[334] in contrast to the Ruisdaels^a and the Rubens^b, which I would call objective naturalism. It is subjective insofar as the nature which appears here is, as Zola^c has said, nature seen through a temperament. It is the optic organization not only of man generally, but of the seeing possibility of one great artist, which appears here. Here again I would say, through this subjective naturalism which is present in all the expressionistic pictures, we have the presence of ultimate reality, but now ultimate reality not only in nature but IN OUR ENCOUNTER with nature. And this is the greatness and the beauty of impressionistic art, that it brings in, in a way that was never before, the optical subjectivity of man. 5) RAILROAD STATION [La Gare] by Monet^d -- This means that the same Monet^e was able to make a picture of the technical world, the second world man has created above nature, and in this world we have also

not only the objectivity of the technical things, which constitute a railroad station, but also the optic reception, the subjective receptive side, which, [like] the impressionists, he always put into the center. The technical world is in this way able, through the artistic symbol, also to become a symbol for ultimate reality, not directly in a religious sense---it is secular subject matter---but indirectly, through the power of being which is revealed also in these creations of man. 6) UNLOADING THE CARGO (Monet^f) -- It is a mixture of technical and natural elements, and what I said about both of them is here repeated in this very beautiful work of impressionist art. We will call this realm, which is now finished, nature---and technic[s] and its relation to nature. Next we will have another realm of naturalistic style and secular subject matter: human relations, social relations: