oyment.

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 sy