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144 THE FLIGHT OF THE DRAGON
" In Occidental art objects are copied
directly from nature ; hence before a landscape
one feels as if one were placed in the
midst of nature. There is a wonderful apparatus
called the photograph, which gives a
facsimile copy of the object, whatever it is,
which has
to which it is directed. Nothing
not actually been seen is sketched, nor is a
nameless landscape reproduced, as we often
... A
see done in Chinese productions.
painting which is not a faithful copy of nature
has neither beauty nor is worthy of the name."
And this is the considered judgment of that
popular modern painter
Okio :
" The use of art is to produce copies of
things, and if an artist has a thorough know-
ledge of the properties of the thing he paints,
he can assuredly make a name .
. . Without
the true depiction of objects there can be no
pictorial art. Nobility of sentiment and suchlike
only come after a successful delineation
of the external form of an object."
Such men would be very much at home at an
Academy banquet or in the parlour of a
suburban stockbroker and less so in the world
of art than a saint would be in Wall Street.
For whereas the saint would perceive the
spark of the universal in the particular stock-