IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



201 



infinitely varied, yet all alike after their kinds. 

 If not, then " Nature " must be a goddess gifted 

 with superhuman powers of calculation and mar- 

 vellous deftness in arranging invisible atoms. 



4. The beauty of form, proportion, and color- 

 ing that abounds in nature affords evidence of 

 mind. Herculean efforts have been made by 

 modern evolutionists to eliminate altogether 

 the idea of beauty from nature, by theories of 

 sexual selection and the like, and to persuade 

 us that beauty is merely utility in disguise, and 

 even then only an accidental coincidence be- 

 tween our perceptions and certain external 

 things. But. in no part of their argument 

 have they more signally failed in accounting 

 for i:ie observed facts, and in no part have they 

 more seriously outraged the common sense 

 and natural taste of men. In point of fact, 

 we have here one of those great correlations 

 belonging to the unity of nature — that indis- 

 soluble connection which has been established 

 between the senses and the aesthetic senti- 

 ments of man and certain things in the exter- 

 nal world. But there is more in beauty than 

 this merely anthropological relation. Certain 

 forms, for example, adopted in the skeletons 

 of the lower animals are necessarily beautiful 



