FORMS OF LIFE 



the cell-love of the two sexual cells, or the attraction of 

 the sperm-cell to ovum. 8. Landscape beauty (the sub- 

 ject of regional aesthetics) : the pleasure which is caused 

 by the sight of a fine landscape, and that finds satisfac- 

 tion in modern landscape-painting, is more comprehen- 

 sive than that of any other aesthetic sensations. In point 

 of space the object is larger and richer than any of the 

 individual objects in nature which are beautiful and in- 

 teresting in themselves. The varying forms of the 

 clouds and the water, the outline of the blue mountains 

 in the background, the woods and meadows in the mid- 

 dle-distance, and the living figures in the foreground, 

 excite in the mind of the spectator a number of differ- 

 ent impressions which are woven together into a har- 

 monious whole by a most elaborate association of ideas. 

 The physiological functions of the nerve-cells in the cor- 

 tex which effect these aesthetic pleasures, and the inter- 

 action of the sensual aestheta with the rational phroneta, 

 are among the most perfect achievements of organic 

 life. This "regional aesthetics," which has to establish 

 scientifically the laws of landscape beauty, is much 

 younger than the other branches of the science of the 

 beautiful. It is very remarkable that absolute irregu- 

 larity, the absence of symmetry and mathematical forms, 

 is the first condition for the beauty of a landscape (as 

 contrasted with architecture, and the beauty of separate 

 objects in nature). Symmetrical arrangement of things 

 (such as a double row of poplars or houses) or radial 

 figures (a flower-bed or artificial wood) do not please the 

 finer taste for landscape; they seem tedious. 



A comparative survey of these eight kinds of beauty 

 in natural forms discovers a connected development, 

 rising from the simple to the complex, from the lower 

 to the higher. This scale corresponds to the evolution 

 of the sense of beauty in man, ontogenetically from the 

 child to the adult, phylogenetically from the savage to 



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