INTRODUCTION xxi 



mere outline, the forests a patch of green, the rivers 

 streaks of white, the animals just possible items of 

 food. The eagle would see much, but it would see 

 no beauty. 



Perhaps we shall understand why it is that the 

 eagle with these unbounded opportunities sees no 

 beauty if we consider the case of a little midge 

 buzzing round a man's body. The midge is roughly 

 in about the same relation to the body of a man that 

 the eagle is to the body of the Earth. The midge 

 in its hoverings sees vast tracts of the human body ; 

 sees the features — the nose, the eye, the mouth ; sees 

 the trunk and the limbs and the head. But even in 

 the most beautiful of men it would see no beauty. 

 And it would see no beauty because it would have 

 no soul to understand expression. It might be 

 hovering round the features of a man when the 

 smile on his lips and the exaltation in his eyes were 

 expressive of the highest ecstasy of soul, but the 

 midge would see no beauty in those features because 

 it had not the soul to enter into the soul of the man 

 and understand the expression on his face. All the 

 little shades and gradations and tones and lights in 

 the features of the man would be quite meaningless 

 to the midge because it would know nothing of the 

 man's soul, of which the features and the changes 

 and variations in them were the outward manifesta- 

 tion. The midge would know nothing of the 

 reality of the man which lay hidden behind the 

 appearance. 



It is the same with the eagle in respect to natural 

 features as it is with the midge in respect to the 

 features of the man. The eagle sees only the bare 



