42 ESSAYS IIS NATIONAL IDEALISM.

thought; his art is more deeply rooted in the national life*
than that.* If the flower has not meant so much to him
that he has already a clear memory picture o£ its essential
characters, he may as well ignore it in his decoration ; for-
a decorative art not intimately related to his own experience,,
and to that of his fellow men, could have no intrinsic
vitality, nor meet with that immediate response which
rewards the prophet speaking in a mother-tongue. It is
of course, true that the original memory pictures are-
handed on as crystallised traditions ; yet as long as the art
is living, the tradition remains also plastic, and is moulded
imperceptibly by successive generations. The force of its-
appeal is strengthened by the association of ideas,—artistic,,
emotional and religious. Traditional forms have thus a
significance not merely foreign to any imitative art, but
dependent on the fact that they represent rather race con-
ceptions, than the ideas of one artist or a single period*.
They are a vital expression of the race mind : to reject
them, and expect great art to live on as before, would be
to sever the roots of a forest tree, and still look for
flowers and fruit upon its branches.

Consider, also, patterns. To most people patterns,
mean extremely little ; they are things to be made and
cast aside for new, only requiring to be pretty, perhaps
only to be fashionable ; whereas they are really things
which live and grow, and which no man can create,—all

* The Western craftsman will not recover his power of design
until he worships God with flowers ; until the sacraments of life
are once more made a ritual; nor until he gets back some real"
superstitions in place of the superstition of l facts/ Any Roman-
Catholic wo aid understand this.