The fundamental conception which it is most important to emphasize as that which affects art throughout in its relation to all we have above considered may be thus stated. If we look closely at the relative position man occupies in all the infinite variety of his material wants, desires, and aims, we shall find that it is not one merely of _general_ significance, but one of actual _dependence_. The absence of freedom implied in this relative position is antagonistic to the Ideal; and in order that man may become a suitable object for art, he must have already released himself from the travail of this enforced condition, and thrown off the chains of his dependence. Moreover, this act of mutual accommodation, when we trace it to its origin, may strike us in one of two different ways. Either he may conclude that Nature in all friendliness on her own part supplies man with what he needs, and so far from throwing obstacles in the path of his interests and objects, rather freely gives them him as one who meets him half way wherever he goes. Or, on the contrary, we shall not fail to observe that our humanity has wants and desires, whose immediate satisfaction Nature is quite unable to secure. In cases that fall under the second type it is obvious that man can only work out the self-satisfaction vital to him through his own energies; he must take possession of that which Nature possesses, set to rights the defects which appear, modify their form, removing all that stands in his way with adroitness; and, in short, convert Nature's raw material into means through which he will be able to attain all that he proposes. The relation in which the unity between man and his environment will be most conspicuous must be sought for in an example, where there is already a real contact between them, where, that is to say, human ability is on such good terms with the amenability of Nature that all the severity of a conflict between them as unreconciled forces disappears, and we have forthwith the completed symphony under our eyes.