with obtrusive importance, without the covering epidermis with its vital warmth. The enormous exaggeration of the muscles, the impossible assertion of strength which is expressed by the extreme contraction of all the muscles, therefore also of the counteracting muscles, are well-known features of sculpture in its worst period of decline. There is still, however, a distinction between Rodin and the _rococo_ sculptors, who confused fleshy tumours over the whole surface of the bodies of their statues with the power of portraying artistically. At any rate, the latter had a correct knowledge of myology, or the subject of the muscles, whereas Rodin’s anatomy is shockingly inaccurate. I really do not think much of Lorenzo Matthielly’s groups at the Vienna Hofburg-gates; but in the face of Rodin’s monstrosity I apologise in my heart for all the objections I have ever made against them. At any rate, with Matthielly every muscle occupies its proper place. Rodin, however, invents muscles which do not exist, and never did exist. Two mighty ridges, ending below in sausage-tips, run down the “Thinker’s” back, which are perhaps intended for the two _longissimi dorsi_; in this case, however, they are howling blunders as regards their attachment, their whole course, and their form. The muscles of the forehead and temples are treated quite as arbitrarily as those of the back. Where nature only recognises thin cutaneous muscles and ligatures, there Rodin puts bumps which remind one of blood tumours after blows from a club, and impart to the face the appearance of evil _Verschlagenheit_; not, as Fritz Reuter says, in the sense of craftiness, but in that of receiving a sound cudgeling. As a record “The Thinker” stands on the same level as the anatomical plates in Japanese manuals of the healing art of the time of the Shoguns.