Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY JUNE 7, 1927. THE WASTE OF BEAUTY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16360, 7 June 1927, Page 6

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, TUESDAY JUNE 7, 1927. THE WASTE OF BEAUTY

Miss Maude Hoyden, an accomplished writer and popular speaker, in a recent address told her audience that “Beauty is everywehe; there is perhaps nothing in the whole of nature that is not beautiful." If Miss Royden was right, it might, be expected that every person would see beauty everywhere. The expectation can hardly be justified. If she is right Mid many persons have no recognition for what they see around them which is beautiful then beauty does appear to be wasted. Beauty, in this, as one of Nature’s gifts to man, occupies no solitary place. Her prodigality in her gilts, if it were not so common would be ascribed to miracle. A nation which developed among its po »ple, generally, a sense of beauty, at all proportional t.o the riches Nature offers, would live in peace within itself and with its neighbors. To be able to see beauty men have to work and live under beautiful conditions. Those who live in the slums of great cities, workers in stokeholds, abattoirs, factories, telephone rooms, mines underground, or tunnels must be in danger of becoming beauty blind. There may be a true foundation for the poet s belief tlutt every little child comes into the world “not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness . . . and by the vision splendid is on liis way attended" until, alas, the vision fades away “into the light of. common day." it is true that .the toil of life does net take up the whole of a man’s day. There arc still eight Hours left for sleep and eight hours for play. But what if the playground is ugly; the streets untidy; the. outside of the home neglected; if the civic sense for beauty, in those in authority, lias been lost in sympathy with the deforming examples of the tragic ugliness of l’owcr Board erections and motor vehicular traffic. Beauty is put to shame every day in what should be the homes of her children. Everything in Nature is beautiful. Miss Rovden’s message is needed us much in New Zealand as it was in England. The first settlers in a newly-settled country come along with axes and match boxes. They must be utilita rj.au s', because (hey have to live. They leave in their wake dead standing timber and blackened' wastes. This, too, is wealth, and therefore in its degree attractive. An artificial standard of

what is good to look upon replaces a natural one. The replacement of values lias some effect upon character; .Adjusting influences may have to be called into being to compensate for the loss of surrounding beauty in the daily life. The destruction of the virgin forests of New Zealand was unavoidable. It might certainly have been done less ruthlessly. Bush might have been preserved at least along riverbanks for the sake of the beauty retained and for the preservation of the river outlets to the sea. But settlement had to go on. The productive power latent in the land covered with bush was also a gift to 1 man. It vas a capital asset. And the beauty of the country where it can be left unreclaimed, its mountains and rivers, are also capital assets, which it is bad economy to sacrifice unduly. In preserving our beautiful bush aud native scenery we arc attracting to our shores many who cannot now find such sources for rest and quietness under conditions of great beauty, in the older countries of the world. In preserving the natural beauty of the country we are helping our own people, for natural beauty does elevate 'character whilo the drift to ugliness does carry away with it a true sense of human values. Addison wrote long ago that “ delightful scenes, whether in nature painting, or poetry have a kindly influence on the body, as well as the mind; and not only serve to clear and brighten the imagination, but are able to disperse grief and melancholy, and to set the animal spirits into pleasing aud agreeable motions.' ’ , A colorless world would be a world deprived of much of its beauty. Color makes up so much of.natural beauty that it is disconcerting to be told Hint color is not that which is produced on the flower, the insect, or tho bird, but, that these, from their chemical nature or mechanical texture, reflect light, of certain wave lengths while absorbing or neutralising ail others. “Color," the naturalists tell us, “is the effect upon our consciousness by light of certain wave lengths." They tell us that there is no evidence that the lower animals, especially tho mammals, perceive all the.shades and intensities, the contrasts an\l the harmonies, of colors as we perceive them, or that they are affected as we are with their unequalled beauty. Wallace in “The World of Life," related a suggestive fact that the development of the color sense through its utility, recoives least support from those animals which are nearest to us, and from which lie held we have been corporeally developed—the mammals; rathe? more support from those which have had a widely different origin—tho birds; aud apparently most from those furthest removed from us —the insects. Wallace thought that this fact disproved “development for utility" as the final cause of the color sense. On the other band he claimed that it “gives the strongest suppoit to the view that the ‘relined perception and enjoyment of color wo possess has not, and could not have been developed in us by its survival-value in our early struggle for existence, but that these faculties are, as Huxley remarked in regard to his enjoyment of scenery and music, “gratuitous gifts," and as such are powerful arguments for “a benevolent Author of the Universe." Color in New Zealand appears in sombre hues. The great exceptions to this rule are the unrivalled sunsets. Our birds aud insects are not spectacular. But sombre, as natural coloring is, we feel as if a blow' had fallen upon tis when told that colors, as apprehended by the imagination are only ideas in the mind, and not qualities that have any existence in matter: more exactly “that what is produced on the flower, the insect, or tho bird, is not color but a surface," peculiarly constituted for reflection, absolution, or neutralisation. Something appears to" have been taken out of life. If this is so with color, may it not bo so with all forms of beauty { Is imagination to be so stunted and dwarfed? Although these problems are bewildering and not capable of profitable pursuit, it docs add to man’s apparent place in the Universe to realise that his capacity for enjoying what is beautiful comes from within himself rather than from without. It adds to human responsibilities. We are no longer beings isolate. Man is so identified with the secrets of creation, and the very origin and source of life, that he is able, if he chooses, to rise to the highest ideals of thought and action through perception of what is beautiful. The prodigal profusion, and apparent waste, of beauty, to be seen on every side by discerning eyes, is an invitation, and an inspiration for the highest life.