India were in a state of almost hopeless embarrassment--when the
Famine Insurance Fund had been misappropriated in the way I have
related--when the Indian Government frankly acknowledged that it
was beyond their power to estimate their future expenditure, even
approximately, the Indian Government deliberately sacrificed revenue
to the amount of £200,000 derived from this source. The motives which
persuaded them to this sacrifice may have been as pure as driven snow;
but with Lord Lytton's assurances fresh in their memories, I need
not say that their motives were not so interpreted by those in India.
There the explanation given was this:--The war in Afghanistan, from
which so much had been expected, had resulted, not in success, but
ignominious failure. The Government had been compelled to patch up
a peace without a single element of permanence in it. Despite of the
choral odes which Ministers sang together on the occasion of this
peace, it was impossible that they could have been wholly blind to the
real character of the Treaty of Gundamuck. They felt that discovery
could not be long delayed, and, like the steward who had wasted his
master's goods, they hastened to make themselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness. While, therefore, the war was still nominally
unfinished, they sought to propitiate Manchester by throwing its
merchants this sop of £200,000. Like Canning's famous policy of
calling on the New World to redress the balance of the Old, the
prestige of Imperialism, damaged by the failure in Afghanistan, was to
be re-established in Manchester at the expense of the Indian taxpayer.
If the Indian Government had any better reason than this for their
partial repeal of the Cotton Duties, it is a pity that they did not
communicate it to the world. The reason which they did condescend to
give was simply this--that the finances of the Empire were so heavily
embarrassed, and in such confusion, that it was a matter of no
consequence if they become still further involved to the extent of
£200,000. I give the actual words, that I may not be suspected of
caricaturing the Government:--
"The difficulties caused by the increased loss by exchange
are great, but they will not practically be aggravated to an
appreciable extent by the loss of £200,000. If the fresh fall
in the exchange should prove to be temporary, such a loss will
possess slight importance. If, on the other hand, the loss
by exchange does not diminish ... it will become necessary to
take measures of a most serious nature for the improvement of
the financial position; but the retention of the import duties
on cotton goods will not thereby be rendered possible. On
the contrary, such retention will become more difficult than
ever."
According to the Government of India, it was the peculiarity of
these £200,000 to be simply an incumbrance, happen what might. If the
exchange did _not_ fall, they were reduced to insignificance; if it
did fall, their retention became more difficult than ever. The reader
will not be surprised to learn that these enigmatic propositions were
not accepted in India as a sufficient justification of the act they
were supposed to explain.
Despotic as an Indian Viceroy is, there are even in India certain
Constitutional checks on his authority, as, for instance, the Members
of Council, the Vernacular and the English press. How was it, the
reader may ask, that these constitutional checks were evaded; for it
cannot be that they all concurred in such a policy as I have described
in the foregoing pages? The principal means of evasion was secrecy.
The negotiations with Shere Ali were kept sedulously hidden from the
public knowledge, and their nature was only to be dimly inferred from
the devout and philanthropic orations of the Viceroy himself. The same
course was adopted with respect to the North-West famine; and but
for the accident of Mr. Knight's visit to Agra, the truth would have
remained hidden to this day. But Lord Lytton did not trust to secrecy
alone. The vernacular press was gagged by a Press Act, which was
hurried through Council, and made a law in the course of a few hours.
The English press could not be gagged precisely in this fashion,
but it was very ingeniously drugged through the agency of a curious
functionary, styled the Press Commissioner. When Mr. Stanhope
was questioned in the House regarding the special duties of this
nondescript official, he replied that he had been appointed to
superintend the working of the Vernacular Press Act. Actually, he
was in operation for several months before that Act had come into
existence, and never has had any duties in connection with it. The
Press Commissioner is attached to the personal staff of the Viceroy,
and may be regarded as a kind of official bard, whose duty it is to
chant the praises of his master, and advertise his political wares.
The description of Lord Lytton as a "specially-gifted Viceroy" is
believed in India to have proceeded from the affectionate imagination
of the Press Commissioner. But, besides this, he is a channel of
communication between the Government of India and the Indian press.
When he was first called into existence, India was informed that a
new era was about to begin, in the relations between the press and the
Government. The Government, anxious that its policy should be fully
discussed by an intelligent press, had appointed a Press Commissioner,
whose duty it would be to keep editors supplied with accurate
information, from the very fountain-head, of all that Government was
doing, or intended to do. It is unnecessary to say that the Press
Commissioner has done nothing of the kind. The greater part of the
matter he communicates to the press is simply worthless, and wholly
devoid of interest to any sane person. If anything of importance
occurs which the Government desires to keep secret, but which it fears
will leak out, the Press Commissioner communicates the matter to the
editors "confidentially," and then it is understood that they are in
honour bound not to allude to the subject in their papers. At distant
intervals, however, the Press Commissioner, of necessity, allows some
interesting scraps of information to escape from him; and it is by
means of these that the English press is drugged. Any newspaper which
offends the Government by criticism of too harsh a character is liable
to have the supply of such morsels suspended until it gives evidence
of amendment. And as there is in India, among the readers of
newspapers, quite an insatiable craving for these morsels of official
gossip, it would be extremely prejudicial to the circulation of a
newspaper if they no longer appeared in its columns. The vengeance
of Lord Lytton and the Press Commissioner has already fallen upon
one journal. The Calcutta _Statesman_, having poured ridicule on this
Press Commissioner, has been deprived of his ministrations. In brief,
the Press Commissionership is simply an agency for bribing the English
Press, which costs the Indian taxpayer the sum annually of £5000.
But the most effective check on the arbitrary authority of the
Governor-General is furnished by his Council. These are selected as
men of long Indian experience, in order to aid the Governor-General
with their advice and special knowledge. The last Governor-General
who set at nought the advice and remonstrances of his Council was Lord
Auckland, when he plunged into the disastrous war in Afghanistan. Lord
Lytton, who in other respects has so carefully trod in the footsteps
of his predecessor, did not fail to imitate him in this. His frontier
policy was carried out in spite of the opposition of the three most
experienced members of his Council; his repeal of the Cotton Duties in
the face of their unanimous opposition, with the single exception of
Sir John Strachey. Thus it is that, under Lord Lytton, British rule
in India has become a tawdry and fantastic system of personal rule. It
might perhaps do well enough if an Empire could be governed by means
of ceremonies, speeches, and elegantly written despatches--"fables in
prose," they might very fitly be called. But an Empire cannot be so
governed, and the result of the experiment has been an amount of
human suffering appalling to contemplate. The Indian air is "full of
farewells for the dying and mournings for the dead," and the path of
the Government can be traced in broken pledges and dead men's bones.
These bones are as dragon's teeth, which Lord Lytton is sowing
broadcast all over India and Afghanistan, and they will assuredly
be changed into armed men if the hand of the sower be not promptly
stayed.
"Nothing," writes Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, one of the Indian
Members of Council, "would have induced me to have been a
party to the imposition of restrictions on the press, if I
could have foreseen that within a year of the passing of the
Vernacular Press Act the Government of India would be embarked
on a course which, in my opinion, is as unwise and ill-timed
as it is destructive of the reputation for justice upon which
the prestige and political supremacy of the British Government
in India so greatly depend. And here I must remark that
the slight value which in some influential quarters is
now attached to the popularity of our rule with our native
subjects, has for some time past struck me as a source of
grave political danger. _The British Empire in India was not
established by a policy of ignoring popular sentiment, and
of stigmatizing all views and opinions which are opposed
to certain favourite theories, as the views and opinions of
foolish people. Nor will our rule be long maintained if such a
policy is persisted in._"
ROBERT D. OSBORN.
ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.
The question which I propose to consider in this paper is how far the
beauty of blossoms can be accounted for by the utility of this beauty
to the plant producing them. It is manifestly only one particular case
of a larger inquiry whether the beauty which Nature exhibits can be
accounted for by its utility.
These questions connect themselves with some of the highest points
of the philosophy of the universe. Is the system of the universe
intellectual, or is it purely material? Is there an ordering mind, or
is there merely blind and struggling matter? Are there final causes as
well as material causes, or are there material causes only?
These questions have been asked and answered in opposite senses, from
the first dawn of philosophy to the present hour; and during all that
period of time the battle has been raging--and has spread, too, over
the whole realm of Nature. Scarcely any branch of natural science
exists which has not furnished materials for at least a skirmish; so
that it requires an experienced and impartial eye to be able rightly
to understand the true fortunes of the contest over the whole field
of battle. True it is, that for every man the question between the two
theories has to be decided by somewhat simpler considerations than any
such survey. Something in every man seems inevitably to determine him
towards either the intellectual or the material theory of things.
The existence of beauty in the world is a very remarkable fact. On
the theory of a Divine and beneficent Creator, this fact has seemed
no difficulty; but the theory of a mere blind fermentation of matter
gives no account of it, except as a mere accident, which, on the
doctrine of chances, should be perhaps a very rare and unusual
accident. Hence the existence of beauty has from of old been a
favourite theme of the theistic believers. "Let them know how much
better the Lord of them is," says the author of the Wisdom of Solomon,
speaking of the works of Nature, "for the first Author of beauty hath
created them ... for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures
proportionably the Maker of them is seen."[1] The same familiar view
has lately been presented by the Duke of Argyll in his "Reign of
Law":[2]--
"It would be to doubt the evidence of our senses and of our
reason, or else to assume hypotheses of which there is no
proof whatever, if we were to doubt that mere ornament, mere
variety, are as much an end and aim in the workshop of Nature
as they are known to be in the workshop of the goldsmith and
the jeweller. Why should they not? The love and desire of
these is universal in the mind of man. It is seen not more
distinctly in the highest forms of civilized art than in the
habits of the rudest savage, who covers with elaborate carving
the handle of his war-club or the prow of his canoe. Is it
likely that this universal aim and purpose of the mind of man
should be wholly without relation to the aims and purposes of
his Creator? He that formed the eye to see beauty, shall He
not see it? He that gave the human hand its cunning to work
for beauty, shall His hand never work for it? How, then, shall
we account for all the beauty of the world--for the careful
provision made for it where it is only the secondary object,
not the first?"
But even if beauty be always associated with utility and have in fact
been brought about by its utility, it may nevertheless have been an
object in the mind of a Divine artificer, who may have been minded
to use the one as a means and end to the other. We may therefore,
I think, approach the subject with a perfect freedom from any
theological bias.
The whole subject will, I believe, be felt by some persons to be a
piece of moonshine,--the whole discussion fit for cloudland, not for
this practical solid world of ours.
Beauty, such persons would say, is not a real thing, an objective
fact: it is a part of man, not of the world--it is in him who sees,
not in the thing seen: it is seen by one man in one thing--by another
man in another.
To this it seems a sufficient answer to say that the relation of
any one external thing to any one mind which produces the peculiar
condition which we call the perception of beauty, is _a_ fact, and,
like every other single fact, must have an adequate cause. But when we
find that there are forms of beauty, such as the beauty of sunlight,
which operate alike on all men, and, it would seem, on all sensitive
beings--when we find that the brilliant flowers which attract the
child in the field or the lady in the drawing-room, attract the
insect tribes--we feel ourselves in the presence of a great body of
persistent relations, which it is impossible to pass over as unreal or
as unimportant.
But, again, there is ugliness in the world; and one ugly thing, it is
suggested, destroys all your deductions from beauty. This, no doubt,
is a very important fact for any one to grapple with who proposes
to give any theoretical explanation of the presence of beauty in the
universe; but for me, who am only inquiring whether and how far beauty
is useful, it is not really material, because there can be no doubt
that beauty, as well as ugliness, exists in the world. This much I
will say in passing, that, to my mind, the balance of things is in
favour of beauty and against ugliness--the tendency is in favour of
beauty, not ugliness, and that tendency may be a very important thing
to think of.
Furthermore, the fact that we recognize ugliness seems to make our
recognition of beauty more important; for it shows that the
perception of beauty is not mere habit, and that we have an inward
and independent judgment on the matter--we are able to approve the one
thing on the score of beauty, and to reject the other as ugly.
Even allowing fully for the existence of ugliness, it must be conceded
that the world around us presents a vast mass of beauty--complex,
diverse, commingled, and not easily admitting of analysis. It is
common alike to the organic and the inorganic realms of Nature. The
pageants of the sky at morning, noon, and night, the forms of the
trees, the beauty of the flowers, the glory of the hills, the awful
sublimity of the stars--these, and a thousand things in Nature, fill
the soul with a sense of beauty, which the art neither of the poet,
nor of the philosopher, nor of the painter can come near to depict. We
are moved and overcome, sometimes by this object of beauty, sometimes
by that, but yet more by the complex mass of glory of the universe.
"For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune;
Whether she work on land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."
As yet no attempt has been made to show the utility of this
promiscuous and multitudinous crowd of beauties--and it seems not
likely that such an attempt can yet be made with success: and the
phenomena of Nature are therefore likely for a long time to come to
impress most men with the sense of beauty for beauty's sake. But in
respect of certain particular and separable instances, the attempt has
recently been made to show that the beauty exhibited is useful to the
structure exhibiting it, and consequently that it may be accounted
for by the strictly utilitarian principle of the survival of the
fittest,--one instance in which this has been most notably attempted
being in respect of the beauty of flowers. Let us consider how far
beauty can thus be accounted for in this particular case.
There will be a great advantage in this course; for beauty is a
thing about which it is not very easy to argue: it is too subtle, too
evanescent, too disputable, to afford an easy material for the logical
or scientific crucible; and these difficulties we shall best surmount
by in the first place isolating certain beautiful things for our
consideration, and limiting to them our inquiry into how far each of
the rival theories is sufficient to explain their existence. We shall
thus try to narrow the great controversy to very definite and distinct
issues.
"Flowers," says Mr. Darwin,[3] "rank amongst the most
beautiful productions of Nature, and they have become,
through natural selection, beautiful, or rather conspicuous in
contrast with the greenness of the leaves, that they might
be easily observed and visited by insects, so that their
fertilization might be favoured. I have come to this
conclusion, from finding it an invariable rule that when a
flower is fertilized by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured
corolla. Again, several plants habitually produce two kinds of
flowers: one kind open and coloured, so as to attract insects;
the other closed and not coloured, destitute of nectar, and
never visited by insects. We may safely conclude that, if
insects had never existed on the face of the earth, the
vegetation would not have been decked with beautiful flowers,
but would have produced only such poor flowers as are now
borne by our firs, oaks, nut and ash trees, by the grasses, by
spinach, docks, and nettles."
No one can doubt who watches a meadow on a summer's day that insects
are attracted by the scent and the colours of the flowers. The whole
field is busy with their jubilant hum. These little creatures have the
same sense of beauty that we have. What room there is for thought in
that fact! There is a subtle bond of mental union between ourselves
and the creatures whom we so often despise. There is a joy widespread
and multiplied beyond our highest calculation. What a deadly blow to
that egotism of man which thinks of all beauty as made for him alone!
But I return to the argument. We have presented to our notice three
kinds of attraction which operate upon insects--the conspicuousness
of colour and form, the beauty of the smell, and the pleasant taste of
the honey. No one, as I have said, who watches a meadow or a garden on
a summer's day can for a moment doubt the operation of these
causes, or question the direct action of insects in producing the
fertilization of flowers. In that sense the beauty of a flower is
clearly of direct use to the flower which exhibits it. It is better
for it that it should be fertilized by insects than not fertilized at
all; but is it better for it to be fertilized by insects than by the
wind, or by some other agency, if such exist?
This shall be the subject of inquiry. But before we can answer it,
we must go a little afield and collect some other of the facts of the
case.
The conclusion that beauty is useful for the fertilization of the
flower does not rest merely on the general phenomena of a summer
meadow. It is confirmed by many other observations. Flowers are
not merely attractive in themselves; they are frequently rendered
attractive by their grouping. Sometimes flowers individually small are
gathered into heads, or spikes, or bunches, or umbels, and so
produce a more conspicuous effect than would result from a more equal
distribution of the flowers; sometimes yet more minute flowers or
florets are gathered together into what appears a single flower, and
often have the outer florets so modified both in shape and colour as
to produce the general effect of one very brilliant blossom, as in the
daisy or the marigold.
Sometimes the same result is produced by "the massing of small flowers
into dense cushions of bright colour."[4] This, as is well known, is
of common occurrence with Alpine flowers; and this mode of growth, as
well as the great size of many Alpine blossoms as compared with that
of the whole plant, and the great brilliance of Alpine plants as
compared with their congeners of the lowlands, have all been explained
by reference to the comparative rarity of insects in the Alpine
heights, and the consequent necessity, if the plants are to survive,
that they should offer strong attractions to their needful friends.[5]
A similar explanation has been offered for the brilliant colours of
Arctic flowers.[6]
Furthermore, this curious fact exists, that of flowering plants a
large number do not ripen or put forward their pistils and stamens at
the same periods of their growth: in some cases the pistil is ready
to receive the pollen whilst the anthers are immature and not ready to
supply it: such are called proterogynous. In other cases the anthers
are ripe before the pistil is ready to receive the pollen: these are
proterandrous. In either case the same event happens--that the ovules
can never be fertilized by the pollen of the same blossom, nor without
some foreign agency, generally that of insects.
Lastly, there is a large number of plants, including a great
proportion of those with unsymmetrical blossoms, of which the
flowers have been shown to be specially adapted by various mechanical
contrivances for insect agency. Nothing, as is well known, is more
marvellous than the variety and subtlety of the arrangements for
the purpose which exist in orchidaceous plants, as explained by the
patience and genius of Mr. Darwin.
In view of these facts it would be impossible to deny that
conspicuousness is one of the agencies in force for the fertilization
of flowers; that, to use the recent language of Mr. Darwin, "flowers
are not only delightful for their beauty and fragrance, but display
most wonderful adaptations for various purposes."[7]
So far we have considered the evidence which is affirmative, and in
favour of the explanation of the existence of beauty in flowers; we
have found clearly that beauty, or rather conspicuousness, is in many
cases useful to the plant. But beauty is by no means the only agency
in this necessary process. On the contrary, the agencies actually in
operation are very numerous.