312 THE ESTHETICS OF 



No matter, that which we cannot comprehend, cannot 

 explain, may yet perhaps be so far capable of arrangement 

 and demonstration, that we may come to understand where 

 and why the Incomprehensible necessarily enters into joint 

 possession of our spiritual life. Though we cannot de- 

 velope the nature of Beauty in itself, yet it may be possible, 

 perhaps, to discover what it signifies for us, Mankind, 

 under what shape it appears, and what its influencing 

 elements are. 



The Investigator of Nature knows and understands no 

 other development than the progress from the simpler to 

 the more complex, from the less to the more Perfect, and 

 thus to him that other doctrine is without meaning, which 

 has here and there been attacked and defended, which says 

 that Man proceeded perfect from the hand of the Creator, 

 and has, through corruption and running wild, become 

 what he now is. I spoke of the progress from the less to 

 the more perfect, but I must observe that this is only a 

 comparison, a human, clumsy conception, which, in reality, 

 finds no application in the products of Nature, much more 

 in the Creation of a Holy Author of Things. 



"Though the creatures themselves seem different, they 

 are truly of like goodness."* 



We must adopt a very different method in order to 

 bring this progress nearer to our understandings. The 

 whole vegetable world is, like a single, individual plant, 

 developed from one cell. The cell includes in itself the 

 whole life of the Plant, in its most manifold phenomena, in 

 its most complicated combinations ; but in it, all is still 

 simple and easily to be surveyed. The vegetable cell 



" 'Et yap ia0opa ra ytvop.(.va, aXXa pidg iicriv 

 Chrysostom. irepi Trpovotas. 



