VERONICA. 89 



which no lower animal is capable. We have 

 gone on increasing and widening our love for 

 colour we have employed it first for personal 

 decoration, in flowers, feathers, gems, and 

 pigment ; then for the decoration of our 

 houses and belongings ; then for painting 

 proper and true art. Thus at last the mere 

 beauty of colour by itself, apart from other 

 emotional associations, has become far more 

 potent with us, and especially with civilised 

 man, than with our early progenitors or with 

 our four-handed cousins. We can admire 

 sunsets and sunrises at which they would 

 gaze in stolid indifference. We can admire 

 autumn hues, and distant hills, and countless 

 effects of cloud or light on sea and sky and 

 landscape. And to all these we add a 

 thousand higher elements of the sense of 

 beauty. We feel at once that the speedwell 

 has symmetry of a beautiful sort, which we 

 have learned to appreciate more than any 

 other creatures in the slow growth of human 

 products, from the stone hatchet to Brussels 



