645 



any moral condition beyond that of mere felicity ; for such an ac- 

 knowledgment belongs to the second operation of the theoretic 

 faculty, and not to the sympathetic part which we are at present ex- 

 amining ; so that we even find that in this respect, the moment we 

 begin to look upon any creature as subordinate to some purpose out 

 of itself, some of the sense of organic beauty is lost. Thus, when we 

 are told that the leaves of a plant are occupied in decomposing car- 

 bonic acid, and preparing oxygen for us, we begin to look upon it 

 with some such indifference as upon a gasometer. It has become a 

 machine ; some of our sense of its happiness has gone ; its emanation 

 of inherent life is no longer pure. The bending trunk, waving to and 

 fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it is happy, 

 though it is perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down 

 and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a 

 bridge, — it has become useful ; it lives not for itself, and its beauty 

 is gone, or what it retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines 

 and colours, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and though 

 now adapted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost 

 for ever, or to be regained only in part when decay and ruin shall 

 have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand 

 of Nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again sug- 

 gest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with 

 hues of life. 



" There is something, I think, peculiarly beautiful and instructive 

 in this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of 

 all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature, 

 for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence 

 and energy of both each takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock 

 by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream." — p. 88. 



" Of the parallel effects of expression upon plants there is little to 

 be noted, as the mere naming of the subject cannot but bring count- 

 less illustrations to the mind of every reader : only this, that, as we 

 saw they were less susceptible of our sympathetic love, owing to the 

 the absence in them of capability of enjoyment, so they are less open 

 to the affections based upon the expression of moral virtue, owing to 

 their want of volition ; so that even on those of them which are dead- 

 ly and unkind, we look not without pleasure, the more, because this 

 their evil operation cannot be by them outwardly expressed, but only 

 by us empirically known ; so that of the outward seemings and ex- 

 pressions of plants, there are few but are in some way good, and 

 therefore beautiful, as of humility and modesty, and love of places 

 Vol. II. 4 l 



