As, then, from all that has been said, it appears that all the elements of beauty which have thus been noticed, belong to inanimate beings, and as this is shown by the passages I have quoted from the best writers, it seems surprising, not merely that they should not have seen this to be the case, but, that it should not have led them to observe, that there exists also a second beauty, of living beings, and third, of thinking beings, as well as others of the useful, the ornamental, and the intellectual arts respectively, in each of which some new element was only added to the characters of the preceding species. It seems still more surprising that Alison, who deviates so widely from all fundamental principles, should have actually stumbled upon an observation of a few of the characteristics of inanimate beings, and traced them as they pass upward through some living and thinking beings--whose new characteristics, however, he did not discriminate. He observes, that "the greater part of those bodies in nature, which possess hardness, strength, or durability, are distinguished by angular forms. The greater part of those bodies, on the contrary, which possess weakness, fragility, or delicacy, are distinguished by winding or curvilinear forms. In the mineral kingdom, all rocks, stones, and metals, the hardest and most durable bodies we know, assume universally angular forms. In the vegetable kingdom, all strong and durable plants are in general distinguished by similar forms. The feebler and more delicate race of vegetables, on the contrary, are mostly distinguished by winding forms. In the animal kingdom, in the same manner, strong and powerful animals are generally characterized by angular forms; feeble and delicate animals, by forms of the contrary kind."[13] SECTION II. ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN LIVING BEINGS. I have now to show that, in living beings, while the characters of the first and fundamental beauty, that of inanimate beings, are still partially continued, new characteristics are added to them. Plants accordingly possess both rigid parts, like some of those described in the preceding section, and delicate parts, which, in ascending through the classes of natural beings from the simplest to the most complex, are the very first to present to us new and additional characters totally distinct from those of the preceding class. I. To begin as nature does, then, we find the trunks and stems of plants, which are near the ground, resembling most in character the inanimate bodies from among which they spring. They assume the simplest and most universal form in nature, the round one; but as growth is their great function, they extend in height and become cylindrical.