and are delighted by the variety of results which
the Divine intelligence has attained in the various involutions of these
quantities, and perhaps most when, to outward appearance, such
proportions have been violated; more by the slenderness of the campanula
than the security of the pine.

Sec. 16. And animals.

What is obscure in plants, is utterly incomprehensible in animals, owing
to the greater number of means employed and functions performed. To
judge of expedient proportion in them, we must know all that each member
has to do, all its bones, all its muscles, and the amount of nervous
energy communicable to them; and yet, forasmuch as we have more
experience and instinctive sense of the strength of muscles than of
wood, and more practical knowledge of the use of a head or a foot than
of a flower or a stem, we are much more likely to presume upon our
judgment respecting proportions here, we are very apt to assert that the
plesiosaurus and camelopard have necks too long, that the turnspit has
legs too short, and the elephant a body too ponderous.

But the painfulness arising from the idea of this being the case is
occasioned partly by our sympathy with the animal, partly by our false
apprehension of incompletion in the Divine work,[21] nor in either case
has it any connection with impressions of that typical beauty of which
we are at present speaking; though some, perhaps, with that vital beauty
which will hereafter come under discussion.

Sec. 17. Summary.

I wish therefore the reader to hold, respecting proportion generally.
First, That apparent proportion, or the melodious connection of
quantities, is a cause of unity, and therefore one of the sources of all
beautiful form. Secondly, That constructive proportion is agreeable to
the mind when it is known or supposed, and that its seeming absence is
painful in a like degree, but that this pleasure and pain have nothing
in common with those dependent on ideas of beauty.

Farther illustrations of the value of unity I shall reserve for our
detailed examination, as the bringing them forward here would interfere
with the general idea of the subject-matter of the theoretic faculty
which I wish succinctly to convey.

FOOTNOTES

[14] Compare Chap. ix. Sec. 5, note.

[15] Spenser's various forest is the Forest of Error.

[16] It must be matter of no small wonderment to practical men to
observe how grossly the nature and connection of unity and va