VII 
CREATION - BY LAW 
155 
ments of beauty and harmonious adjustments to conditions 
are not only conceivable but demonstrable results. 
The objection I am now combating is solely founded on 
the supposed analogy of the Creator’s mind to ours as regards 
the love of beauty for its own sake ; but if this analogy is to 
be trusted, then there ought to be no natural objects which 
are disagreeable or ungraceful in our eyes. And yet it is 
undoubtedly the fact that there are many such. Just as 
surely as the horse and deer are beautiful and graceful, the 
elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and camel are the reverse. 
The majority of monkeys and apes are not beautiful; the 
majority of birds have no beauty of colour ; a vast number of 
insects and reptiles are positively ugly. Now, if the Creator’s 
mind is like ours, whence this ugliness ? It is useless to say 
“ that is a mystery we cannot explain,” because we have 
attempted to explain one -half of creation by a method that 
will not apply to the other half. We know that a man with 
the highest taste and with unlimited wealth practically does 
abolish all ungraceful and disagreeable forms and colours from 
his own domains. If the beauty of creation is to be explained 
by the Creator’s love of beauty, we are bound to ask why He 
has not banished deformity from the earth, as the wealthy and 
enlightened man does from his estate and from his dwelling ; 
and if we can get no satisfactory answer, we shall do well to 
reject the explanation offered. Again, in the case of flowers, 
which are always especially referred to as the surest evidence 
of beauty being an end of itself in creation, the whole of the 
facts are never fairly met. At least half the plants in the 
world have not bright-coloured or beautiful flowers ; and Mr. 
Darwin has lately arrived at the wonderful generalisation 
that flowers have become beautiful solely to attract insects to 
assist in their fertilisation. He adds, “ I have come to this 
conclusion from finding it an invariable rule, that when a 
flower is fertilised by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured 
corolla.” Here is a most wonderful case of beauty being 
useful , when it might be least expected. But much more is 
proved ; for when beauty is of no use to the plant it is not 
given. It cannot be imagined to do any harm. It is simply 
not necessary, and is therefore withheld ! We ought surely 
to have been told how this fact is consistent with beauty 
