Garden
Design History: The Garden of Suggestion Home
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| `What I have said of the best forms
of gardens is meant only of such as are in some
sort regular; for there may be other forms wholly
irregular, that may, for aught I know, have more
beauty than any of the others... Something
of this I have seen in some places, but heard
more of it from others who have lived much among
the Chinese... Among us, the beauty of building
and planting is placed chiefly in some certain
proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our
walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one
another, and at exact distances. The Chinese
scorn this way of planting... Their greatest
reach of imagination is employed in contriving
figures where the beauty shall be great, and
strike the eye, but without any order of disposition
of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed... And whoever observes the work upon the
best India gowns, or the painting upon their
best screens or purcellans, will find their beauty
is all of this kind, without order.'
Sir William Temple, 1685: Upon the Garden
of Epicurus. |
Art makes no move in any direction unless called there by the human spirit. At the root of every national school of gardening there lies, behind the political and social circumstances which help to shape it, the spiritual impetus which gives it a continuing character. The Chinese at the beginning of their history practised an animist form of religion. The sky, the mountains, the seas, the rivers, the rocks, and the beasts were all the materialization of spirits. There may have been in their notions a Supreme Being, the Spirit of the Great Sky-Vault, with whom the Emperor communicated officially from mountain-tops, but for lesser men there were innumerable lesser spirits than the Sky with whom they might establish a placatory personal relationship. The effect of such a belief upon the outlook of a people holding it is to inculcate humility, reticence, and good manners man was, after all, a fellow inhabitant of the world with many other forms of being and not, like the arrogant European heirs of Greek civilization, the master of it. Metaphysically the universe was regarded as being composed of two principles, Repose and Action, Yin and Yang, which in essence seem also to be the female and the male character. This gave to the national temperament a special awareness of the importance of contrast, the craggy mountain and the smiling valley, the gnarled tree seen against the smooth snow, the upright against the prostrate form. Against this background Lao-Tzu taught the quietist philosophy of Tao-ism which held that you should not live life but let life live you... that effort, spiritual or physical, was most undesirable, that one should drift on the stream of life. Confucius, on the other hand, while equally wishing to achieve the freedom of spiritual calm, recommended as a means of attaining it a life of public service and co-operation in a well-knit community; he preached a life of moderation in everything.
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