Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/179

Rh physical benefit, so science now tells us, would be less also.

For some reason or another, which is occasionally hard to define, you find pleasure in a thing over and above its use; and I want to persuade you that the finer instinct, the genius of the human race, tends always in that direction—not to rest content with the mere use of a thing, but to lay upon it that additional touch of adornment—whether by well-selected material, or craftsman's skill, or social amenity, which shall make it a thing delightful to our senses or to our intelligence.

Take, for instance, so simple a thing as a wine-glass, or a water-glass. Materially, it is subject to a very considerable drawback; it is brittle, and if broken is practically unmendable. From the point of view of utility, strength, cheapness, cleanliness, it has no advantage over hardware or china. But in its relation to beverages beautiful in colour and of a clear transparency, glass has a delightfulness which greatly enhances the pleasure of its use. There is a subtle relation between the sparkle of the glass, and the sparkle produced in the brain by the sight and the taste of good wine (or—let me add, for the benefit of temperance members of my audience—of good ginger-ale). I think one could also trace a similar delight to the relations subsisting between glass in its transparency and a draught of pure water.

That relationship set up between two or