THIED ANNUAL FLOWER SERMON. 31 



swamps the mollusks and the reptiles were governed by 

 the same laws of matter as those which now constrain men. 



Any inference from design, then, would have been of a 

 Designer Who meant a world where the dust could quicken 

 into protoplasm, and the protoplasm construct cells, and the 

 cells group into reproductive structures. And that is what 

 much of the argument comes to now. So that he who 

 considers only matter, whether angular crystals or pliant 

 flesh, can make some plausible reply to the reasoning of 

 Paley. But, to use the words of Mozley, ** When the 

 materialist has exhausted himself in efforts to explain utility 

 in nature, it would appear to be the peculiar office of beauty 

 to rise up suddenly as a confounding and baffling extra 

 which was not even formally provided for in his scheme." 



That, granted sufficient space and time, matter might 

 develop structures having qualities of permanence, and that 

 the useful would tend to become the durable, that there 

 should be a " survival of the fittest," this, while leaving the 

 miracle of origin just where it was, might be regarded as 

 eliminating the supernatural from the process. The useful 

 would be its own explanation ; because it serves the turn it 

 lives on. But no such explanation can be given of beauty. 

 The only turn it can serve is the delight of a clear eye and 

 a gentle soul. " It is essential to the very sense and mean- 

 ing of beauty that it should be seen ; and inasmuch as it is 

 visible to reason alone, we have thus in the very structure 

 of nature a recognition of reason and a distinct address to 

 reason, wholly unaccountable unless there is a higher reason 

 or mind to make it. For what but reason can address 

 reason?" 



It is the human eye which is the real object of the gor- 

 geousness in a sunset and the elegance in a frond of maiden- 

 hair fern. The brutes never see such things. Forms and 

 hues are reflected on their retinas, brilliancy and oddity 

 may excite their attention, but beauty they do not and 

 cannot know. Even were we to allow that this wondrous 

 human mind has been educed from mere animal capacities 



