BIOLOGY IN ITS WIDER ASPECTS 1195 



sinking through the miles of water from the surface overhead. There 

 is enormous pressure, many tons on every square inch of the body, 

 but the tissues are so interpenetrated by water that the pressure is 

 not felt. The current of life flows slowly and centenarians flourish. 

 There is no light, save the fitful gleams of luminescence from fixed 

 animals that sparkle like Christmas trees, and from free-swimmers 

 ghding slowly past like illuminated miniature gondolas. Otherwise 

 utter darkness. Also intense cold, near the freezing-point, due to 

 the down-sinking of icy water from the Polar regions. What an eerie 

 world, covering a hundred million square miles, more than half of 

 the Earth's whole surface, a world of eternal night and eternal 

 winter, soundless, stagnant, and monotonous, a plantless world with 

 a stern struggle for existence. 



In the second place, in addition to pictures of thrilling interest. 

 Natural History affords a means of cultivating the esthetic sense. 

 For while it is a defensible thesis that every fully-formed wild 

 creature, living an independent life, bears the hall-mark of beauty, 

 it cannot be denied that some are more beautiful than others. That is 

 to say, they excite the esthetic thrill more readily, for we cannot 

 get past the definition that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 

 There is an objective basis in organic beauty, for form-beauty rests 

 on the rhythmic orderliness of normal growth, and colour-beauty is 

 due to- the by-products of wholesome and harmonious living, and 

 movement-beauty consists of eurhythmic self-expressions, a melody 

 of motion, from which all the discord of awkwardness has been 

 sifted out. But there is easy beauty, like the peacock's, and difficult 

 beauty, like the snake's; and Natural History is a discipline in 

 esthetic emotion. The world of living creatures is crowded with 

 beauty, and man must give himself lessons in appreciation, just as 

 in the case of paintings and music. He must not allow his admiration 

 to be baulked by conventionality or prejudice, or by some sinister 

 or superstitious association. He must be a student in Nature's 

 school, till he finds naught common on the earth. Some people are 

 quite sincere in denying the beauty of the hippopotamus, but this 

 usually means that they have not seen it in its native setting, or 

 that they have not been patient enough to scrutinise it with the 

 eyes of the author of Book of Job : 



"Great behemoth, see him with his ruddy hide, in the shade of the 

 lotuses, in the covert of the reeds and fens. His strength is in his 

 loins; his force is in the sinews of his belly; the muscles of his thighs 

 are knit together. His bones are pipes of brass; his limbs are like 

 bars of iron; he is the chief of the ways of God." 



The sense of beauty is one of the enrichments of life, and the 

 study of Natural History affords fine opportunities for its culture. 

 There is no risk of the cold light of science hurting the esthetic 

 emotion, for the more we know of a beautiful thing the greater is 



