tress. In fact it is impossible for us
even to judge concerning the true harmonic effect of these other
measures, and it may well be doubted whether the very soul itself of our
meter is not empty and tinny as compared with these others--quality for
quality.

There is one great broad line that divides the nations and civilizations
of the earth, past and present, in all their arts of expression. We may
call it that of the ideographic as against the literal. It controls the
inner form of language and of languages; it manifests in the passage of
thought from man to man; it determines whether the writing of the people
shall be hieroglyphic or alphabetic; it gives both life and form to the
ideals of their art. It is a distinction that was clearly recognized by
Wilhelm von Humboldt, when he laid down that the incorporative
characteristic essential to all the American languages is the result of
the exaltation of the imaginative over the ratiocinative elements of
mind.

The time has passed when we think that the absence of our perspective
drawing in Japanese pictures is due to the fact that these "children of
nature" never happened to recognize that a thing looks smaller in
proportion to its distance, so that they ought to come to us to learn.
We have come, in some measure if not yet fully, to recognize that
whereas we show a thing to the eye, these other peoples suggest a
thought to the mind, by their pictures. And we should remember, and
remember always, that while our modern art having won its technical and
artistic skill within the past few hundred years, is now beginning to
emancipate itself from the materialism of the eye by efforts towards the
"impressionist" methods, these ancient peoples had long since arrived at
the ability to convey "impressions" through the medium of harmonious
compositions of the most rigid conventional elements--an artistic
achievement which those who know its difficulties can alone begin to
appreciate.

It may be quite easily forgiven to one trained with Western, modern
eyes, who at first sight of these monuments, in total ignorance of their
meanings, sees them as strange or grotesque. But when, as their
strangeness wears away, one comes to see the unfailing accuracy with
which the glyphs are drawn, one's opinion of their makers has to change.
And when, with this familiarity gained, one advances to an appreciation
of the work in its bearings as a whole, one has to acknowledge himself
facing th