The emphasis which workers in any art place upon their powers of execution is for themselves a false valuation of technique, and it tends to obscure the layman's vision of essentials. Technique is not, as it would seem, the whole of art, but only a necessary part. A work of art in its creation involves two elements,--the idea and the execution. The idea is the emotional content of the work; the execution is the practical expressing of the idea by means of the medium and the vehicle. The idea of Millet's "Sower" is the emotion attending his conception of the laborer rendered in visual terms; the execution of the picture is exhibited in the composition, the color, the drawing, and the actual brush-work. So, too, the artist himself is constituted by two qualifications, which must exist together: first, the power of the subject over the artist; and second, the artist's power over his subject. The first of these without the second results simply in emotion which does not come to expression as art. The second without the first produces sham art; the semblance of art may be fashioned by technical skill, but the life which inspires art is wanting. The artist, then, may be regarded in a dual aspect. He is first a temperament and a mind, capable of feeling intensely and able to integrate his emotions into unified coherent form; in this aspect he is essentially the _artist_. Secondly, for the expression of his idea he brings to bear on the execution of his work his command of the medium, his intellectual adroitness and his manual skill; in this aspect he is the _technician_. Every artist has a special kind of means with which he works, requiring knowledge and dexterity; but it may be assumed that in addition to his ability to express himself he has something to say. We may test a man's merit as a painter by his ability to paint. As an artist his greatness is to be judged with reference to the greatness of his ideas; and in his capacity as artist his technical skill derives its value from the measure in which it is adequate to their expression. In the case of an accomplished pianist or violinist we take his proficiency of technique for granted, and we ask, What, with all this power of expression at his command, has he to say? In his rendering of the composer's work what has he of his own to contribute by way of interpretation? Conceding at once to Mr. Sargent his supreme competence as a painter, his consummate mastery of all his means, we ask, What has he seen in this man or this woman before him worthy of the exercise of such skill? In terms of the personality he is interpreting, what has he to tell us of the beauty and scope of life and to communicate to us of larger emotional experience? The worth of technique is determined, not by its excellence as such, but by its efficiency for expression.