The will of Velázquez’ art is objective form. Bodily substance becomes real. Man’s moods and passions in themselves suffice. They have their value not in some rapt design beyond man’s body or in employing it to mystic ends: the world of appearance _is_ the world. Velázquez’ traits are traits of modern Europe. Mysticism disappears, both in immanent and transcendental form. The beauty of spiritual strain, so eloquent in Ribera, is replaced by the beauty of physical poise. The hot fluidity of El Greco which recalls the Prophets, the creative incompleteness of the Byzantines, becomes a static peace. In El Greco, as in all mystic art, the moving materials reach the immobility of form only through the focus of a world beyond them. But in Velázquez, there are no colors save those of face and fabric; there are no forms save those of the body. Velázquez is a realist in the restricted modern European sense. He is impressionistic and he is mechanistic. The vast autonomy of the subjective vision is renounced in him. He makes his eye a literal _receiver of impressions_: whereas the mystic eye (and the Spanish eye) has ever been a _creator of expression_. This type of æsthetic will which, from the Renaissance to Courbet, is to reign in Europe wins perhaps its highest triumph in the alien Velázquez. What tribute to the energy of Spain! For this is not Spain, this is but a fragment. The vision yearning to become complete, the mystic marriage, the parabolic search, the lyric plaint, the ceaseless _cante hondo_, the arabesque which transforms words to body--these, too, are Spain: these are the virtues which create El Greco, Calderón, Lope, Ribera, Cervantes. Velázquez will have none of them. Velázquez will be wholly European. Europe, accepting the world of appearance as the entire world, pours all its energy to the creating of the immense material universe which is our shambles of the machine and applied science. Spain does not follow. But Velázquez leads.[23] Velázquez was a great lover of El Greco. Manuel Cossío tells us that in his private chambers at the Palace, the court painter had works of the great mystic. His love and study of his antithesis helped to confine him within his own domain. In his religious subjects, Velázquez shows the direct influence--chiefly in composition--of El Greco. And in these works, the graphic might of Velázquez fades: they are the least of his pictures. Where Velázquez is great, El Greco is excluded: the younger man seems willfully to avoid what he must have felt should denature his æsthetic. And in this response, Velázquez achieves once more the miracle of Spain: the infusing of a part with an intensity and essence of the Whole. El Greco is Spain of Africa and of the Semites, Spain the High Priest of Rome, the mystic Spain. And Velázquez is Spain of Europe: the land of analytic grace, of luxuriant elaborations, of immense exclusions.