International studio (59.1916)

Religion and Nature in Oriental Nrt

human race divided. One great branch turned
its face toward the West and laid the foundations
of a civilization based on individual effort, the
glorification of man—a being who had within him-
self an element of the divine. The other branch
looked to the rising sun and came eventually to
follow the teaching of Sakya-Muni, the Buddha,
a prince from the North of India, who, in the
words of a Japanese art critic, “synthetized that
vast ocean of idealism which was Eastern
thought.” He taught that the individual is vain
phenomenon, only of consequence in so far as he
becomes identified with that
universal Will of which he
is only the instrument.
The East, therefore, tend¬
ed to develope a life of con¬
templation, a philosophic
calm, in contrast to the
aggressive, scientific spirit
of our own civilization.
And the difference is funda¬
mental in the two systems
of art. The dramatic mo¬
ments in the life of Buddha
are never depicted. Instead
we have that hieratic fig¬
ure—repeated with infinite
variations by long genera-
tions of Oriental priestly
painters and artist monks—
with quiet features, wide
forehead, drooping eyelids,
and unruffled draperies,
which in Mr. Binyon’s
words “draws the mind in¬
ward, lays a spell upon it,
woos us from the restless
world, a divine ecstasy of absolute contem-
plation.”
Buddhism, with its negative impersonal doc-
trines, is thus entwined with the evolution of
Eastern art. But in addition there are other fac-
tors we must reckon upon, in considering the de-
velopment of the peculiar qualities of the art of
these two peoples—particularly their ideals and
national temper. It is here we find the great
distinction between the art of China and that of
Japan. They are separate peoples, of separate
ways of thinking and differing impulses, as we
have come to realize from their recent political
history.

In China the first great flowering of Oriental
art came, as we have seen, under the Tang Dy-
nasty. It had been preceded by a development
of a thousand years, guided by the teachings of
the two Chinese philosophers, Confucius and
Lao-tse. The first advocated a doctrine of col-
lectivism and socialism, which has always had a
tremendous influence upon the naturally conserv-
ative Chinese spirit, but always opposed by a
positive individualistic philosophy advanced by
Lao-tse.
Confucius aimed at a social harmony which

should reproduce the structure of music. “Keep
your mind pure and free through art,” he
said, while Lao-tse, whose system came to be
known as Tao-ism, was responsible for the more
temperamental qualities, and the ever-present
love of nature, which Chinese art shows. When-
ever Chinese art rose to a culminating period, the
restraining formalism and conventions of Con-
fucianism were always counteracted by the greater
freedom for the individual of Taoist thought. The
decline came when Confucian pedantry and love
for established precedent finally won, in the Ming
and Manchu Dynasties.
{Part IT will appear in a later issue)


FROM ALBUM. GROUP OF FIVE LOHANS, BY LI LUNG-MIEN. (JAPANESE
RIRIOININ.) SUNG. CHINESE

LII