forced to connect not only the beautiful with the good, but aesthetics with the religious life, especially in sublimity, and sublimity in analysis with our thoughts of God. In fact, it has been the feeling of the irreconcilability of a true aesthetic with any mere materialism, and of its implicate of a Goodness at the Heart of the Universe, that has sustained me for years with undiminished enthusiasm in my studies, and made them at times a joy even almost to agony; and long before I knew anything of Canon Mozley's now famous sermon on Nature, and even before it was published, I had drawn out an outline of the chapter on "The Universality of Beauty and its Implications," and had it sketched in thought very much as it now stands. In revising the chapter, however, I have inserted a quotation from Mozley as an introduction, and I have had pleasure in noting the influence of his sermon on the theological literature of the times. Since the appearance of that sermon it has come to be fully recognized (though the idea is almost as old as speculation) that there may be a "Natural Theology of Natural Beauty" as well as a Philosophy of Beauty. And the advance of science with its continuous disclosure of the deeper wonders and glories of creation has also, I have no doubt, largely contributed to that result. In the chapters on the Development of Taste, I have followed independently what has seemed to me the leading of facts so far as they could be got at. But in the preparation of the first chapter especially I had a difficulty in getting anything that was of any direct help to me on some of the points discussed; and when dealing with the Greeks, I felt how hard it was to write about them without seeming exaggeration on the one hand, or undue depreciation on the other. The mere statement of a thought in relation to them seemed to result in some cases in what might appear to others unfairness or flattery, and each of them had to be avoided as an injustice. And in relation to the whole subject of what the ancients enjoyed in nature, it had always to be considered that merely negative evidence was no evidence; and the question had to be asked whether the comparative want of evidence of the appreciation of the picturesque among them, might not, to a considerable extent, be due to the want of the picturesque itself. Is not our joy in it largely owing to the presence of the signs of human life and comfort and our sense of safety? Has the clearing of a country of its wild-wood growth, and the rising of country villas and comfortable farms and farmhouses, with the increase and spread of a free population, nothing to do with our modern love of landscape? Or, have they not rather a good deal to do with it? And is not the landscape consequently which we enjoy, to say nothing of our feeling or sentiment about it, itself to some degree a novelty? It seems to me that when we speak of the comparative want of the sentiment of nature in the ancient classics, we must make allowance for the want of the factors externally which naturally give rise to it, as well as for the want of a motive for expressing it and the absorption of men in other lines of life and thought. Some of the main influences which retarded the growth of the sentiment I have tried to emphasize when tracing the Development of Taste. I had thought of adding chapters on "The Relations of Religion, Art, and Philosophy," and "The Place and Power of Art in Education," and perhaps others on other subjects, such as "Physiological Aesthetics"; but a volume has its limits, and so has the patience and the purse of readers, and the thought had to be abandoned. Finally, in going over such a long and wide field of inquiry, and in dealing with subjects ranging from a taste for beauty in animals to the rationality of the universe as a system, I may have fallen into errors from imperfect information, and may have passed judgments, many of them, that may seem questionable to some, and worse than questionable, false to others; but I have tried conscientiously and with labour to reach the truth, and I only ask my readers to remember that, since to err is human, they may themselves also commit mistakes in their judgments of what I have written. GREENOCK, November, 1886. CONTENTS. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TASTE IN RELATION ESPECIALLY TO THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE: THE LOWER ANIMALS-PREHISTORIC MAN-SAVAGES-THE EGYPTIANS AND ASSYRIANS. The development of taste a subject of vast extent-But in the present instance limited especially to a taste for the Beautiful in Nature-Where in the scale of creation does a taste for beauty begin to be shown?-The views of Darwin and A. Russel Wallace-The question when considered from a common sense point of view a doubtful one-But, granting a probable ap- preciation of beauty in the lower animals, it must at best be very limited in its range-No doubt, however, of the existence of a taste for beauty when we advance to man-Quaternary artists and savages-Probable limited range of their taste for beauty in nature; and no evidence of the love of the picturesque in prehistoric man, nor in savages, and still less any evidence of the emotion of sublimity-Fear rather than the emotion of the sublime the portion of the savage-But he has also his times of joy, and hence the first beginnings of art-The play-impulse of Schiller and Herbert Spencer-The order of the arts in their rudiments-Egyptians and Assyrians-Fondness of ancient Egyptians for flowers; and some evi- dence of love of the picturesque in Egyptians and Assyrians-Signifi- cance of man in Egyptian art, and religious symbolism of Egyptians and Assyrians compared-No undoubted evidence of emotion of sublimity in Egyptians or Assyrians-Layard's description of an Assyrian palace- But mistakes to be guarded against in our readings of the past-An illus- tration to the point from modern times-But, though there is no undoubted proof of it, the emotion of sublimity was probably experienced to some ex- tent by the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians-Only probably, for their THE DEVELOPMENT OF TASTE IN RELATION ESPECIALLY TO THE BEAUTIFUL IN NATURE: THE HEBREWS. The scenes in nature in which the Hebrews delighted-The Song of Solomon, |