in which there are three co-ordinate elements, acting, words, and
music, not one of which is subordinate to the others, but all of equal
value, expressing different sides of the dramatic subject-matter. Of
the inability of words in themselves to inspire music, he is very
emphatic: "No verses of a poet, not even of a Goethe or a Schiller,
can determine the music. The drama alone can do this, i.e. not the
dramatic poem, but the actual drama as it moves before our eyes as
the visible counterpart of the music."

In order to be effective the union of the three elements must be
_organic_, and I must now explain what is meant. When we speak of
a work of art as an _organism_ we mean that the different parts
of which it is composed co-operate together towards the purpose of the
whole in such a way that not one of them is superfluous or could be
dispensed with. It resembles in this respect the products of nature,
and life, which is only a complex form of organized activity. In the
higher natural products, especially those we speak of as
_living_, the single parts are not dead weights, but are
themselves organisms, containing within them individual and complete
systems of living forces, acting independently, and at the same time,
as subordinate units contributing to the purpose of the whole, so that
shortly we may say that, as each part is conditioned by the whole, so
the whole is conditioned by the single parts. When a person loses a
limb, and has it replaced by an artificial one, his first impression
is of the enormous weight of the new limb, although it may only weigh
about a quarter of the old one. This is explained by the fact that the
new limb is a dead weight, whereas the former one was a living
organism. That is to say, when he lifted it, the nervous impulses
transmitted from the brain were sustained and enforced by forces
within the limb itself; being alive it _helped_ in the effort,