The existence of beauty in the world is a very remarkable fact. On the theory of a Divine and beneficent Creator, this fact has seemed no difficulty; but the theory of a mere blind fermentation of matter gives no account of it, except as a mere accident, which, on the doctrine of chances, should be perhaps a very rare and unusual accident. Hence the existence of beauty has from of old been a favourite theme of the theistic believers. "Let them know how much better the Lord of them is," says the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, speaking of the works of Nature, "for the first Author of beauty hath created them ... for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen."[1] The same familiar view has lately been presented by the Duke of Argyll in his "Reign of Law":[2]-- "It would be to doubt the evidence of our senses and of our reason, or else to assume hypotheses of which there is no proof whatever, if we were to doubt that mere ornament, mere variety, are as much an end and aim in the workshop of Nature as they are known to be in the workshop of the goldsmith and the jeweller. Why should they not? The love and desire of these is universal in the mind of man. It is seen not more distinctly in the highest forms of civilized art than in the habits of the rudest savage, who covers with elaborate carving the handle of his war-club or the prow of his canoe. Is it likely that this universal aim and purpose of the mind of man should be wholly without relation to the aims and purposes of his Creator? He that formed the eye to see beauty, shall He not see it? He that gave the human hand its cunning to work for beauty, shall His hand never work for it? How, then, shall we account for all the beauty of the world--for the careful provision made for it where it is only the secondary object, not the first?" But even if beauty be always associated with utility and have in fact been brought about by its utility, it may nevertheless have been an object in the mind of a Divine artificer, who may have been minded to use the one as a means and end to the other. We may therefore, I think, approach the subject with a perfect freedom from any theological bias. The whole subject will, I believe, be felt by some persons to be a piece of moonshine,--the whole discussion fit for cloudland, not for this practical solid world of ours. Beauty, such persons would say, is not a real thing, an objective fact: it is a part of man, not of the world--it is in him who sees, not in the thing seen: it is seen by one man in one thing--by another man in another.