Gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against materialism, against unemotional vision began. At the outset he attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the Impressionists. But, by the purest instinct he discovered, as Cézanne had already discovered, that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered in color. And he also discovered (this time the discovery came from Puvis de Chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to suit the harmony of the composition. Thus unconsciously, almost without volition on his part, he was led to understand that the Primitives everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their vision was or was not exact. And so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized efficiency. Unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his art or to his life. Gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished world. And he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to harmony with himself. At least the caricature of himself in _Contes Barbares_ is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled child that some imagine him to be. Having both the world and himself to struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved only to be, as he said in his last letter to de Montfreid, "a downfall followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." And so in his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by Van Gogh after the disaster that parted them: "Gauguin made one feel that a good picture should be the equivalent of a good action."