that our faculties of perception were sometimes exercised in the observation of ugliness. If the mere exercise of our faculties produced a sense of pleasure, there would be no such thing as a difference between a sense of beauty and a sense of ugliness. It appeared to him that the main importance of the question turned on the inquiry, whether beauty was really an ideal or not; whether it was a varying function which differed with different opinions and different sets of times, or whether there was such a thing as an ideal of beauty just as there were first principles of truth and goodness. That was a question which had been debated from the earliest dawn of serious thought among mankind. The great question raised in the time of Socrates was whether there was absolute goodness, absolute truth, and absolute beauty. It had been decided by the general verdict of the most earnest thought in the world that there was an absolute ideal in all those subjects. Precisely similar objections to those which Lord Grimthorpe had told them had been raised by his friend, had been raised by Plato's contemporaries, and were raised now, but the only argument which could be produced against his views was the existence of lower standards of right and wrong. When they looked at the matter from the point of view of right and wrong, they all saw the absurdity of the argument. The fact that in certain nations there was an imperfect moral standard proved nothing against the existence of a perfect standard. It only proved that those nations were in a state of degradation. He remembered being struck by the statement of a missionary on this subject: he was asked whether, in spite of the moral degradation he came in contact with, he had ever met any nation that rejected the morality of the Ten Commandments when they came to understand them, and he said he never had. Custom might maintain a lower standard, but all men recognised the true standard of right and wrong when it was explained to them. What was possible in respect to man's conscience was similarly possible in respect to beauty. In proportion as the faculties of men developed, they appreciated the one uniform and ideal standard of beauty. It was from this point of view only that the full force of Lord Grimthorpe's argument could be discerned. What we had to consider was that there was by common consent of mankind, or the increasing consent of intelligent mankind, an absolute standard of beauty, and they found that throughout Nature there was a continual approximation to, and in the great majority of cases absolute attainment of, that standard of beauty, no matter what the work might be to which Nature put her hand. His lordship asked the question, how it came that Nature in all its forms and circumstances was continually approximating to this beauty; and it certainly was a most extraordinary and amazing circumstance. There was only one point in his lordship's paper to which he would venture to take exception, and that was an observation he threw out once or twice that this beauty is not necessary. He should be rather inclined to think that that was an obiter dictum which weakened his case; because it might turn out to be, and it would be, a very strong argument, pointing to the conclusion he is aiming at, if it were proved that

beauty is an indispensable concomitant of the highest perfection in other respects. Just as in mathematics, the law of action proved to be the law of least action; that which at first appeared to be an arbitrary law, turned out, when it was fully investigated, to be the very means of doing the work with the least possible expenditure of force. So it might be here, and beauty may be necessarily associated with the simplest and best of all contrivances. But if that was so, it added force to the argument, because it compelled them to ask the question, "How comes it that all these extraordinary qualities, accuracy, strength, usefulness, beauty, capacity for moral action, are all found bound up together so indissolubly that they could not separate one from the other?" The more we knew of Nature, the more we found these qualities united. Human Nature was of such a character, that the highest forms of morality were inseparable from it. The question was, what united them? and when the question was put in that form, new force seemed added to the argument which Lord Grimthorpe had put before them in a manner for which they were much indebted to him ; for there was one explanation which accounted for it all, namely, that the whole framework of Nature was designed by One mind, in which all ideals were so united that He could not do one good thing without doing all good things at the same time. But if they once lost sight of this central influence in the mass of conflicting forces, the whole manifestation became inexplicable.

Mr. J. HASSELL said that Lord Grimthorpe made a statement which should never be forgotten, namely, that "If one side is left to go on preaching its own dogmas and keeping discreet silence about objections which they cannot answer, and if the objectors kept silence too, the objections will be forgotten, or assumed to have been silenced, though nobody undertakes to say how, or when, or by whom." That should be kept in mind. They who were standing up in these days, and had to bear much ridicule, should not be backward in bringing before their young people all the evidences they could upon these matters. Let nothing prevent them from repeating those grand ideas of God's order and God's perfection, as seen in His works.

LORD GRIMTHORPE, in reply, thanked Dr. Wace for saving him the trouble of answering his friend, Mr. Ranyard. Some of them might remember that Sydney Smith, in some of his letters against America, talked about a "larcenous lake and swindling swamp." He did not know whether people had any idea of that as a thing of beauty. The latter remarks of Dr. Wace were certainly very significant indeed, and he had no doubt they would turn out some day to be right, but he (Lord Grimthorpe), being a lawyer, could not venture to assume it. He could not venture to assume that beauty was a necessary concomitant of every kind of perfection, and he was never in the habit of assuming for the purpose of argument what he could not prove. He quite agreed with him that it did enforce the argument very materially. Mr. Boscawen's remarks were interesting all through. It would be found that a good many people

who were on Darwin's side were beginning very seriously to question Darwin's own doctrines, and no doubt the longer they went on the more that would be the case. He did not think there were any other remarks which required any observations from him.

The Meeting was then adjourned.

REMARKS UPON THE FOREGOING PAPER

BY

THE REVEREND W. ARTHUR.

LORD GRIMTHORPE does good service in pressing the argument from beauty to design indicated in his vigorous work on the Origin of the Laws of Nature. That argument is one that will grow of itself, and will be found to have broad bases and manifold connexions.

Particular attention should be given to the answer which Lord Grimthorpe reports as that made to him by "one of the most eminent philosophical writers of the age." This philosopher says: "Beauty is merely a question of habit and fashion; there is no such thing as absolute beauty, and therefore Nature has done nothing for it." The conclusion, namely, that Nature has done nothing for beauty is so absurd that it could not be drawn from any properly formulated premises, or even tacked on to them. With that conclusion the assertion which in the apparent premises stands immediately before it has nothing to do. It may be quite true that there is no absolute beauty, and yet all relative beauty may be directly due to Nature; just as it may be true that there is no absolute motion, and yet all relative motion is due to Nature. The other assertion in the premises, that beauty is merely a question of habit and fashion, is itself merely a begging of the question. It is not true; beauty is more than a question of habit and fashion. But even if it were true, it would not prove that Nature had "done nothing for it." Dress is clearly a matter of habit and fashion, yet Nature has done something for it by giving, on the one hand, wool, cotton, silk, and hides, and on the other hand the desire and ability to make clothes, joined with the twofold appreciation of utility and beauty.

In respect of dress, however, social considerations outweigh those of beauty; that is, fashion overrules taste, and dictates either permanent or transient habit-the usage of the caste in India fixing for ages the form of dress which will be most respectable, as the fiat of some milliner in Paris fixes for a season what will be most in vogue. But it is equally vain to look for the approved pattern in nose-jewels, or in crinoline, apart from a mind to design, or a power to mould. But to regard beauty in dress, or in any production of man, as if it were the whole of beauty is the philosophy of the workshop.

This remark includes furniture and architecture, for in all departments of these we are in a region of what man frames out of Nature—not of what he finds and admires in it. In painting and sculpture we are in a complex region-one, it is true, of what man produces, but of what he produces more or less in imitation of what he finds in Nature and admires in it. The reason why we so seldom see beauty in implements or machinery is because that in them natural forms are so seldom reproduced, the product required being one of which Nature has not given the mould. The assertion that science has done nothing for beauty would be absurd, but not so absurd as the assertion that Nature has done nothing for it. What science has done for it was subsequent to what Nature had done, and totally dependent upon it, whereas what Nature did for it was done ere science began to be.

In any sense of the word "beauty," to which even the lowest philosophical value can be attached, it must mean not anything either in the object taken alone, or in the subject taken alone; not merely some quality in an object without us which prompts us to say "Beautiful," and not merely some faculty within us which recognises that quality, and feels admiration of it. Beauty no more means either of these apart, than rainbow means water, air, or sunlight, apart from one another. It is the synthesis of all that makes rainbow, and it is the synthesis of certain qualities of body external to us, and certain faculties of mind internal to us, which creates that state of delight which utters itself in the word beauty. All the stars in the sky would never give origin to the idea of beauty if they shone only upon wood and stone. No more would they give origin to the human idea of beauty if they shone only into the eyes of toads. But they shine into no human eyes without giving rise to that idea-an idea which gathers to itself intellectual, emotional, and active associations according to the grade of the mind in which it is awakened. In contrast with these natural objects, all the slag heaps in the Black Country by day, and all the furnaces by night, never gave rise to the idea and emotion of beauty, whether they addressed themselves to the eyes of an Englishman or of a Japanese, of an artist or of a cowboy.

Into certain objects Nature has put something calculated to excite in man a pleasure which makes him say "Beautiful" ; into man Nature has put the capacity of recognising this quality in the object, of feeling the pleasure, of naming it, and of uttering the name. But the object and the man may be billions of miles distant one from the other, and till they are brought into communication, into presence, by some connecting medium between them,