ndeavor to learn wherein consists that which,
enriching the world of man so widely and plenteously, is deeply
enjoyed by so few.

Were the beautiful, like size and shape and strength and nimbleness,
cognizable by intellectual perception, even the Hottentot would get to
know something of it in the forest, along with the grosser qualities
of trees and valleys. Were it liable to be seized by the discursive
and ratiocinative intellect, the most eminent statesman or lawyer or
general would excel too in the capacity to appreciate beauty; the
Roman would have shone in arts as in arms; the Spartan would not have
been so barren where the Athenian was so prolific. But beauty is
_felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its
presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous
sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding.
When we exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and
delightful, expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious
cleansing thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes,
ever springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all
things have their being.

The beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot
demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it.
Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward
eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus
is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown
through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this
does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor,
carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of
the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not
until then is its individuality and are its various physical
qualities, size, shape, etc., apprehended. And now the intellect
itself becomes a conductor, transmitting still deeper inward to the
seat of emotion the image of the object; and not until it reaches that
depth is its beauty recognized.

In all her structures and arrangements Nature is definite, precise,
and economical. In subdivision of labor she is minute and absolute,
providing for every duty its special exclusive agent. In the mind
there is as severe a sundering of functions as in the body, and the
intellect can no more encroach upon or act for the mental
sensibilities than the stomach can at need perform the