NATURE PORTRAITS. 
PART IV. 
THE EXTRINSIC AND INTRINSIC VIEWS OF NATURE. 
“The purpose of this exercise is to tell 
children how to see the hidden beauties 
of flowers.” Thus ran the announce- 
ment at the opening of the class-room 
period. Is it worth while to tell them 
any such thing? Why not teach them 
to be interested in plants? Why give 
them a half-truth when they might 
have the whole truth ? 
The “beauty” of a flower or a bird 
is only an incident: the plant or the 
bird is the important thing to know. 
Beauty is not an end. The person 
who starts out to see beauty in plants 
is often in the condition of mind that 
the dear old lady was who came into my conservatory and exclaimed, as she 
saw the geraniums, “ Oh, they are as pretty as artificial flowers ! ” 
But these people are not looking for beauty, after all ; they look for 
mere satisfying form or color or odditv. They confound beauty with pretti- 
ness or with outward attractiveness. Real beauty is deeper than sensation. 
It inheres in fitness of means to end as well as in physical attributes. The 
child should see the thing itself before he sees its parts. Teach first the 
whole bug, the whole bird, the whole plant. The botanist may well devote 
his life to a single cell, but the layman wants to know the trees and the 
woods. 
I dislike to hear people say that they love flowers. They should love 
plants; then they have a deeper hold on things. Intellectual interest should 
go deeper than mere form or color. Teachers or parents ask the child to see 
how pretty the object is; but in most cases the child wants to know how it 
lives and what it does. 
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