Every work of art, whether in sculpture, painting, or music, must have a definite content; and only in having such has it any claim to be so called. This content must be spiritual; that is, it must come from the inner spirit of the artist, and translate itself by means of the work into spirit in the spectator or listener. Only in the recognition of this inner meaning which lives behind the outside and shimmers through it, can consist the difference between the impression made on me by the sight of a beautiful painting, and that produced on an inferior animal, as the retina of his eye paints with equal accuracy the same object. For what is this sense of beauty which thrills through me, while the dog at my side looks at the same thing and sees nothing in seeing all which the eye can grasp? Is it not the response in me to the informing spirit behind all the outward appearance? But if this sense of beauty stops in passive enjoyment, if the sense of sight or of hearing is simply to be intoxicated with the feast spread before it, we must confess that our appreciation of beauty is a very sensuous thing. Content though some may be, simply to enjoy, in the minds of others the fascination of the senses only provokes unrest. We say with Goethe: “I would fain understand that which interests me in so extraordinary a manner;” for this work of art, the product of mind, touches me in a wonderful way, and must be of universal essence. Let me seek the reason, and if I find it, it will be another step towards “the solvent word.” Again, in a true work of art this content must be essentially _one_; that is, one profound thought to which all others, though they may be visible, must be gracefully subordinate; otherwise we are lost in a multiplicity of details, and miss the unity which is the sole sign of the creative mind. Nor need we always be anxious as to whether the artist consciously meant to say thus and so. Has there ever lived a true artist who has not “builded better than he knew”? If this were not so, all works of art would lose their significance in the course of time. Are the half-uttered meanings of the statues of the Egyptian gods behind or before us to-day? Do they not perplex us with prophecies rather than remembrances as we wander amazed among them through the halls of the British Museum? A whole nation striving to say the one word, and dying before it was uttered! Have we heard it clearly yet? The world goes on translating as it gains new words with which to carry on the work. It is not so much the artist that is before his age as the divine afflatus guiding his hand which leads not only the age but him. Through that divine inspiration he speaks, and he says mysterious words which perhaps must wait for centuries to be understood. In that fact lies his right to his title; in that, alone, lies the right of his production to be called a work of art.