UTILITY AND BEAUTY. 329 themselves to us as closely akin to the painted beauty of flowers that we cannot think of the one without the other; and we may well hesitate to accept as satisfactory a theory which can offer no explanation of phenomena so closely akin to those of flowers, except, forsooth, that they are merely accidental." But we may widen our view still further. How can the theory of utility to the thing exhibiting it accounting for its beauty be applied to the glories of the dawn or sunset, or to the solemn grandeur of the clouds or the midnight sky? Of what use to the rainbow is its colour? or the ripples on its surface to river or lake? or the whiteness of the foaming surge to the sea? or their varied beauties to the pebbles on the beach, or to granite, or marble, or glittering gold? And, lastly, if all the beauties of colour and form wherever perceived should be found to be useful for the maintenance or the protection of their objects, what difference would it make to the idea of beauty being an end in creation, or to the idea of our taste for it so far as it exists being one with God's? The discovery would only verify the contention by proving the beautiful to be at the root of creation and "creation's final law." No matter what may be the laws involved in its production, or the means employed for securing it, or its use in nature, there is beauty universally in the things around us; and if any spot or feather on the wing of butterfly or bird has grown more lovely in the course of ages by the taste of the female for that spot or feather, or if the colours and forms of even the rainbow and the rose should be found useful to them as well as necessary to the very idea of them as rainbow and "On the Utility to Flowers of their Beauty," Contemporary Review, December, 1879. rose, their beauty need none the less be an end in creation. It is rather directly assumed and asserted by the theory to exist for a very definite end and purpose. It exists at least for the female and for the maintenance of the species, or for the rainbow or the rose exhibiting it; and it is to be assumed, it would seem, as a principle of investigation by the naturalist and philosopher, that every beauty in creation has its use-its definite and beneficent end. And that may well be; and we can believe it; and we may be thankful for the assertion of the thought by men of science, if only they will enlarge their ideas of use of the use of beauty--to other ends than that of the self-existence of the individual or the species exhibiting the beauty. If they will say that the beauty of a flower may be useful not only for the requirements of the flower itself, but for the bee and the beetle it may be, and for the man who can gaze on it with admiration, and for other numerous and unknown purposes perhaps; and so with all the pageants of the changing seasons-that they are useful not only to themselves, but for ends outside of themselves in the pleasures, say, of sense or reason, or in the grandeur of the moral life, we shall respond, and respond with enthusiasm, that they speak as wise men and as facts abundantly suggest, and that they are opening up the way for more hopeful scientific investigation and for grander ideas of God and of His world. But if they seek to bind us down to one narrow idea of use in self-existence, and, when speaking of the marvellous variety in the appearances of leaves, ask, as if the questions were mutually exclusive and inconsistent, "Does it result from some innate tendency of each species? Is it intentionally designed to delight the eye of man? or has the form, and size, and THE USE OF BEAUTY. 331 texture some reference to the structure and organization, the habits and requirements of the whole plant?"1 and then proceed to write and to investigate as if an affirmative to the last question could be the only true, and a fully complete, answer to them all, we shall say, and say with all the emphasis of full conviction, that they are as partial in their views as those who would maintain that the beauty of creation was only to delight the eye of man, and that the fulness of creation escapes them. We shall take the liberty, moreover, of pointing out that "the form, and size, and texture," of leaves not only have " only have "some reference" to their “structure and organization," but that they are their structure and organization, and that habits and requirements are in turn involved in these, and are part of the "idea" or or "innate tendency" to be realized in the growth of the plant. And, instead of putting the questions we have quoted as if they were mutually exclusive and inconsistent, we shall combine them in one affirmation and say, that the form of the leaf results from some innate tendency or idea to be realized, and is useful for the plant, and is for man's delight, and for a thousand other things perhaps of which we know nothing and may never know anything. But beauty and use, though found united in nature, are after all as distinct from each other in thought and perception as colour from sound or the heat of the fire from the flickering flame; and no discovery of use can affect the question which we have been discussing, the question, viz., Does God delight in the beauty which He has made us to admire? And there can be only one true rational answer to it when it is put in that form, and that is, that He does. If He has made it "On Leaves." By Sir John Lubbock. Contemporary Review, May, 1885. (no matter how nor by what method), and made us to admire it, it must at the same time be assumed that He has pleasure in it. And if you should say, "But we do not know anything of a personal God to begin with, and so it is premature to discuss the question whether He sees things as we see them or not," you do not even thereby escape the conclusion that at all events our taste is in accordance with the "constitution and course of nature" in her innermost laws and structure. For, as already quoted from Tyndall, "we are here as the upshot of her operations, endowed with capacities to enjoy not only the materially useful, but with others of indefinite scope and application, which deal alone with the beautiful and the true." And since these faculties are the outcome of her operations they must also be conceived of as in harmony with herself as one in fact with her own constitution. Our perception of beauty in such a case must still be thought of as in essential agreement with the Unknown Power of which all phenomena are said to be but varied manifestations; and that is only an agnostic way of saying that our perceptions of beauty, so far as they go, are one with God's. The world's of reality and of perception and thought are still in unison, and, though we may choose to ignore the fact, are still in reality inseparable except by abstraction. There is the presupposition of an intelligible universe, and so of the unity of all things in reason-of beauty and of a taste for beauty from everlasting. EXISTENCE OF THE UGLY. 333 CHAPTER XIV. THE UNIVERSALITY OF BEAUTY AND THE EXISTENCE THERE is beauty everywhere; but is everything beautiful? For that is the point to which we have next to attend. And when we do attend to it we find that the question is not so easily answered as might at first sight appear, that in fact it is one which involves in the long run some of the knottiest points in philosophy and theology, and that there is no end almost to the discussions to which it may give rise in the very highest departments of thought and speculation. Of course we all will say that there are many things which are ugly, and that everyone may see it for himself. It might even be maintained with some degree of plausibility that ugliness is more prevalent than beauty; for a thing is beautiful only in contrast with other things which comparatively at least are less so. There are not many faces which we call beautiful, and there are many which we would be inclined to call plain, if not ugly. And so with all classes of objects it is only the few that would be called the beautiful of their kind. But then in these cases we speak of only the emphatically beautiful, the most beautiful of their kind; and there may after all be nothing, however comparatively plain, which may not |