638 VIS MEDICATRIX NATURE 



would point out, (1) that knowing is on the way to truth, 

 and the knowing creatures, that face the facts, survive; and 

 (2) that truth-seeking expresses the natural activity of the 

 healthy mind, and Nature is all for health. 



But it is also part of the deepest life of Man to enjoy 

 what is beautiful, and one of the glories of the universe is 

 its beauty. There is no place where this voice is not heard 

 unless Man has obtruded noisily. ^Esthetic emotion thrills 

 what is best and highest in us, and it also makes the pro- 

 toplasmic stream sing as it flows. The correspondence is 

 never disappointing; and those who ask most are best satis- 

 fied. Part of the sensory delight that we have in beautiful 

 sights in Nature may be due to Man's familiarity with them 

 for so many hundreds of thousands of years ; but this will 

 not explain the correspondence that there is between the 

 beauty of Nature and the ever-changing requirements of 

 what we may call the t spiritual eye '. In the contemplation 

 of the supremely beautiful there is something of the satisfac- 

 tion which religious feeling finds in music a language ex- 

 pressing the inexpressible. 



The system to which we belong is more or less intelligible, 

 we can make good sense of it; it is beautiful through and 

 through ; but in what possible sense can it be said that there 

 is in it anything corresponding to what we call good? If 

 we patiently consider this question, two sets of facts present 

 themselves. In the first place, Man began with strands of 

 personality of pre-human origin, and some of these must have 

 been very fine and others very coarse. We are apt to think 

 oftener of the latter, for it is sometimes to our dismay and 

 perplexity that they show themselves in the fabric of our 

 life. 



But do we think enough of the other side, that there must 



