OF VITAL BEAUTY. FIRST, AS RELATIVE.
Sec. 1. Transition from typical to vital Beauty.
I proceed more particularly to examine the nature of that second kind of
beauty of which I spoke in the third chapter, as consisting in "the
appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things." I
have already noticed the example of very pure and high typical beauty
which is to be found in the lines and gradations of unsullied snow: if,
passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower Alps, early in May,
we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round
openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive,
fragile flower[31] whose small dark, purple-fringed bell hangs down and
shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering
at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its hard
won victory; we shall be, or we ought to be, moved by a totally
different impression of loveliness from that which we receive among the
dead ice and the idle clouds. There is now uttered to us a call for
sympathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and achievement,
which, however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be that
so seems to call, cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated
without worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or whose
mind is clearly and surely sighted.
Throughout the whole of the organic creation every being in a perfect
state exhibits certain appearances, or evidences, of happiness, and
besides is in its nature, its desires, its modes of nourishment,
habitation, and death, illustrative or expressive of certain moral
dispositions or principles. Now, first, in the keenness of the sympathy
which we feel in the happiness, real or apparent, of all organic beings,
and which, as we shall presently see, invariably prompts us, from the
joy we have in it, to look upon those as most lovely which are most
happy; and secondly, in the justness of the moral sense which rightly
reads the lesson they are all intended to teach, and classes them in
orders of worthiness and beauty according to the rank and nature of that
lesson, whether it be of warning or example, of those that wallow or of
those that soar, of the fiend-hunted swine by the Gennesaret lake, or of
the dove returning to its ark of rest; in our right accepting and
reading of all this, consists, I say, the ultimately perfect condition
of that noble theoretic faculty, whose place in the system of our nature
I have already partly vindicated with respect to typical, but which can
only fully be established with respect to vital beauty.
Sec. 2. The perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital
beauty, is charity.
Its first perfection, therefore, relating to vital beauty, is the
kindness and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost
amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high
degree the heart of man is incapable, neither what intense enjoyment the
angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and
in the part they take in the shedding of God's kindness upon them, can
we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are
made in measure like unto him, can we increase this our possession of
charity, of which the entire essence is in God only.
Wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty
implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and
healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the
entire perfection of the Christian character, for he who loves not God,
nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet and the
creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and
which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful
even to those that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand,
none can love God nor his human brother without loving all things which
his Father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that
respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under
concords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly. Wherefore
it is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of St. Francis of
Assisi, who spoke never to bird nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and
beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of
all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the Mariner
of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the Heartleap
well,
"Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,"
and again in the White Doe of Rylstone, with the added teaching of that
gift, which we have from things beneath us, in thanks for the love they
cannot equally return; that anguish of our own,
"Is tempered and allayed by sympathies,
Aloft ascending and descending deep,
Even to the inferior kinds,"
so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic
faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, than
those accursed sports in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger,
serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one, and gathers into one
continuance of cruelty for his amusement all the devices that brutes
sparingly and at intervals use against each other for their
necessities.[32]
Sec. 3. Only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy.
As we pass from those beings of whose happiness and pain we are certain
to those in which it is doubtful or only seeming, as possibly in
plants, (though I would fain hold, if I might, "the faith that every
flower, enjoys the air it breathes," neither do I ever crush or gather
one without some pain,) yet our feeling for them has in it more of
sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in delight far more
than we can give; for love, I think, chiefly grows in giving, at least
its essence is the desire of doing good, or giving happiness, and we
cannot feel the desire of that which we cannot conceive, so that if we
conceive not of a plant as capable of pleasure, we cannot desire to give
it pleasure, that is, we cannot love it in the entire sense of the term.
Nevertheless, the sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually
reaches so far as to the conception of life in the plant, and so to
love, as with Shelley, of the sensitive plant, and Shakspeare always, as
he has taught us in the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita, and
Wordsworth always, as of the daffodils, and the celandine.
"It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold.
This neither is its courage, nor its choice,
But its necessity in being old,"--
and so all other great poets (that is to say, great seers;[33]) nor do I
believe that any mind, however rude, is without some slight perception
or acknowledgment of joyfulness in breathless things, as most certainly
there are none but feel instinctive delight in the appearances of such
enjoyment.
Sec. 4. Which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants.
For it is matter of easy demonstration, that setting the characters of
typical beauty aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic form is in
proportion to its appearance of healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush,
setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of color and fair
folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the snow-wreath, we
find in and through all this, certain signs pleasant and acceptable as
signs of life and enjoyment in the particular individual plant itself.
Every leaf and stalk is seen to have a function, to be constantly
exercising that function, and as it seems _solely_ for the good and
enjoyment of the plant. It is true that reflection will show us that the
plant is not living for itself alone, that its life is one of
benefaction, that it gives as well as receives, but no sense of this
whatsoever mingles with our perception of physical beauty in its forms.
Those forms which appear to be necessary to its health, the symmetry of
its leaflets, the smoothness of its stalks, the vivid green of its
shoots, are looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own happiness and
perfection; they are useless to us, except as they give us pleasure in
our sympathizing with that of the plant, and if we see a leaf withered
or shrunk or worm-eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be most
painful, not because it hurts _us_, but because it seems to hurt the
plant, and conveys to us an idea of pain and disease and failure of life
in _it_.
That the amount of pleasure we receive is in exact proportion to the
appearance of vigor and sensibility in the plant, is easily proved by
observing the effect of those which show the evidences of it in the
least degree, as, for instance, any of the cacti not in flower. Their
masses are heavy and simple, their growth slow, their various parts
jointed on one to another, as if they were buckled or pinned together
instead of growing out of each other, (note the singular imposition in
many of them, the prickly pear for instance, of the fruit upon the body
of the plant, so that it looks like a swelling or disease,) and often
farther opposed by harsh truncation of line as in the cactus
truncatophylla. All these circumstances so concur to deprive the plant
of vital evidences, that we receive from it more sense of pain than of
beauty; and yet even here, the sharpness of the angles, the symmetrical
order and strength of the spines, the fresh and even color of the body,
are looked for earnestly as signs of healthy condition, our pain is
increased by their absence, and indefinitely increased if blotches, and
other appearances of bruise and decay interfere with that little life
which the plant seems to possess.
The same singular characters belong in animals to the crustacea, as to
the lobster, crab, scorpion, etc., and in great measure deprive them of
the beauty which we find in higher orders, so that we are reduced to
look for their beauty to single parts and joints, and not to the whole
animal.
Sec. 5. This sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility.
Now I wish particularly to impress upon the reader that all these
sensations of beauty in the plant arise from our unselfish sympathy with
its happiness, and not from any view of the qualities in it which may
bring good to us, nor even from our acknowledgment in it of any moral
condition beyond that of mere felicity; for such an acknowledgment,
belongs to the second operation of the theoretic faculty (compare Sec. 2,)
and not to the sympathetic part which we are at present examining; so
that we even find that in this respect, the moment we begin to look upon
any creature as subordinate to some purpose out of itself, some of the
sense of organic beauty is lost. Thus, when we are told that the leaves
of a plant are occupied in decomposing carbonic acid, and preparing
oxygen for us, we begin to look upon it with some such indifference as
upon a gasometer. It has become a machine; some of our sense of its
happiness is gone; its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. The
bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is
beautiful because it is happy, though it is perfectly useless to us. The
same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty.
It serves as a bridge,--it has become useful; it lives not for itself,
and its beauty is gone, or what it retains is purely typical, dependent
on its lines and colors, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and
though now adapted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is
lost forever, or to be regained only in part when decay and ruin shall
have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand
of nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest
ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of
life.
There is something, I think, peculiarly beautiful and instructive in
this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of
all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature,
for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence
and energy of both, it takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock by
the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.
Sec. 6. Especially with respect to animals.
Sec. 7. And it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism.
But still more distinct evidence of its being indeed the expression of
happiness to which we look for our first pleasure in organic form, is
to be found in the way in which we regard the bodily frame of animals:
of which it is to be noted first, that there is not anything which
causes so intense and tormenting a sense of ugliness as any scar, wound,
monstrosity, or imperfection which seems inconsistent with the animal's
ease and health; and that although in vegetables, where there is no
immediate sense of pain, we are comparatively little hurt by
excrescences and irregularities, but are sometimes even delighted with
them, and fond of them, as children of the oak-apple, and sometimes look
upon them as more interesting than the uninjured conditions, as in the
gnarled and knotted trunks of trees; yet the slightest approach to
anything of the kind in animal form is regarded with intense horror,
merely from the sense of pain it conveys. And, in the second place, it
is to be noted that whenever we dissect the animal frame, or conceive it
as dissected, and substitute in our ideas the neatness of mechanical
contrivance for the pleasure of the animal; the moment we reduce
enjoyment to ingenuity, and volition to leverage, that instant all sense
of beauty disappears. Take, for instance, the action of the limb of the
ostrich, which is beautiful so long as we see it in its swift uplifting
along the desert sands, and trace in the tread of it her scorn of the
horse and his rider, but would infinitely lose of its impressiveness, if
we could see the spring ligament playing backwards and forwards in
alternate jerks over the tubercle at the hock joint. Take again the
action of the dorsal fin of the shark tribe. So long as we observe the
uniform energy of motion in the whole frame, the lash of the tail, bound
of body, and instantaneous lowering of the dorsal, to avoid the
resistance of the water as it turns, there is high sense of organic
power and beauty. But when we dissect the dorsal, and find that its
superior ray is supported in its position by a peg in a notch at its
base, and that when the fin is to be lowered, the peg has to be taken
out, and when it is raised put in again; although we are filled with
wonder at the ingenuity of the mechanical contrivance, all our sense of
beauty is gone, and not to be recovered until we again see the fin
playing on the animal's body, apparently by its own will alone, with the
life running along its rays. It is by a beautiful ordinance of the
Creator that all these mechanisms are concealed from sight, though open
to investigation, and that in all which is outwardly manifested we seem
to see his presence rather than his workmanship, and the mysterious
breath of life, rather than the manipulation of matter.
As, therefore, it appears from all evidence that it is the sense of
felicity which we first desire in organic form, it is evident from
reason, as demonstrable by experience, that those forms will be the most
beautiful (always, observe, leaving typical beauty out of the question)
which exhibit most of power, and seem capable of most quick and joyous
sensation. Hence we find gradations of beauty from the apparent
impenetrableness of hide and slow motion of the elephant and rhinoceros,
from the foul occupation of the vulture, from the earthy struggling of
the worm, to the brilliancy of the butterfly, the buoyancy of the lark,
the swiftness of the fawn and the horse, the fair and kingly sensibility
of man.
Sec. 8. The second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with
life is justice of moral judgment.
Thus far then, the theoretic faculty is concerned with the happiness of
animals, and its exercise depends on the cultivation of the affections
only. Let us next observe how it is concerned with the moral functions
of animals, and therefore how it is dependent on the cultivation of
every moral sense. There is not any organic creature, but in its history
and habits it shall exemplify or illustrate to us some moral excellence
or deficiency, or some point of God's providential government, which it
is necessary for us to know. Thus the functions and the fates of animals
are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity
and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and
slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some
ever earnest and laborious, and, I think, unhappy in their endless
labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who
shall gather them, and others employed like angels in endless offices of
love and praise. Of which when, in right condition of mind, we esteem
those most beautiful, whose functions are the most noble, whether as
some, in mere energy, or as others, in moral honor, so that we look with
hate on the foulness of the sloth, and the subtlety of the adder, and
the rage of the hyena: with the honor due to their earthly wisdom we
invest the earnest ant and unwearied bee; but we look with full
perception of sacred function to the tribes of burning plumage and
choral voice.[34] And so what lesson we might receive for our earthly
conduct from the creeping and laborious things, was taught us by that
earthly king who made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones (yet
thereafter was less rich towards God). But from the lips of an heavenly
King, who had not where to lay his head, we were taught what lesson we
have to learn from those higher creatures who sow not, nor reap, nor
gather into barns, for their Heavenly Father feedeth them.
Sec. 9. How impeded.
Sec. 10. The influence of moral signs in expression.
There is much difficulty in the way of our looking with this rightly
balanced judgment on the moral functions of the animal tribes, owing to
the independent and often opposing characters of typical beauty, which
are among them, as it seems, arbitrarily distributed, so that the most
fierce and cruel are often clothed in the liveliest colors, and
strengthened by the noblest forms, with this only exception, that so far
as I know, there is no high beauty in any slothful animal, but even
among those of prey, its characters exist in exalted measure upon those
that range and pursue, and are in equal degree withdrawn from those that
lie subtly and silently in the covert of the reed and fens. But that
mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power, which can, when
it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the
ideas of destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the
animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, I
think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own,
can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the
alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle; and
again, on the other hand, regardless of the impressions of typical
beauty, accept from each creature, great or small, the more important
lessons taught by its position in creation as sufferer or chastiser, as
lowly or having dominion, as of foul habit or lofty aspiration, and from
the several perfections which all illustrate or possess, courage,
perseverance, industry, or intelligence, or, higher yet, of love and
patience, and fidelity and rejoicing, and never wearied praise. Which
moral perfections that they indeed are productive, in proportion to
their expression, of instant beauty instinctively felt, is best proved
by comparing those parts of animals in which they are definitely
expressed, as for instance the eye, of which we shall find those ugliest
which have in them no expression nor life whatever, but a corpse-like
stare, or an indefinite meaningless glaring, as in some lights, those of
owls and cats, and mostly of insects and of all creatures in which the
eye seems rather an external, optical instrument than a bodily member
through which emotion and virtue of soul may be expressed, (as
pre-eminently in the chameleon,) because the seeming want of sensibility
and vitality in a living creature is the most painful of all wants. And
next to these in ugliness come the eyes that gain vitality indeed, but
only by means of the expression of intense malignity, as in the serpent
and alligator; and next to these, to whose malignity is added the virtue
of subtlety and keenness, as of the lynx and hawk; and then, by
diminishing the malignity and increasing the expressions of
comprehensiveness and determination, we arrive at those of the lion and
eagle, and at last, by destroying malignity altogether, at the fair eye
of the herbivorous tribes, wherein the superioity of beauty consists
always in the greater or less sweetness and gentleness primarily, as in
the gazelle, camel, and ox, and in the greater or less intellect,
secondarily, as in the horse and dog, and finally, in gentleness and
intellect both in man. And again, taking the mouth, another source of
expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish, or
perhaps where without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes
a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator, and
then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds' beaks, wherein
there is more obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles
than is commonly supposed, (compare the bills of the duck and the
eagle,) and thence we reach the finely developed lips of the carnivora,
which nevertheless lose that beauty they have, in the actions of
snarling and biting, and from these we pass to the nobler because
gentler and more sensible, of the horse, camel, and fawn, and so again
up to man, only there is less traceableness of the principle in the
mouths of the lower animals, because they are in slight measure only
capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low
function, whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means
of expression, beyond and above its lower functions. Compare the remarks
of Sir Charles Bell on this subject in his Essay on Expression, and
compare the mouth of the negro head given by him (p. 28, third edition)
with that of Raffaelle's St. Catherine. I shall illustrate the subject
farther hereafter by giving the mouth of one of the demons of Orcagna's
Inferno, with projecting incisors, and that of a fish and a swine, in
opposition to pure graminivorous and human forms; but at present it is
sufficient for my purpose to insist on the single great principle, that,
wherever expression is possible, and uninterfered with by characters of
typical beauty, which confuse the subject exceedingly as regards the
mouth, (for the typical beauty of the carnivorous lips is on a grand
scale, while it exists in very low degree in the beaks of birds,)
wherever, I say, these considerations do not interfere, the beauty of
the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or
intellectual virtue expressed by it; and wherever beauty exists at all,
there is some kind of virtue to which it is owing, as the majesty of the
lion's eye is owing not to its ferocity, but to its seriousness and
seeming intellect, and of the lion's mouth to its strength and
sensibility, and not its gnashing of teeth, nor wrinkling in its wrath;
and farther be it noted, that of the intellectual or moral virtues, the
moral are those which are attended with most beauty, so that the gentle
eye of the gazelle is fairer to look upon than the more keen glance of
men, if it be unkind.
Sec. 11. As also in plants.
Of the parallel effects of expression upon plants there is little to be
noted, as the mere naming of the subject cannot but bring countless
illustrations to the mind of every reader: only this, that, as we saw
they were less susceptible of our sympathetic love, owing to the absence
in them of capability of enjoyment, so they are less open to the
affections based upon the expression of moral virtue, owing to their
want of volition; so that even on those of them which are deadly and
unkind we look not without pleasure, the more because this their evil
operation cannot be by them outwardly expressed, but only by us
empirically known; so that of the outward seemings and expressions of
plants, there are few but are in some way good and therefore beautiful,
as of humility, and modesty, and love of places and things, in the
reaching out of their arms, and clasping of their tendrils; and energy
of resistance, and patience of suffering, and beneficence one towards
another in shade and protection, and to us also in scents and fruits
(for of their healing virtues, however important to us, there is no more
outward sense nor seeming than of their properties mortal or dangerous).
Sec. 12 Recapitulation.
Whence, in fine, looking to the whole kingdom of organic nature, we find
that our full receiving of its beauty depends first on the sensibility
and then on the accuracy and touchstone faithfulness of the heart in its
moral judgments, so that it is necessary that we should not only love
all creatures well, but esteem them in that order which is according to
God's laws and not according to our own human passions and
predilections, not looking for swiftness, and strength, and cunning,
rather than for patience and kindness, still less delighting in their
animosity and cruelty one towards another, neither, if it may be
avoided, interfering with the working of nature in any way, nor, when we
interfere to obtain service, judging from the morbid conditions of the
animal or vegetable so induced; for we see every day the theoretic
faculty entirely destroyed in those who are interested in particular
animals, by their delight in the results of their own teaching, and by
the vain straining of curiosity for new forms such as nature never
intended, as the disgusting types for instance, which we see earnestly
sought for by the fanciers of rabbits and pigeons, and constantly in
horses, substituting for the true and balanced beauty of the free
creature some morbid development of a single power, as of swiftness in
the racer, at the expense, in certain measure, of the animal's healthy
constitution and fineness of form; and so the delight of horticulturists
in the spoiling of plants; so that in all cases we are to beware of such
opinions as seem in any way referable to human pride, or even to the
grateful or pernicious influence of things upon ourselves, and to cast
the mind free, and out of ourselves, humbly, and yet always in that
noble position of pause above the other visible creatures, nearer God
than they, which we authoritatively hold, thence looking down upon them,
and testing the clearness of our moral vision by the extent, and
fulness, and constancy of our pleasure in the light of God's love as it
embraces them, and the harmony of his holy laws, that forever bring
mercy out of rapine, and religion out of wrath.
FOOTNOTES
[31] Soldanella Alpina.
[32] I would have Mr. Landseer, before he gives us any more writhing
otters, or yelping packs, reflect whether that which is best worthy
of contemplation in a hound be its ferocity, or in an otter its
agony, or in a human being its victory, hardly achieved even with
the aid of its more sagacious brutal allies over a poor little
fish-catching creature, a foot long.
[33] Compare Milton.
"They at her coming sprung
And touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew"
[34] "Type of the wise--who soar, but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home."
(WORDSWORTH.--To the Skylark.)