Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/48



is the Japanese imagination to make the world-large laughter of flowers out of the December snow; it is our fire of imagination that we build a land of Spring fairies already in Winter's heart of frost, and of wind too solemn even for speech. We flatly object to recognise the existence of Winter; we are happy to think that we have only three seasons in the year. I always think the Japanese mind is most wonderful where it leaves behind the Chinese thought, finite, hard, like the Greek thought, whose consciousness to ethics ever thought a Vision frivolous; and we thank the Buddhism which encouraged our appreciation of Nature as having a big share of moral life. We read in our literature the record of a long fight of those two thoughts, Chinese and Japanese. It is originally a Chinese thought to praise and moralise over the plum-blossom; and the nightingale, speaking generally, is more a Chinese bird, or, we might say, a Greek bird, like Keats nightingale, than a Japanese bird; but the nightingale, also the Rh