Waste,
ruin, conflict, rot, are about us everywhere. . . . We need as little
think this earth all beauty as think it all horror. It is made up of
loveliness and ghastliness; of harmony and chaos; of agony,
joy, life, death. The nature-worshippers are blind and deaf to the
waste and the shrieks which meet the seeker after truth. . . . The
poets indeed are the true authors of the beauty and order of
nature; for they see it by the eye of genius. And they alone see
it. Coldly, literally examined, beauty and horror, order and
disorder seem to wage an equal and eternal war."
In considering the substance of these strong statements,
characteristic of very different types of mind, we note in the
first place that two different problems are to some extent fused--
that of the ugly, and that of the morally evil. Of course, it is
frequently impossible to separate them; still, for purposes of
analysis, the attempt should be made; especially as our present
quest is aesthetic rather than ethical.
In the second place it must be remembered that the nature-mystic
is by no means a nature-worshipper. His claim of kinship
with nature surely implies the contrary! He knows that
evil and ugliness (however interpreted) are in man, and he
expects therefore to find them permeating the whole.
Confining our attention as far as may be to the aesthetic aspect
of the objections raised, let us at once define and face the
real issue now before us, namely, the significance for the
nature-mystic of what is called "ugliness.
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