But how often the processes have covered up what is most important,—to me at least,—the value of the individual, his aspirations, and indeed the notions or beliefs that are common between us.
Sometimes this covering has been sordid and mean, pedantic or unesthetic, sometimes most splendid. But how difficult it has been always for the many to read, for instance, in our great Rubens, the evidences of a lofty nature, the devout intentions of a healthy mind!
Not that we can turn back to-day and desert. From the time when the Greek first asserted in art the value of personal manhood to the date of the "impressionist" of to-day, the career has been one. And certainly in the art of painting a vaster future lies before us, whenever we are ready to carry the past. But remember that whatever has been really great once will always remain great.
Even if I were competent to make more than approaches to reflection, this place of dreams is not well chosen for effort. I feel rather as if, tired, I wished to take off my modern armor, and lie at rest, and look at these pictures of the simplicity of attitude in which we were once children. For, indeed, the meaning of our struggle is to regain that time, through toil and the fullness of learning, and to live again in the oneness of mind and feeling which is to open to us the doors of the kingdom.
[SKETCHING]
Nikko san, August 12.
The enchantment of idleness is no longer to be lived in, of mere enjoyment of what I see. I have now to feel the bitterness of work, of effort of memory and analysis, and to become responsible to myself for what I see, and for the accuracy with which I see it; just as my quieting inhalation of the Buddhist air is disturbed by the intellectual necessity of giving to myself some account of formulas, and later, unfortunately, of rendering to you this same account of my impressions. And yet I feel so delightfully lazy, so much as if I were in a Newport in which all should be new. All this place has become more and more enchanting. I am sure that I shall go with the regret of not having painted whatever I shall leave untried; all so preferable, undoubtedly, to what shall have been done. Everything here exists for a painter's delight, everything composes or makes pleasant arrangements, and the little odds and ends are charming, so that I sometimes feel as if I liked the small things that I have discovered better than the greater which I am forced to recognize.