ON THE BEAUTY OF NATURE. Paria 
neither the radiance of a body nor the susceptibility of a mind gives 
origin to the sense of beauty. When by the action of a medium 
they are so brought together, then arises what before was not, an 
idea of beauty, an emotion of beauty, an exclamation “ Beautiful,” 
upon which follow trains of thought, feeling, and it may be action, 
graduated, as I said before, according to the mental and moral 
character of the percipient. The steps whereby is done the work 
of bringing object and subject into presence are always manifold, 
and often reach over tracts never yet measured. Those steps 
imply means of utterance on the part of the object, means of 
receiving what it utters on the part of the subject, and a vehicle of 
conveyance to carry the utterance over the inch or the practical 
infinity which may separate between the two. Could a star or a 
rose, a wave ora field of corn throw off nothing from them, and 
could a man not take in what they do throw off in any other way 
than he takes it in on the palm of his hand, they would never be 
known to him. Therefore the offices of an eye in him, and of a _ 
reflecting or emitting impulse in them, are called for. These given, 
a vehicle to carry the impulse from the surface of the star to the 
interior of the eye must be found. This being supplied, as we believe 
by ether, what Sirius emits and what the moon or the rose reflects 
is borne both to the hand and the eye, but to the hand it is as if it 
were not, while to the eye it brings tidings of a fair object without. 
Now the eye has not evolved either the ether or the star, not even 
the motion in ether which travelled from the star. No more has 
the star evolved the eye. All of them together have not evolved 
the mind which can say “ Beautiful,” can ask “ Who made it” ? can 
speculate on its distance, can determine to try and measure that 
distance, and can bring others to enjoy the sight. Yet all this 
synthesis is to be accounted for without any Mind planning and 
perfecting the whole, accounted for by a few phrases and a few 
trifling facts which to the phenomenon are not more than the 
emery dust is to the diamond. 
In the passage quoted by Lord Grimthorpe from Mozley, it is 
said that no one could have anticipated that the same physical 
laws which feed us, clothe us, and give us breath and motion, 
would also create a picture. Of themselves the light, heat, water, 
air, do not create any picture. All the trees and flowers which 
glow in a beautiful sunset see no picture. The animals see a glory 
and a beauty, but the inward picture never leads to an attempt to 
reproduce itself. This is for the human mind only. Just as such 
inward picture of the sunset as man enjoys is born of the soul in 
union with Nature, so such external picture as he may paint to 
