t qu'au fond la pensee
humaine est une, quelle que soit la diversite des objets auxquels
elle s'applique, art, science, poesie, metaphysique, repondant,
chacun a sa facon au meme desir, chacun refletant dans la
conscience humaine les multiples aspects de la vie
innombrable."

CHAPTER XIV

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE UGLY

A charge frequently brought against the nature-mystic is that he
ignores the dark side of nature, and shuts his eyes to the ugly
and repulsive features of the world of external phenomena. If
nature can influence man's spiritual development, what (it is
asked) can be the effect of its forbidding and revolting aspects?
Is the champion of cosmic emotion and of Nature Mysticism
prepared to find a place for the ugly in his general scheme? The
issue is grave and should not be shirked. It is, moreover, of long
standing, having been gripped in its essentials by many thinkers
of the old world, more especially by Plato, Aristotle, and
Plotinus.

Let us begin by examining one or two characteristic statements
of the indictment that there are ugly, and even revolting, objects
in a world we would fain think fair. Jefferies says of certain
creatures captured in the sea: "They have no shape, form, grace,
or purpose; they call up a vague sense of chaos which the mind
revolts from. . . . They are not inimical of intent towards man,
not even the shark; but there the shark is, and that is enough.
These miserably hideous things of the sea are not anti-human in
the sense of persecution, they are outside, they are ultra and
beyond. It is like looking into chaos, and it is vivid because
these creatures, interred alive a hundred fathoms deep, are
seldom seen; so that the mind sees them as if only that moment
they had come into existence. Use has not habituated it to them,
so that their anti-human character is at once apparent, and stares
at us with glassy eye."

Kingsley, in his "At Last," asks, "Who will call the Puff Adder
of the Cape, or the Fer-de-lance, anything but horrible and ugly;
not only for the hostility signified, to us at least, by a flat
triangular head and heavy jaw, but by the look of malevolence
and craft signified, to us at least, by the eye and lip?"

Frederic Harrison puts the case from the more general point of
view: "The world is not all radiant and harmonious; it is often
savage and chaotic. In thought we can see only the bright, but in
hard fact we are brought face to face with the dark side.