But it does not follow that he will wish to pick all the
flowers or to cage all the birds or to own all the cats.
No one who still believes in democracy and the rights of man will admit
that any division between men and men can be anything but a fanciful
analogy to the division between men and animals. But in the sphere of
such fanciful analogy there are even human beings whom I feel to be like
eats in this respect: that I can love them without liking them. I feel it
about certain quaint and alien societies, especially about the Japanese.
The exquisite old Japanese draughtsmanship (of which we shall see no more,
now Japan has gone in for Progress and Imperialism) had a quality that was
infinitely attractive and intangible. Japanese pictures were really
rather like pictures made by cats. They were full of feathery softness
and of sudden and spirited scratches. If any one will wander in some
gallery fortunate enough to have a fine collection of those slight
water-colour sketches on rice paper which come from the remote East, he
will observe many elements in them which a fanciful person might consider
feline. There is, for instance, that odd enjoyment of the tops of trees;
those airy traceries of forks and fading twigs, up to which certainly no
artist, but only a cat could climb.
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