In reducing nature in this way to an element within the consciousness of the artist and spectator, I may seem to have destroyed at a blow all the pure unsullied beauty of the external world as it exists in apparent independence of human experience. I have done nothing of the kind. I have insisted that nature, as an existent independent of individual experience, is an unreal abstraction; that the very fulness and reality and splendour of nature exist for each of us nowhere but in the world of our own consciousness, and that within that world of consciousness nature does exist as a system of objects acting and reacting on one another, and is therefore independent of the presence or absence of the consciousness which presents them. Such a conception of nature seems to me an inevitable corollary from the general conception of the purpose and mode of action of art forced upon us by our previous investigations. From this point of view I will define a work of pictorial art as an arrangement of spatial symbols embodying an individualised psychical content present to the mind of the artist, and intended to call up always the same ideas and emotions in the minds of others. I will make no attempt to conceal my opinion that such a theory is valid of all pictorial art, and I will add that I am also disposed to think that such a point of view is a peculiarly fruitful one from which the whole field of art criticism could be reconstituted. And as criticism, as at present understood and practised, is declared on all hands--even by its most accomplished exponents--to be bankrupt,[33] I might urge that the revolutionary character of any general theory was a strong argument in its favour. But the present occasion is not a suitable one for dwelling upon the general and far-reaching character of this theory. Here I am only justified in insisting upon its validity as a working hypothesis for the proper understanding of our immediate subject-matter. Only on such an hypothesis, it seems to me, can we give an intelligible explanation of the essential character of Turner’s studies and sketches and drawings from nature, and of their connection with his completed works. Whether this assertion is justified at all, and if so how far, depends, of course, upon the whole of the foregoing study of Turner’s works, but I will add a few cursory remarks, partly of a recapitulatory nature, but treating our subject-matter from the point of view of its logical content or meaning. In these remarks I will try to deal with some of the difficulties that stand in the way of such a treatment.