CHAP. 1 The Wealth of Life 17 



dog may howl painfully at our sweet music. We call the 

 apple - blossom and the butterfly's wings beautiful, partly 

 because the rays of light, borne from them to our eyes, 

 caus^ a pleasantly harmonious activity in our brains, partly 

 because this awakens reminiscences of past pleasant experi- 

 ences, partly for subtler reasons. Still, all healthy organisms 

 are harmonious in form, and seldom if ever are their colours 

 out of tone with their surroundings or with each other, — a 

 fact which suggests the truth of the Platonic conception that 

 a living creature is harmonious because it is possessed by 

 a single soul, the realisation of a single idea. 



The plants which seem to many eyes to have least 

 beauty are those which have been deformed or discoloured 

 by cultivation, or taken altogether out of their natural set- 

 ting ; the only ugly animals are the products of domestica- 

 tion and human interference on the one hand, or of disease 

 on the other ; and the ugliest things are what may be called 

 the excretions of civilisation, which are certainly not beauty 

 for ashes, but productions by which the hues and colours of 

 nature have been destroyed or smothered, where the natural 

 harmony has been forcibly put out of tune — in short, where 

 a vicious taste has insisted on becoming inventive. 



