 All of that said, the feeling remains that there has to be something to the internal/external distinction, even if it isn’t explicated in a satisfactory way by Beardsley. Intuitively, some properties are properties of a work, and some properties aren’t properties of a work. Related to this is what’s really at issue, the matter of proper methodology, or the epistemology of interpretation: some evidence is relevant to what a work means—and what else but properties of the work itself?—and some evidence isn’t logically relevant to what a work means—and what else but properties of things other than the work? Put this way, the distinction seems inevitable, and indeed, it’s hard to see how art criticism can get along without it. Rejecting it altogether is tantamount to inviting “chaos of thought and passion, all confused”—in other words, the potential relevance of anything and everything to interpretation, and thus no limits on what a work of art can justifiably be said to mean. Deconstructionists may well welcome such unlimited freedom, but lesser breeds who like the law—which includes historicist, romantic, psychoanalytic, and other critics, besides new critics—will wonder whether the very idea of interpretation has been lost in the midst of anarchy.