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142 THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGON
serves his purpose. The camera sees more than
that, it sees all the details ; but it cannot see
the spirit that has to be felt.
Most Europeans think of boats as means
of locomotion, of apples as eatables. They
recognize such things by their serviceable
their individuality, the universal in
qualities ;
these particulars, escapes them. In a picture
of a boat or an apple they look for those
unessential qualities which minister to their
pleasure, and of which alone they are aware.
The cleverness of a man who can paint fruit
that tempts urchins impresses them but the
;
artist who feels, and tries to express, the soul
of fruit and flowers they take for an incompetent
dunce or a charlatan.
" One might say that man has been a
monarch, looking to his subject-world only
for service and for flattery, and just because
of this lordly attitude he has failed to understand
that subject-world, and, even more, has
failed to understand himself."
In the East men have ever set the spiritual
life above the practical, and artists have
excelled in expressing the very essence of
material things because they expressed what
they felt, instead of representing what the
ordinary man sees. Tkey kave felt that if