regarding it by itself or for its own sake, and, therefore, not as beautiful. To say, as we have said, in general terms, that mind and its artistic beauty stand _higher_ than natural beauty, is no doubt to determine almost nothing. For "higher" is an utterly indefinite expression, which designates the beauty of nature and that of art as if merely standing side by side in the space of the imagination, and states the difference between them as purely quantitative, and, therefore, purely external. But the mind and its artistic beauty, in being "_higher_" as compared with nature, have a distinction which is not simply relative. Mind, and mind only, is capable of truth, and comprehends in itself all that is, so that whatever is beautiful can only be really and truly beautiful as partaking in this higher element and as created thereby. In this sense the beauty of nature reveals itself as but a reflection of the beauty which belongs to the mind, as an imperfect, incomplete mode of being, as a mode whose really substantial element is contained in the mind itself. Moreover, we shall find the restriction to fine art very natural, for however much has been and is said--though less by the ancients than by ourselves--of the beauties of nature, yet no one has taken it into his head to emphasize the point of view of the _beauty_ of natural objects, and to attempt to make a science, a systematic account of these beauties. The aspect of _Utility_, indeed, has been accentuated, and a science, _e.g._ of natural things useful against diseases a _materia medica_, has been compiled, consisting in a description of minerals, chemical products, plants, and animals that are of use for curative purposes. But the realm of nature has not been arrayed and estimated under the aspect of beauty. In dealing with natural beauty we find ourselves too open to _vagueness_, and too destitute of a _criterion_; for which reason such a review would have little interest. The above prefatory remarks upon beauty in nature and in art, upon the relation between the two, and the exclusion of the former from the region of the subject proper, are meant to remove any idea that the limitation of our science is owing merely to choice and to caprice. But this is not the place to _demonstrate_ the above relation, for the consideration of it falls within our science itself, and therefore it cannot be discussed and demonstrated till later. Supposing that for the present we have limited ourselves to the beauty of art, this first step brings us at once into contact with fresh difficulties.