ON THE BEAUTY OF NATURE. 261 
proportion of ugliness of any known creatures above the 
rank of oysters. A few kinds of dogs, who rank about 
with monkeys in intelligence, are certainly ugly enough too ; 
and elephants, who make the third family of the most knowing 
beasts, can hardly be called beautiful. On the other hand, 
what product of life is as beautiful as many shells? A col- 
lection of them, such as Dr. Percy has, is quite amazing for 
its beauty and variety. How does any evolutionary or selection 
theory profess to account for them? Or do you suppose that 
oysters occasionally make pearls for their own private con- 
templation or ornament? Or that even peacocks know how to 
make the spines of their feathers grow so to compose “eyes”? 
So it seems we are driven to these odd-looking con- 
clusions :—1. Though the human race in its best form is the 
most perfect and beautiful of all animals (though not if we 
take the gorgeous colours of some birds into account), never- 
theless the great majority of human individuals must be called 
ugly, and vastly inferior in beauty to many of the commonest 
and smallest, and almost the lowest creatures, who must be 
very superior to us in good taste if we are to judge either 
from their productions or their progeny, which, we are told, is 
the result of their selection in breeding; and therefore that 
theory of beauty breaks down in the very place where it ought 
to be the strongest and the most successful. 
2. When we get below locomotive life, the only attempt to 
account for any vegetable beauty—viz., that of flowers—is so 
inadequately supported, and goes such a little way in account- 
ing for their whole beauty, that it 1s worth nothing as « 
general theory ; leaving beautiful but stinking poppies, and 
tulips which have no smell, and almost colourless but very 
sweet mignonette, to reconcile themselves as they can, and 
also to explain as they can what primarily made the con- 
nexion which does exist between insects and flowers. 
3. Beyond that very limited attempt to account for floral 
beauty, the evolutionists have absolutely nothing to say for 
trees, and @ fortiori nothing for inanimate nature. 
4. Our general impotence in producing beauty, even to 
please our own taste, is a no less striking fact when we are 
considering how its prevalence in the world is to be explained. 
Is it necessary to draw any further inference from these 
facts? Or can there be any inference but one as to the prime 
cause of all the beauty of the universe? Beauty differs from 
usefulness or necessity in this obvious way: Ifthe world was 
to exist at all it must contain all the necessary adaptations ; 
though it is still true that that would not make one of them. 
As I said elsewhere, the fact that children cannot be reared 
VOL. XXI. > Ae 
