THE USE OF GARDENS 



from the laws of art which they have never attempted to under- 

 stand. For these laws they have substituted certain trivial dogmas, 

 cramped, inflexible, and artificial, incapable of serious application, 

 and leading to no sane conclusions — dogmas that bar the way to 

 all sound progress and prevent healthy developments of thought 

 or practice. But the " advanced " men, indifferent to the fact that 

 the laws which they despise are founded upon the intelligent obser- 

 vation of nature by many generations of earnest investigators, do 

 not hesitate to set up their own imperfect conclusions against the 

 accumulated experience of centuries and to pride themselves on 

 having made discoveries of world-shaking significance. 

 This is, of course, the confidence of ignorance, the outcome of the 

 vanity which is the mark of a small mind. But the pretensions or 

 the men who make noisy professions of their foolish creed do secure 

 a certain amount of acceptance from that section of the public 

 which mistakes insistence for sensible argument ; and consequently 

 the "advanced" art has a perceptible following. It is a following 

 of which any reasonable leader might well feel ashamed, because 

 it consists less of the people who are worth converting than of 

 those who will subscribe to any extravagance and endorse any 

 new departure no matter how irrational it may be ; but it con- 

 stitutes a somewhat dangerous group of active resisters to healthy art 

 activity. The danger arises from the readiness of this group to 

 condemn every manifestation of aesthetic sincerity as old-fashioned 

 or common-place and to describe respect for dignified tradition as 

 mere convention worship. The seekers after sensation, like a small 

 boy defying his nurse, find an unholy joy in flouting authority, and 

 the more unconscious that authority seems to be of their rebellion 

 the more they scream and rave. But as this kind of violence is more 

 or less infectious they induce others of the same order to scream 

 with them and to become a nuisance in a comparatively orderly 

 world. 



Between the " advanced " artist who thinks that there is evidence 

 of originality and enlightenment in his disregard of wholesome 

 tradition and the garden designer who believes that he can substi- 

 tute his own tricks and contrivances for nature's quiet perfection of 

 method there is a very close similarity. They are both working 

 under a complete misconception of their artistic responsibilities and 

 are possessed by a conceit which blinds them to the futility of their 

 efforts ; and as an inevitable consequence they fail to produce 

 anything that is worthy of preservation. The garden which is 

 but a monument of the designer's vanity, and which advertises 



xi 



