496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



life enjoyed a keen perception of the beauty offered us by nature and 

 by art. Now, physical science may, and probably will, some day en- 

 able our posterity to set forth the exact physical concomitants and con- 

 ditions of the strange rapture of beauty. But, if ever that day arrives, 

 the rapture will remain, just as it is now, outside and beyond the 

 physical world ; and, even in the mental world, something superadded 

 to mere sensation. I do not wish to crow unduly over my humble 

 cousin the orang, but in the aesthetic province, as in that of the intel- 

 lect, I am afraid he is nowhere. I doubt not he would detect a fruit 

 amid a wilderness of leaves where I could see nothing ; but I am 

 tolerably confident that he has never been awe-struck, as I have been, 

 by the dim religious gloom, as of a temple devoted to the earth-gods, 

 of the tropical forest which he inhabits. Yet I doubt not that our 

 poor long-armed and short-legged friend, as he sits meditatively 

 munching his durian fruit, has something behind that sad Socratic 

 face of his which is utterly "beyond the bounds of physical science." 

 Physical science may know all about his clutching the fruit and 

 munching it and digesting it, and how the physical titillation of his 

 palate is transmitted to some microscopic cells of the gray matter of 

 his brain ; but the feelings of sweetness and of satisfaction which for 

 a moment hang out their signal-lights in his melancholy eyes are as 

 utterly outside the bounds of physics as is the "fine frenzy " of a hu- 

 man rhapsodist. 



Does Mr. Lilly really believe that, putting me aside, there is any 

 man with the feeling of music in him who disbelieves in the reality of 

 the delight which he derives from it, because that delight lies outside 

 the bounds of physical science, not less than outside the region of the 

 mere sense of hearing? But, it may be, that he includes music, paint- 

 ing, and sculpture under the head of physical science, and in that case 

 I can only regret I am unable to follow him in his ennoblement of my 

 favorite pursuits. 



The third thesis runs that I put aside as " unverifiable " "every- 

 thing which can not be brought into a laboratory and dealt with chem- 

 ically"; and once more, I say No. This wondrous allegation is no 

 novelty ; it has not unfrequently reached me from that region where 

 gentle (or ungentle) dullness so often holds unchecked sway — the pul- 

 pit. But I marvel to find that a writer of Mr. Lilly's intelligence and 

 good faith is willing to father such a wastrel. If I am to deal with 

 the thing seriously, I find myself met by one of the two horns of a 

 dilemma. Either some meaning, as unknown to usage as to the dic- 

 tionaries, attaches to "laboratory" and "chemical," or the proposition 

 is (what am I to say in my sore need for a gentle and yet appropriate 

 word ?) — well — unhistorical. 



Does Mr. Lilly suppose that I put aside as "unverifiable" all the 

 truths of mathematics, of philology, of history ? And, if I do not, 

 will he have the great goodness to say how the binomial theorem is to 



