His works may be nearer science, but are further from humanity.We have an old saying in Japan that a woman cannot love a man who is truly vain, for their is no crevice in his heart for love to enter and fill up.In art vanity is equally fatal to sympathetic feeling, whether on the part of the artist or the public.
Nothing is more hallowing than the union of kindred spirits in art.At the moment of meeting, the art lover transcends himself.
At once he is and is not.He catches a glimpse of Infinity, but words cannot voice his delight, for the eye has no tongue.
Freed from the fetters of matter, his spirit moves in the rhythm of things.It is thus that art becomes akin to religion and ennobles mankind.It is this which makes a masterpiece something sacred.In the old days the veneration in which the Japanese held the work of the great artist was intense.The tea-masters guarded their treasures with religious secrecy, and it was often necessary to open a whole series of boxes, one within another, before reaching the shrine itself--the silken wrapping within whose soft folds lay the holy of holies.Rarely was the object exposed to view, and then only to the initiated.
At the time when Teaism was in the ascendency the Taiko's generals would be better satisfied with the present of a rare work of art than a large grant of territory as a reward of victory.Many of our favourite dramas are based on the loss and recovery of a noted masterpiece.For instance, in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai in charge.Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames.
Thinking only of the picture, he slashes open his body with his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson and plunges it into the gaping wound.The fire is at last extinguished.Among the smoking embers is found a half-consumed corps, within which reposes the treasure uninjured by the fire.Horrible as such tales are, they illustrate the great value that we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion of a trusted samurai.
We must remember, however, that art is of value only to the extent that it speaks to us.It might be a universal language if we ourselves were universal in our sympathies.Our finite nature, the power of tradition and conventionality, as well as our hereditary instincts, restrict the scope of our capacity for artistic enjoyment.Our very individuality establishes in one sense a limit to our understanding; and our aesthetic personality seeks its own affinities in the creations of the past.It is true that with cultivation our sense of art appreciation broadens, and we become able to enjoy many hitherto unrecognised expressions of beauty.But, after all, we see only our own image in the universe,--our particular idiosyncracies dictate the mode of our perceptions.The tea-masters collected only objects which fell strictly within the measure of their individual appreciation.
