Note 387 — Chapter IX · SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING

The Chinese soul “wanders” in its world. This is the meaning of the East-Asiatic perspective, which places the vanishing point in the middle of the picture instead of in the depth as we do. The function of perspective is to subject things to the “I,” which in ordering comprehends them; and it is a further indication that “will”—the claim to command the world—is absent from the Classical make-up that its painting denies the perspective background. In Chinese perspective as in Chinese technique (see Vol. II, p. 627), directional energy is wanting, and it would not be illegitimate to call East-Asiatic perspective, in contrast with the powerful thrust into depth of our landscape-painting, a perspective of “Tao”; for the world-feeling indicated by that word is unmistakably the operative element in the picture.