By a more careful analysis of the artist’s work we hope to learn the teaching Watts set himself to give, and to ascertain the means that he adopted; but one point needs to be made clear at this stage, namely, that although Watts was a great teacher, yet he was not a revolutionary.  The ideals he held up were not new or strange, but old, well-tried, one might almost say conventional.  They represent the ideals which, in the friction and turmoil of ages, have emerged as definite, clear, final.  They are not disputed or dubious notions, but accepted truisms forgotten and neglected, waiting for the day when men shall live by them.

Furthermore, Watts was not in any sense a mystic—­neither personally or as an artist.  “The Dweller in the Innermost” is not the transcendental self known to a few rare souls, but is merely conscience, known to all.  The biblical paintings have no secret meaning assigned to them.  The inhabitants of Eden, the hero of the Deluge, the Hebrew patriarchs, Samson and Satan—­all these are the familiar figures of the evangelical’s Bible.  “Eve Repentant” is the woman Eve, the mother of the race; “Jacob and Esau” are the brothers come to reconciliation; “Jonah” is the prophet denouncing the Nineveh of his day and the Babylon of this.  The teaching—­and there is teaching in every one of them—­is plain and ethical.  So also, with the Greek myths; they teach plainly—­they hold no esoteric interpretations.  Watts is no Neo-Platonist weaving mystical doctrines from the ancient hero tales; he is rather a stoic, a moralist, a teacher of earthly things.

But we must be careful to guard against the impression of Watts as a lofty philosopher consciously issuing proclamations by means of his art.  Really he was not aware of being a philosopher at all; he was simply an artist, an exquisitely delicate and sensitive medium, who, when once before his canvas, suddenly filled with his idea, was compelled to say his word.  If there be any synthesis about his finished work—­and no one can deny this—­it was not because Watts gave days and nights and years to “thinking things out.”  His paintings are, as he used to call them, “anthems,” brought forth by the intuitive man, the musician.  This was the fundamental Watts.  Whatever unity there be, is due rather to unity of inspiration than to strength or definiteness of character and accomplishment, and this was sometimes referred to by Watts as a golden thread passing through his life—­a thread of good intention—­which he felt would guide him through the labyrinth of distractions, mistakes, irritations, ill health, and failures.