beyond a sentimental interest it has little to recommend it.]

All this does not presume to say that the "symbolist" school of
art is necessarily nobler than the "naturalist." I am making no
comparison, only a distinction. When the difference in aim is
fully realized, the Primitives can no longer be condemned as
incompetent, nor the moderns as lunatics, for such a condemnation
is made from a wrong point of view. Judgement must be passed, not
on the failure to achieve "naturalism" but on the failure to
express the inner meaning.

The brief historical survey attempted above ended with the names
of Cezanne and Gauguin, and for the purposes of this
Introduction, for the purpose, that is to say, of tracing the
genealogy of the Cubists and of Kandinsky, these two names may be
taken to represent the modern expression of the "symbolist"
tradition.

The difference between them is subtle but goes very deep. For
both the ultimate and internal significance of what they painted
counted for more than the significance which is momentary and
external. Cezanne saw in a tree, a heap of apples, a human face,
a group of bathing men or women, something more abiding than
either photography or impressionist painting could present. He
painted the "treeness" of the tree, as a modern critic has
admirably expressed it. But in everything he did he showed the
architectural mind of the true Frenchman. His landscape studies
were based on a profound sense of the structure of rocks and
hills, and being structural, his art depends essentially on
reality. Though he did not scruple, and rightly, to sacrifice