The Plant's Response 191 



has come, in the sating of our aesthetic nature, a success; 

 triumphant as is ours in the lower planes of human living, 

 who shall then describe the beauty of this world ! When 

 all men seek beauty as the highest terrestrial ideal ; when a 

 man's wealth is counted not in dollars but in the amount 

 of ideal earth-culture that his hand controls, who shall 

 then declare the splendor of this blooming fruitful 

 planet ! 



What would the earth be if conformable only to the 

 wisdom of our economies, to the law of wisest practical 

 use; what then shall it be when to this perfection is 

 superadded a condition responsive to our love of sym- 

 metry and beauty? Remember Nature knows beauty 

 only the beautiful : the unbeautif ul she forever cov- 

 ers and buries out of sight. Only untaught man inter- 

 feres with her processes of harmony and purity and life ; 

 for the law of Nature is the law of eternal things, is the 

 law of God. We shall never outrun her. Our parks, 

 our gardens, our flowers, our fruits, our trees, shall 

 never fail, nor shall our highest skill ever exhaust their 

 patient, silent, activity and progress, their confident re- 

 sponse. 



Here now I might well end my story were it not that 

 I am sure that even here there rises yet another argu- 

 ment in the minds of thoughtful people. There is yet one 

 more response made by the green leafy world to the grop- 

 ing spirit of the sons of men, more delicate, more subtle 

 yet, by far, by far. In all that has been spoken so far 

 man himself is the aggressor; he suggests the response 

 and the answer is as he desires. But the world was full 

 of answers ere man dreamed at all, and to every nature- 



