When, after reading all the preceding plays, one reaches "The Lonely Way" (_Der einsame Weg_), it is hard to escape an impression of everything else having been nothing but a preparation. It is beyond all doubt Schnitzler's greatest and most powerful creation so far, representing a tremendous leap forward both in form and spirit. It has less passion than "The Call of Life," less subtlety than "Intermezzo," less tolerance than "Countess Mizzie." Instead it combines in perfect balance all the best qualities of those three plays--each dominant feature reduced a little to give the others scope as well. It is a wonderful specimen of what might be called the new realism--of that realism which is paying more attention to spiritual than to material actualities. Yet it is by no means lacking in the more superficial verisimilitude either. Its character-drawing and its whole atmosphere are startlingly faithful to life, even though the life portrayed may represent a clearly defined and limited phase of universal human existence. The keynote of the play lies in _Sala's_ words to _Julian_ in the closing scene of the fourth act: "The process of aging must needs be a lonely one to our kind." That's the main theme--not a thesis to be proved. This loneliness to which _Sala_ refers, is common to all people, but it is more particularly the share of those who, like himself and _Julian_, have treasured their "freedom" above everything else and who, for that reason, have eschewed the human ties which to a man like _Wegrath_ represent life's greatest good and deepest meaning. Again we find the principal characters of the play typifying the artistic temperament, with its unhuman disregards of the relationships that have primary importance to other men. Its gross egoism, as exemplified by _Julian_, is the object of passionate derision. And yet it is a man of that kind, _Sala_, who recognizes and points out the truer path, when he say: "To love is to live for somebody else." The play has no thesis, as I have already said. It is not poised on the point of a single idea. Numerous subordinate themes are woven into the main one, giving the texture of the whole a richness resembling that of life itself. Woman's craving for experience and self-determination is one such theme, which we shall find again in "Intermezzo," where it practically becomes the dominant one.