UNDER THE MAPLES 



landscape reveals to him his susceptibility to 

 beauty. 



It is considered sound rhetoric to speak of the 

 statue as existing in the block of marble before the 

 sculptor touches it. How easy to fall into such 

 false analogies! Can we say that the music existed 

 in the flute or in the violin before the musician 

 touches them? The statue in the form of an idea 

 or a conception exists in the mind of the sculptor, 

 and he fashions the marble accordingly. Does the 

 book exist in the pot of printer's ink? Living 

 things exist in the germ, the oak in the acorn, the 

 chick in the egg, but from the world of dead matter 

 there is no resurrection or evolution. Life alone 

 puts a particular stamp upon it. We may say that 

 the snowflake exists in the cloud vapor because of 

 the laws of crystallization, but the house does not 

 exist in a thousand of brick in the same sense. It 

 exists in the mind of the builder. 



The sculptor does not interpret the marble; he 

 interprets his own soul through the medium of the 

 marble the picture is not in the painter's color 

 tubes waiting to be developed as the flower is in 

 the bud; it is in the artist's imagination. The 

 apple and the peach and the wheat and the corn 

 exist in the soil potentially; life working through 

 the laws of physics and chemistry draws their 

 materials out and builds up the perfect fruit. To 

 decipher, to interpret, to translate, are terms that 



188 



