230 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. VIII. 



by believing fingers may be transformed into a diaboloid of 

 revolution. . . . Will there be an interminable series of 

 such expressions of belief, each more unnatural than its 

 predecessor, and gradually converging towards absolute 

 absurdity ? " 



4. Has everything beautiful in Art its original in Nature ? 

 Spring of 1854 shortly after the Tripos Examina- 

 tion. 



" As the possibility of working out the question within 

 the time forms no part of our specification, we may glance 

 at heights which mock the attenuated triangle of the mathe- 

 matician, and throw our pebble into depths which his cord 

 and plummet can never sound." 



Maxwell here takes his revenge upon the Senate-house 

 by becoming more discursive than ever. 1 



He begins by deprecating precise definitions and pro- 

 posing an appeal to facts. 



His conclusion is as follows : " Nothing beautiful can be 

 produced by Man except by the laws of mind acting in him 

 as those of Nature do without him ; and therefore the kind 

 of beauty he can thus evolve must be limited by the very 

 small number of correlative sciences which he has mastered ; 

 but as the Theoretic and imaginative faculty is far in advance 

 of Reason, he can apprehend and artistically reproduce 

 natural beauty of a higher order than his science can attain 

 to ; and as his Moral powers are capable of a still wider 

 range, he may make his work the embodiment of a still 

 higher beauty, which expresses the glory of nature as the 

 instrument by which our spirits are exercised, delighted, and 

 taught. If there is anything more I desire to say it is that 

 while I confess the vastness of nature and the narrowness of 

 our symbolical sciences, yet I fear not any effect which 

 either Science or Knowledge may have on the beauty of 

 that which is beautiful once and for ever." 



The following observations occur in the course of the 

 essay : 



1 See above, pp. 167, 8. 



