248 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



visible in the illustration is attached to the tail hanging over the 

 back in relief. 



The inability of the Chinese for sculpture-work has often been noted, 

 and it is true that generally speaking great sculpture and statuary is 

 lacking in China. Buddhism is largely responsible for anything that 

 exists in this line. The spacious and the majestic is not congenial to 

 the Chinese way of thinking, while they approach perfection in things 

 minute and pretty. This is the element undubitably their own and, 

 to be just, we must judge them from their merits and accomplishments, 

 not from supposed drawbacks or from what does not come up to our 

 expectations. The lack of imposing qualities is fully compensated by 

 their ingenious technical skill, by the wonderful thoroughness and 

 solidity of execution, by an immense adaptability of their work to 

 decorative intentions, by all this beauty of delicate form and line result- 

 ing in a microcosm of quaint grace and taste. And this beauty is not 

 cold, but animated by a depth and warmth of colors, — artificial in 

 painting and embroidery, and natural in stone. Their talent in the 

 utilization of the natural coloring in jade and other stones is the best 

 proof of their highly developed color-sense and their innate love of 

 nature, — a phenomenon presumably unique in the history of art. The 

 subjects chosen for their dainty carvings betray a sympathetic insight 

 into the life of the animal and plant world, their power of natural ob- 

 servation, and their faculty of evincing and expressing good and noble 

 sentiments, which rank supreme in their artistic aspirations, whereas 

 striving for naturalness is always subordinate to emotional powers. 

 And that these are not slight or superficial, but of a wide capacity and 

 mental depth, we recognized in the lpve emblems of the Han period 

 portraying the joy of life, the horror of death and the hope of a hereafter. 

 Idealistic as this glyptic art began, it ended in impressionism, in the 

 still-life, in the Stimmungsbild. The artist's sentiment and the expres- 

 sion of his impressions has become the leading motive of art ever since 

 the days of the Sung period. The ancient philosophical and religious 

 emblemizing was destroyed, and the purely personal artwork arose 

 with the sole object to impress and to please. 



