disconcerting influence. Even with the human figures of such a work executed by a painter of the first rank, they are quite uninteresting.[a] [a] See still-life pictures at the Hague and Vienna Museums by Van Dyck and Snyders. Beautiful products of nature such as brilliant flowers and butterflies, cannot be imitated so well that the representations appear as beautiful as the things themselves, and so are unsuited as entire subjects for paintings, for we are usually well acquainted with these things, and consciously or unconsciously recognize the inferiority of the imitation. The greatest flower painters have therefore wisely refrained from introducing into their works more than a few fine roses or similar blooms. The presence of many less beautiful flowers in which the imitation is, or appears to be, more pleasing than the natural forms, neutralizes or overcomes the effect of the inferior imitation of the more beautiful. In fact the extent to which natural products which are necessarily more beautiful than the imitations, may be used in painting, except as incidentals, is very limited. They cannot appropriately be used at all on walls and curtains where they continually cross the vision, for they would there quickly tire owing to the involuntary dissatisfaction with the representation. The Japanese, whose whole art of painting was for centuries concentrated upon light internal decoration, rightly discard from this form of art all natural products which are necessarily superior to the imitations, and confine their attention to those signs which, while being actually more beautiful, when closely seen, than the imitations, do not appear to be so in nature where they are usually observed at some distance from the eye. Thus, waterfowl of various kinds, small birds of the hedges, storks, herons, branches of fruit blossoms, light trees and vegetation, are infinitely preferable to the more beautiful products for purely decorative purposes. A common pigeon with an added bright feather, is better on a wall or screen than the most brilliant pheasant, for in the one case the representation appears above ordinary experience, and in the other case, below it. The decorative artist then is at liberty to enhance the beauty of his signs, but not to take for them things which are commonly observed in nature, and whose beauty he cannot equal. But there should be no wide divergence between the natural beauty and the art, and nothing which in itself is unpleasing is suitable for decoration. It may be introduced in a hanging picture, because here a sense of beauty may be derived from the excellence of the imitation, as in the case of a dead hare or a basket of vegetables; but in pure decoration the effect is general and not particular, and so the imitation yields no beauty apart from that of the thing imitated. CHAPTER XIV SECONDARY ART