8 FLOWER-FIELDS OF ALPINE SWITZERLAND 



and subtle doctrine which governs them ? Who 

 in England will bring himself to see a rock, a pool, 

 a bush as the Japanese gardener sees them, as, 

 indeed, the Japanese people in general see them ? 

 The spirit of Japanese gardening is as fundamentally 

 different from the spirit of English gardening as that 

 of Japanese art is from English art. What poor, 

 spiritless results we have when English art assumes 

 the guise of Japanese art ! It is imitation limping 

 leagues behind its model. And it is this because 

 it is unthought, unfelt, unrealized. 



Strikingly individual, the Japanese outlook is 

 much more impersonal than is ours. Needs 

 must that we be born into the traditions of 

 such a race to comprehend and feel as it does 

 about Nature. A Japanese must have his rocks, 

 streams, trees proportioned to his tea or dwelling 

 house and bearing mystic religious significance. 

 Such particular strictness is the product of ages of 

 upbringing. A few years, a generation or two 

 could not produce in us the reasoned nicety of this 

 phase of appreciation ; still less the reading of 

 some book or the visit to some garden built by 

 Japanese hands. The spirit of a race is of far 

 longer weaving ; one summer does not make a 

 butterfly ; 



