ON THE BEAUTY OF NATURE. 251 
has been produced by insects ; and so toadstools have risen into 
oaks. At least we have never had any other theory of their 
beauty propounded by evolutionists. Again, some animals 
perhaps choose their mates by their beauty (of which 
there is very little proof); and therefore all do; and 
therefore beauty has been constantly increasing, from 
oysters, octopuses, and gorillas, up to whatever creatures 
you think the most beautiful, by spontaneous generation and 
mutual admiration ; and the beauty of the human race has 
been steadily on the increase from the ancient Greeks through 
all stages of civilisation and improvement up to the modern 
Irishman. That kind of logic is queer enough when applied. 
to living or reproducing things. But it is still queerer to say 
that because all these advances have taken place through 
“natural selection,” or some other process or phrase, there- 
fore we must take another leap in the dark and believe that 
all the beauties of entirely inanimate nature have developed 
themselves by some yet unnamed process without any assist- 
ance from any more intelligent or personal First Cause than 
Mr. Herbert Spencer’s ‘‘ Parent of all, Persistent Force,” in 
no particular direction, gradually subdividing itself into in- 
numerable streams of peculiar forces, and spontaneously con- 
verting a homogeneous nebula of universally dispersed matter 
into all the present varieties, by what he calls ‘‘ unfathomable 
mysteries.” 
By way of introduction to further reasoning on the subject, 
I cannot do better than quote again the same words of Dr. 
Mozley’s sermon on “ Nature,” which I did in the chapter 
on it in my own little book above named. He says :— 
“Nature is beautiful by the selfsame materials and laws 
that it is useful. Take a gorgeous sunset. What is the 
substance of it? Only a combination of atmospheric laws 
of light and heat; the same laws by which we live and 
see and breathe. . . . Who could have told beforehand 
that these physical laws which fed us, clothed us, gave 
us breath and motion, the use of our organs, and all the 
means of life, would also create a picture??? If any one 
should say that mere habit and custom have produced our 
admiration of what we call beautiful sunsets, let us substitute 
another phenomenon of light, so rare that many persons never 
see one in their lives, and yet so beautiful that those who see 
it for the first time are amazed at its magnificence, especially 
if it happens to be such a brilliant specimen as that which 
appeared here in October 1870: I mean the aurora borealis. 
I do not know that the evolutionists have really made that 
or any other answer to that argument of Mozley’s; and yet 
