But it is useless merely cataloguing these changes, if we cannot discover the reasons for them. Is all this shuffling and rearrangement for the sake of balance and visual harmony? No doubt to some extent it is. But notice in the remodelled design the effect of that firm straight line of the distant sea in the centre, and the way the distant castle rises out of it. That is the nerve of the whole design. See how all the other lines and shapes fret the eye with their sharp and jagged forms, and yet lead it inevitably back to that one untroubled space. All this artfully calculated playing with lights and shadows, this complicated conspiracy of lines and forms, is assuredly something more than an aimless trifling with appearances. In that untroubled stretch of water we cannot but feel the steady, never-resting, inexorable march of the real powers of nature. It brings the whole mighty background of human life into the drawing; and this real spiritual presence sets the daily toil and hardship of everyday life in a new light, solemnising it, dwarfing it, yet not crushing it. It is as though we had heard the rustle of the wings of eternity in the passing moment. To do this, to produce this effect unerringly and with logical certainty upon every normally constituted Englishman who looks carefully at the drawing, cannot exactly be the chance result of a diligent shuffling and reshuffling of mere shapes and shadows. There is something of divinity in it. The shapes and shadows have meaning, and this timeless and spaceless meaning is the life-blood that animates and transfigures these bald signs and symbols. If art deals only with appearances, we must remember that appearance is also a form of reality, and that form and content can be so closely interwoven that the distinctions of our meddling understanding may become idle and misleading. It is only from some such point of view as this that we can hope to grasp the full importance of what clever people call ‘mere technique.’