Garden Design History: The Garden of Suggestion 1

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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outdoor water fountains