252 LORD GRIMTHORPE 
that cannot be because they are ignorant of either it or him: 
he was far too great a writer for that. Moreover, they occa- 
sionally show themselves ready enough to swoop down on 
writers of far less theological celebrity than Mozley, who has 
been called “the modern Butler,” when they see a chance of 
making capital out of it by exposing some real mistake. 
Perhaps you might not unreasonably say to me, ‘‘ Why need 
you trouble yourself to prove an undefended case? The 
Darwins, Spencers, Huxleys, Tyndalls, Heeckels, et id genus 
omne, have practically confessed the beauty of nature to be too 
much for them, by leaving it to explain itself, with a few insig- 
nificant illustrations about insects and flowers. It will 
be time enough to reply to them when they have answered 
Mozley and your former remarks.’ In one sense that is all 
true. But leaving alone does not propagate truth. If one 
side is left to go on preaching its own dogmas and keeping 
discreet silence about objections which they cannot answer, 
and if the objectors keep silence too, the objections will be 
forgotten, or assumed to have been silenced, though nobody 
undertakes to say how, or when, or by whom. ‘Therefore, in 
short, it does not answer to abstain from repeating the objec- 
tions to bad theories merely because the theorists abstain from 
noticing them, as most of this class of theorists do when 
it suits them; or coolly say that their theory is getting 
universally accepted. 
I have not only looked at the most likely books, but I have 
asked greater readers than myself, including some with an 
inclination rather against than in favour of my views, whether 
they could tell me of any automatic theory of general beauty 
beyond those oft-repeated ones about flowers and animals, and 
I have asked in vain. 
Let us consider then some specimens—for they can only 
be specimens—out of an innumerable multitude of natural 
beauties, which it is impossible to account for by any theory 
except the simple one that they were designed by some mind 
which had also the power to produce them, whatever means it 
worked by. We may be quite ignorant of the means, but 
quite certain that some means were intelligently used: as 
certain as we are that the most inexplicable conjuring-tricks 
are contrived by more intelligence in that matter than we 
possess ourselves ; indeed, the less we can guess at the means 
of performing them the more we think of the cleverness of 
their inventors. ‘I'he only answer that I have ever been able 
to obtain privately to questions of this kind is the one I 
alluded to before, and which is worth further notice because 
the person who gave it me was as capable as any in the world 
