But to-day the impressionist himself is on trial. The world is beginning to question the worth-whileness of his art, except as a necessary transition-stage to something more fundamentally vital that is in process of evolution. What this will prove to be is at present in suspense; but we are vaguely discerning that it will be something at once more organically basic than impressionism and more spiritualised in motive. It may have been inevitable for the artist to depend on temperament in an age, such as the late century has been, of religious, mental and moral upheaval, during which the old academic, dogmatic forms of religion and art were toppling down, the hard old conventions that shackled social and mental betterment were being gradually disintegrated, and old values were being reduced to a flux in the melting pot of scientific analysis. But, as order has begun to emerge from this confusion, the need of a new constructive faith is taking hold of men’s minds; the need of a new consciousness of some spiritual relation with the universe of matter. If the art of the future is to keep pace with progress outside itself, it must shape new motives to this need; and already there are signs that it is doing so. It is here that Goya’s second gift to posterity appears. [Illustration: SCENE OF MAY 3, 1808 GOYA THE PRADO] His influence has been working in the direction of expression, as the painter’s goal, rather than representation. For a while, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Velasquez’s inimitable faculty of recording a visual impression fascinated artists. Consciously or otherwise, these men were a part of the material and scientific tendency of the time, and material representation seemed to them the Ultima Thule of artistic achievement. Hence the thousands of canvases by men of all countries which in their point of view are neither more nor less than photographic. Their authors remained content to vie with the camera; and then, because they had superior opportunities in color, were proud and scornful when they beat the camera at its own game. Meanwhile, there were painters who began to wish to play a game of their own; to rid painting of the obsession in the matter of representation, and to make their pictures more expressive of their own abstract sense of beauty. To these men Goya came as a revelation. Through his impressionism of feeling they learned principles of expression, not discoverable in Velasquez.