207 
religion of the earlier inhabitants of these isles, we have 
stability indeed, but no beauty. Stonehenge, and the kindred 
structures of Peru, described by Squiers,* were devoted to a 
worship, solemn, indeed, and mysterious, but in which terror 
took the place of love. 
“ Pavet ipse sacerdos 
Accessus : dominumque timet deprendere luci f 
It was impossible that heathenism, in any of its forms 
should enter with real sympathy into the refined perception of 
beauty displayed in the works of creation. Only in Greece 
does there seem to have existed the conception that there 
was something divine in the beauty of the human form. 
In this respect their philosophy rather than their religion 
antedated somewhat the influence of Christian ideas. There 
is now no Christian mind that cannot understand the formation 
of all creatures as leading up to man, so that he is the key- 
stone of the mighty design towards which all converges, and 
in which all things centre. (See Hebrews ii.) 
Man is the visible king, and in all the details of his struc- 
ture we easily discern the mark of inbred royalty. 
“ Os homini sublime dedit, ccelumque tueri, 
Docuit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.”— Ovid. 
Dominion and power, and moral and intellectual grace, are 
designedly expressed in the whole of man's formation, so that 
I take nothing short of the person of man as the conception 
of what I understand by organic nature ; instead of the cube 
by which I symbolize the inorganic, or what we may call brute 
matter. To confound the divine prerogatives of man with those 
of the beast is a reversal of the whole scheme of Creation. It 
is a high ciime of less majeste against the dignity of man, and 
an impeachment of the wisdom and goodness of his Creator. 
Man is the expression of the majesty, woman of the beauty 
of Creation. 
The perception of beauty in Creation is the reflection of an 
attribute of the Infinite Mind, and, like the perception of har- 
mony, is intuitive, belonging to man in his original perfection, 
but now very variously shared by individuals of the human 
family. But if this last statement be admitted, much less ouo-ht 
we to extend to the lower animals these eesthetic tastes. Cau & we 
suppose any sense of abstract beauty to influence the mental 
* Squiers’ Peru, 1877, p. 384, &c. 
f Lucan, Pharsalia, lib. iii. 424, 425. 
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