While this is true, it is also true that Japan furnishes no exception to Mr. Whistler’s dictum that “there never was an art-loving nation.” The explanation of this seeming paradox is one which needs to be borne in mind. The æsthetic ideals crystallized in the works of the countless generations of artists who for more than a thousand years have held to them firmly as their guiding principles, have become so much the intellectual heritage of the people as a whole that it is most natural that the foreign observer, noting the æsthetic impress upon everything about him, should look upon the Japanese as a nation of artists. To an extent not known elsewhere the Japanese mechanic is indeed an art-isan. And there is a measure of truth in Percival Lowell’s assertion that there are “no mechanical arts in Japan simply because all such have been raised to the position of fine arts.”[149] From the Japanese point of view, however, differences in degree of artistic perception are as pronounced among the Japanese as among other peoples. In Japan, as in all other lands, artistic inspiration is given to but few among the many; artists having creative genius tower high above their fellows; and the little touches that excite the wonder and admiration of the outside world are seen to be in large degree the outcome of conventional notions rather than the expression of individual feeling. The art of Japan like most other elements in her civilization is of Chinese origin. Concurrently with the introduction by way of the Middle Kingdom of that stream of abstract idealism known as Northern Buddhism, China became the fountain head whence until comparatively recent times a succession of æsthetic ideas spread over Japan.[150] Modern Chinese art is justly held to possess little merit, but in the days when it exerted its dominating influence upon the Japanese mind it had attained a very high standard of excellence, and in particular some of the Chinese painters were among the greatest the world has ever known. With the exception of a few original modifications, the product of temperament and historical situation, everything in Japanese art has come from China; yet the generic ideas have been so worked over and transformed in the process that the resultant is distinctly not Chinese but Japanese. The influence of Buddhism has been very great; it would indeed, be difficult to overestimate it.[151] Most of the earlier artists were Buddhist priests, and, until the revival of Shintō as the State religion, during the present reign, Buddhism was directly and indirectly one of the principal promoters and patrons of the arts. [Illustration: PAINTING BY HO-ITSU: VIEW OF FUJI-SAN]