

THE FACT OF BEAUTY 279 



ualities, and perhaps we are nearer the truth in saying that 

 Technitella thompsoni says to itself, in a quiet way of its 

 own, " Anch' io sono pittore " " I also am an artist ", than 

 in supposing that its beautiful architecture is describable in 

 terms of surface-tension. Perhaps an intermediate view is 

 truer still. 



The artist knows of the emotion that rewards formative 

 achievement, and we have ventured the suggestion that part 

 of the ordinary man's enjoyment in a beautiful work of ani- 

 mal artifice (or, secondarily, in a beautiful organism itself) 

 is a sympathetic sharing in the triumphant mastery of mate- 

 rials. The same general idea we have found in more devel- 

 oped expression in a lecture by Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell 

 entitled " Science and Life ". From this we would quote 

 a few sentences. Speaking not of Nature but of art, he 

 says : " I do not doubt but that the creative artist is a supreme 

 example of the exuberant will of conscious life to absorb, 

 comprehend, transform the universe into itself, and that the 

 emotion he conveys to us is an all-powerful stimulus. The 

 form that he has created is significant, not because it is a 

 vision of abstract relations, or of reality, or of truth, but 

 because it has laid hold of more of the external world, recast 

 it in categories of human mind and the human senses " 

 (p. 18). "^Esthetic emotion is the responsive thrill to 

 creation realised, and life, seeing the image of its own power, 

 knows that it is beautiful " (p. 21). 



10. Evolution of Esthetic Emotion. 



In his Gifford Lectures (1915) Mr. Balfour has spoken 

 of the absence of any pedigree for esthetic emotions, and 

 has suggested that all that evolutionists can do is to regard 

 them as chance by-products. ^Esthetic emotions have opened 



