In all that has gone before we have been concerned with the fundamental problems of aesthetic, though we have not treated them directly. In all that we have written a more or less definite and consistent answer to these problems has been implied. In this final chapter, therefore, I propose to draw out as well as I can some of the more general results of our observations and analyses, or rather to endeavour to state in a more general form the laws of artistic expression and action which we have discovered. The ultimate aim of art criticism, as I understand it, is to grasp and render intelligible the whole region of artistic activity, and I cannot but think that it will facilitate our grasp of the wider laws of artistic phenomena, as well as help to consolidate or disprove the results of our detailed observations, if I make an attempt to render explicit what has only been implied in our remarks upon particular concrete instances. I will begin by calling attention to a fact that has been repeatedly forced upon our notice. Though our attention has been mainly fixed upon Turner’s studies and sketches from nature, we have never come into direct contact with the plain physical reality which, according to the invariable usage of common-sense, it is the mission of art to represent. Common-sense tells us that the ‘subject’ of every landscape painting is a group of physical realities--the fields, rivers, mountains, trees, houses, etc., in such and such a place, together with their invariable physical accompaniments, the air and any particular effect of light and weather that the artist may choose to select. Our analysis has invariably shown us that the slightest sketch--much more then a fully organised work of art!--is something more than and something radically different from a mere representation of such physical constituents. The physical objects are indeed portrayed, but when we have recognised this touch of colour or that shape as the representation of this or that natural fact, we have not exhausted the meaning of the artist’s work. This recognition is nothing more than what I may call the plain dictionary meaning of the words the artist has chosen to employ. It is not till we have gone on to grasp the special significance of the order in which these elements have been grouped, that we really begin to come into contact with the work of art itself. As we cannot interpret the meaning of the simplest sentence unless we give due weight to its grammatical construction, so with a picture we must take into consideration what I can only call the grammatical construction and distinctions proper to pictorial expression. When we penetrate in this way to the real significance of any of Turner’s works we find we have been brought into contact with the artist’s thoughts and emotions. We start, as it were, with trees and rocks and physical details, which, as such, are independent of man and indifferent if not actually hostile to