huparchei. ton d
hallon zoon ouden eudaimonei. hepeide oudame koinonei
theorias.]--Arist. Eth. Lib. 10th. The concluding book of the Ethics
should be carefully read. It is all most valuable.

CHAPTER XII.

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 w