1856.] as Knowledge, Discipline^ and Power, 193 



mechanical utilitarian contrivance fails us, it is replaced by another 

 which appeals to the aesthetic sense as much as the mere intellect. 



Regard a case of birds, or of butterflies, or examine the shell 

 of an echinus, or a group of foraminifera, sifted out of the first 

 handful of sea sand. Is it to be supposed for a moment that the 

 beauty of outline and colour of the first, the geometrical regularity 

 of the second, or the extreme variety and elegance of the third, are 

 any good to the animals ? that they perform any of the actions of 

 their lives more easily and better for being bright and graceful 

 rather than if they were dull and plain ? So, to go deeper, is it 

 conceivable that the harmonious variation of a common plan which 

 we find everywhere in nature serves any utilitarian purpose ? that 

 the innumerable varieties of antelopes, of frogs, of clupeoid fishes, 

 of beetles, and bivalve mollusks, of polyzoa, of actinozoa, and 

 hydrozoa, are adaptations to as many different kinds of life, and 

 consequently varying physiological necessities ? Such a supposition 

 with regard to the three last, at any rate, would be absurd ; the 

 polyzoa, for instance, presenting a remarkable uniformity in mode of 

 life and internal organization, while nothing can be more striking than 

 the wonderful variety of their external shape and of the sculpture of 

 their cells. If we turn to the vegetable world, we find it one vast 

 illustration of the same truth. Who has ever dreamed of finding 

 an utilitarian purpose in the forms and colours of flowers, in the 

 sculpture of pollen-grains, in the varied figures of the frond of 

 ferns ? What " purpose " is served by the strange numerical re- 

 lations of the parts of plants, the threes and fives of monocotyledons 

 and dicotyledons? 



Thus in travelling from one end to the other of the scale of life, 

 we are taught one lesson, that living nature is not a mechanism but 

 a poem ; not a mere rough engine-house for the due keeping of 

 pleasure and pain machines, but a palace whose foundations, indeed, 

 are laid on the strictest and safest mechanical principles, but whose 

 superstructure is a manifestation of the highest and noblest art. 



Such is the plain teaching of Nature. But if we have a right 

 to conclude from the marks of benevolent design to an infinite 

 Intellect and Benevolence, in some sort similar to our own, then 

 from the existence of a beauty (nay, even of a humour,) and of a 

 predominant harmonious variety in unity in nature, which, if the 

 work of man, would be regarded as the highest art, we are simi- 

 larly bound to conclude that the aesthetic faculties of the human 

 soul have also been foreshadowed in the Infinite Mind, 



Such is a brief indication of the regions of thought into which 

 natural history leads us, and we may surely conclude that as Know- 

 ledge it stands second in scope and breadth to no science. 



As Discipline^ impartial consideration will show that it takes no 

 lower rank ; whether we regard it as a gymnastic for the intellectual, 

 tlie moral, or the aestlietic faculty. 



