Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/181

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Use and Ornament
161

time being, to accept the ordinary limiting distinction, so that the finer and less realised uses of beauty and delight may be shown more clearly as the true end to which all lesser uses should converge.

Life itself is a usage of material, the bringing together of atoms into form; and we know, from what science teaches of evolution, that this usage has constantly been in the direction of forms of life which, for certain reasons, we describe as "higher." Emerging through those forms have come manifestations or qualities, which quite obviously give delight to the holders of them; and we are able to gather in watching them, as they live, move, and have their being, that for them life seems good. It is no part of their acceptance of what has come that they are here not to enjoy themselves.

Thus we see from the upward trend of creation a faculty for enjoyment steadily emerging, and existing side by side with fears, risks, and hardships which the struggle for existence entails—probably an even increased faculty for enjoyment, as those fears and risks become more consciously part of their lives. And I question whether we should think that the wild deer had chosen well, could it resign its apprehension of death at the drinking-*place for the sake of becoming a worm—the wriggling but scarcely conscious prey of the early bird.

Man (the most conscious prey of death)