CHAPTER X 



THE IRIS (continued) 



IT pleased me not a little to see that the greatest living 

 biologist, and one of the greatest living men, Professor 

 Ernst Haeckel, quotes the iris amongst his examples 

 of sensible loveliness. Under the head of actinal 

 beauty (radial aesthetics) he shows how pleasure is 

 excited by the orderly arrangement of three or more 

 homogeneous, simple forms that radiate about a 

 common centre; and he cites the four paramera 

 in the body of a medusa, the five radial limbs of 

 the star-fish, and the three counterpieces in an iris 

 bloom. Beauty of order is apparent all through 

 nature, and never more strikingly than in this dis- 

 posal of nine in one the three times three of the 

 iris with its six perianth segments and triple style- 

 arms. In the matter of colours, also, the flower 

 generally conforms to a great, if an old-fashioned, 

 criterion of the beautiful. Burke held that the 

 hues of lovely bodies " must not be dusky or muddy, 

 but clean and fair." He doubted if colours should 

 be of the strongest kind, but held that milder tones 

 of " light greens, soft blues, weak whites, pink reds, 

 and violets " were more appropriate. Since, however, 

 strong and vivid hues could not be excluded from 



139 



