162 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



With the question of beauty in general — beauty in 

 art or beauty in the abstract — we are not here con- 

 cerned, though it would no doubt be possible to sweep 

 away many of the metaphysical subtleties of Plato by 

 a breath of utilitarianism. The beautiful in nature 

 is the suitable — that which is best adapted to a given 

 purpose. When we look at the working of some 

 complex machine performing its functions with pre- 

 cision and rapidity, we are filled with an admiration 

 which is closely allied to a sense of the beautiful. 

 But in art it is necessary to allow for the growth of 

 what may be called formula — that is to say, an abstract 

 notion of the beautiful, originally based upon fact, 

 but subsequently divorced from it. Nothing is more 

 common than the remark that the modern steamship 

 is an unsightly object compared with the old sailing 

 frigate. In the ship with its spreading sails the nice 

 adaptation of means to an end is more obvious to the 

 vulgar mind than it is in the case of a mass of float- 

 ing iron moved by invisible machinery. Hence, long 

 after the superiority of steam to sails has been estab- 

 lished in practice, the sailing ship maintains its 

 original position as a thing of beauty. A certain 

 artistic formula grows up in connection with it, and 

 to dissent from this is believed for a time to be 



