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Many of the intricate Moorish frets and Indian carvings are literal translations of flower-forms geometrically repeated, and here they lend themselves so perfectly to the decoration of even exterior walls that the fretted arches of some Eastern buildings seem almost to have grown of themselves, with all their elaboration, into the world of nature and art.
Here we have again to refer to the fact that has already been mentioned, to wit, that Oriental art remained stationary throughout long periods of time. In point of fact, the simpler forms are invariably characterized by a nearer and nearer approach to the more ancient patterns and also to the natural flower-forms of the Araceæ.
Flower-forms are the most ordinary patterns; sometimes certain ideographs are given as subjects. No uniform is worn in this elementary school: all are in Japanese dress the boys in dark blue kimono, the little girls in robes of all tints, radiant as butterflies. But in addition to their robes, the girls wear hakama, and these are of a vivid, warm sky-blue.
Of course, there are flower-forms which are naturally geometric, which have conventionalised themselves.
But analysis which does not lead to synthesis is merely destructive: it is the child wantonly pulling the flower to pieces and throwing away the fragments; not the botanist, also pulling the flower to pieces, but building up in his mind from those carefully studied fragments a vast synthesis of the constructive power of Nature, embracing the laws of the formation of all flower-forms.
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