The revolution that has resulted from the triumph of naturalistic over humanistic tendencies in painting extends down to the minutest details of technique; it has meant the subordination of design--the imposition, that is, on one’s material of a firm central purpose--to light and color; and this in painting corresponds to the literary pursuit of glamour and illusion for their own sake. It has meant in general a tendency to sacrifice all the other elements of painting to the capture of the vivid and immediate impression. And this corresponds to the readiness of the writer to forego decorum in favor of intensity. The choice that is involved, including a choice of technique, according as one is a naturalist or a humanist, is brought out by Mr. Kenyon Cox in his comparison of two paintings of hermits,[216] one by Titian and one by John Sargent: the impressionistic and pantheistic hermit of Sargent is almost entirely merged in the landscape; he is little more than a pretext for a study of the accidents of light. The conception of Titian’s St. Jerome in the Desert is perhaps even more humanistic than religious. The figure of the saint on which everything converges is not merely robust, it is even a bit robustious. The picture affirms in its every detail the superior importance of man and his purposes to his natural environment. So far as their inner life is concerned the two hermits are plainly moving in opposite directions. An appropriate motto for Sargent’s hermit would be the following lines that I take from a French symbolist, but the equivalent of which can be found in innumerable other Rousseauists: _Je voudrais me confondre avec les chases, tordre_ _Mes bras centre la pierre et les fraîches écorces,_ _Etre l’arbre, le mur, le pollen et le sel,_ _Et me dissoudre au fond de l’être universel._