CREATION BY LAW 155 



ments of beauty and harmonious adjustments to conditions 

 are not only conceivable but demonstrable results. 



The objection I am now combating is solely founded on 

 the supposed analogy of the Creator's mind to ours as regards 

 the love of beauty for its own sake ; but if this analogy is to 

 be trusted, then there ought to be no natural objects which 

 are disagreeable or ungraceful in our eyes. And yet it is 

 undoubtedly the fact that there are many such. Just as 

 surely as the horse and deer are beautiful and graceful, the 

 elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and camel are the reverse. 

 The majority of monkeys and apes are not beautiful ; the 

 majority of birds have no beauty of colour ; a vast number of 

 insects and reptiles are positively ugly. Now, if the Creator's 

 mind is like ours, whence this ugliness ? It is useless to say 

 " that is a mystery we cannot explain," because we have 

 attempted to explain one -half of creation by a method that 

 will not apply to the other half. We know that a man with 

 the highest taste and with unlimited wealth practically does 

 abolish all ungraceful and disagreeable forms and colours from 

 his own domains. If the beauty of creation is to be explained 

 by the Creator's love of beauty, we are bound to ask why He 

 has not banished deformity from the earth, as the wealthy and 

 enlightened man does from his estate and from his dwelling ; 

 and if we can get no satisfactory answer, we shall do well to 

 reject the explanation offered. Again, in the case of flowers, 

 which are always especially referred to as the surest evidence 

 of beauty being an end of itself in creation, the whole of the 

 facts are never fairly met. At least half the plants in the 

 world have not bright-coloured or beautiful flowers ; and Mr. 

 Darwin has lately arrived at the wonderful generalisation 

 that flowers have become beautiful solely to attract insects to 

 assist in their fertilisation. He adds, " I have come to this 

 conclusion from finding it an invariable rule, that when a 

 flower is fertilised by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured 

 corolla." Here is a most wonderful case of beauty being 

 useful, when it might be least expected. But much more is 

 proved ; for when beauty is of no use to the plant it is not 

 given. It cannot be imagined to do any harm. It is simply 

 not necessary, and is therefore withheld ! We ought surely 

 to have been told how this fact is consistent with beauty 



