MAN IN NATURE 489 



to have invented were perfected in the structures of lower ani- 

 mals long before he came into existence. In all these things 

 man has been an assiduous learner from nature, though in 

 some of them, as for example in the art of aerial navigation, 

 he has striven in vain to imitate the powers possessed by other 

 animals. But it may well be doubted whether man is in this 

 respect so much an imitator as has been supposed, and whether 

 the resemblance of his plans to those previously realized in 

 nature does not depend on that general fitness of things which 

 suggests to rational minds similar means to secure similar 

 ends. But in saying this we in effect say that man is not only 

 a part of nature, but that his mind is in harmony with the 

 plans of nature, or, in other words, with the methods of the 

 creative mind. Man is also curiously in harmony with ex- 

 ternal nature in the combination in his works of the ideas of 

 plan and adaptation, of ornament and use. In architecture, 

 for example, devising certain styles or orders, and these for 

 the most part based on imitations of natural things ; he adapts 

 these to his ends, just as in nature types of structure are adapted 

 to a great variety of uses, and he strives to combine, as in 

 nature, perfect adaptation to use with conformity to type or 

 style. So, in his attempts at ornament he copies natural forms, 

 and uses these forms to decorate or conceal parts intended to 

 serve essential purposes in the structure. This is at least the 

 case in the purer styles of construction. It is in the more de- 

 based styles that arches, columns, triglyphs, or buttresses are 

 placed where they can serve no useful purpose, and become 

 mere excrescences. But in this case the abnormality resulting 

 breeds in the beholder an unpleasing mental confusion, and 

 causes him, even when he is unable to trace his feelings to 

 their source, to be dissatisfied with the result. Thus man is 

 in harmony with that arrangement of nature which causes 

 every ornamental part to serve some use, and which unites 

 adaptation with plan. 



s. E. 35 



