The need for coherence is the essential of harmony--whether
founded on conventional discord or concord. The new harmony
demands that the inner value of a picture should remain unified
whatever the variations or contrasts of outward form or colour.
The elements of the new art are to be found, therefore, in the
inner and not the outer qualities of nature.

The spectator is too ready to look for a meaning in a picture--
i.e., some outward connection between its various parts. Our
materialistic age has produced a type of spectator or
"connoisseur," who is not content to put himself opposite a
picture and let it say its own message. Instead of allowing the
inner value of the picture to work, he worries himself in looking
for "closeness to nature," or "temperament," or "handling," or
"tonality," or "perspective," or what not. His eye does not probe
the outer expression to arrive at the inner meaning. In a
conversation with an interesting person, we endeavour to get at
his fundamental ideas and feelings. We do not bother about the
words he uses, nor the spelling of those words, nor the breath
necessary for speaking them, nor the movements of his tongue and
lips, nor the psychological working on our brain, nor the
physical sound in our ear, nor the physiological effect on our
nerves. We realize that these things, though interesting and
important, are not the main things of the moment, but that the
meaning and idea is what concerns us. We should have the same
feeling when confronted with a work of art. When this becomes
general the artist will be able to dispense with natural form and
colour and speak in purely artistic language.

To return to the combination of colour and form, there is another