ON THS BEAUTY OF NATURE. 273 
beauty reaching us in various guises. But in beauty proper, that 
of forms and colours, there is a special feature. It serves no 
pressing physical need. Taste has its direct utility, it is our 
alimentary sense ; so without touch we could not guide our motions, 
it is our mechanical sense ; without smell we could not keep our 
homes or cities pure, it is our sanitary sense ; without hearing we 
could not hold fellowship with our kindred minds, it is our social 
sense. In each of these, over and above the purpose of bare utility 
which possibly might have been served without any attached 
pleasure, there is a system of direct contribution to mental delight 
through physical channels; yet in all pleasure is manifestly 
enlisted in the service of utility ; a beneficent end dignifying every 
arrangement. The beauty of flowers, of woods and fields, of flocks, 
herds, and birds, of hill and sea, of mern and eve, of noonday and 
of night, is not needed to make us feed, or to keep us right when 
we walk, or to warn us of fever in the pool, or to call us out into 
communion with our fellow men. That beauty is over and above 
the purposes of physical existence, of survival in that existence, a 
sheer surplus of delights, and of delights tending to lift us up above 
bodily wants into a region where things are prized for their own 
sake, where joy is known above mere animal satisfaction. And those 
delights allure our thoughts, our researches away to other worlds, 
and in so doing marvellously enlarge the range of our intellects, as 
well as guide the practical sciences and the course of commerce and 
manufacturing—all this ministry of the senses to our happiness, both 
in direct enjoyments, and in resulting benefits involving, as it does, 
the co-ordinated action of more worlds than one, of forces, motions and 
agents incaleulably numerous and complex, is no matter of habit or 
fashion alone, but is a system of conduits through which flows the 
goodness of a great Creator. 
One remark more ; from the beauties which mothers see in the 
faces of their babes, to those found in the gardens, the fields, or the 
skies, not one depends on this world alone. Independently of other 
worlds earth can make nothing beautiful. Ina pitch dark night 
the child’s eye has no expression, neither is the rose red nor the 
lily fair, nor yet on land or sea is there aught lovely to behold. 
All physical beauty depends directly on light from Heaven. 
This is the cardinal fact in the matter, and for ever settles the 
question whether beauty is or is not a mere question of habit, and 
whether it is or is not automatic. In fact, when looked into, the 
term “automatic beauty” will be found absolutely unmeaning, 
contemplating, as it must do, beauty as something with a single base, 
and evolving itself from that base alone. That light which is our sole 
