Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/490

476 higher purposes to serve in this world than mere subservience to the physical wants of man. There is a much higher utility than the mere temporary and worldly one. The useful things of external life, indeed, should not be undervalued; they are the first things required, but they are not the sole or the highest things necessary. Man must have food and clothing in order to live; but it must also be remembered that man does not live by bread and the conveniences of external life alone. When any one does live by these alone, he has forfeited his claim to the higher form of life which is his glorious privilege, and by which he is distinguished from the lower animals. Nature throughout her whole wide domains gives no countenance to such a materialistic exclusiveness. She is at once utilitarian and transcendental. Uses and beauties intermingle. All that is useful is around us; but how much more is there besides? There is a strange superfluous glory in the summer air; there is marvellous beauty in the forms and hues of flowers; there is an enchanting sweetness in the song of birds and the murmur of waters; there are a divine grandeur and loveliness in the landscapes of earth and the scenery of the heavens, the changes of the seasons, the dissolving splendors of morning, noon, sunset, and night, utterly incomprehensible upon the theory of Nature's exclusive utilitarianism. "The tree which shades the wayfarer in the noontide heat adorns the landscape; and the flower which gives honey to the bee sheds its perfume on the air. A leaf no less than a flower fulfils the functions of life, ministers to the necessities of man, yet clothes itself, and adorns the earth in tapestries richer than the robes of kings." All things proclaim that the Divine Architect, while amply providing for the physical wants of his creatures, has not forgotten their spiritual necessities and enjoyments; and, having implanted in the human soul a yearning for the beautiful, has surrounded us with a thousand objects by whose charms that yearning may be gratified. And one of the most striking examples of this Divine care is to be seen in the profusion of minute objects spread around us, which apparently have no direct influence at all upon man's physical nature, and have no connection with his corporeal necessities. These objects, subserving no gross utilitarian purpose, are intended to educate man's spiritual faculties by the beauties of form, the wonders of structure, and the adaptations of economy which they display. Their beauty is sufficient reason for their existence, were there no other. When their varied and exquisitely symmetrical forms are presented to the eye under the microscope, a thrill of pleasure is experienced, calm and pure, because free from all taint of passion, and felt all the more intensely because nameless and indefinite. We are brought face to face with perfection in its most wonderful aspect—the perfection of minuteness and detail; with objects which bear most deeply impressed upon them the signet-mark of their Maker; and we observe with speechless admiration that the Divine attention is acuminated and his skill concentrated on these