colours, This is not merely a deficiency. By means of this approach and simplification he fancies colourharmonies into the things which have a great charm and may greatly enrich Nature. Perhaps this has been the way in which mankind first learned to delight in the aspect of existence; this existence being first of all represented to them in one or two shades, and consequently harmonised. They practised, as it were, these few shades before they could pass on to more. And even now many an individual works himself from a partial colour-blindness into a richer faculty of sight and discernment, and thus not only discovers new pleasures, but is obliged also to abandon and lose some of the former ones.
427
The embellishment of science.—Just as the view that "Nature is ugly, wild, tedious—we must embellish it (embellir la Nature)"—gave rise to the rococo horticulture, so the view that "science is ugly, dry, cheerless, difficult, wearisome—we must embellish it"—invariably gives birth to a something called philosophy. It is bent upon doing that which all art and poetry aim at— namely, first and foremost affording diversion; but it wants to do so in conformity with its hereditary pride, ill a loftier and higher mode, before the best intellects. It is no mean ambition to create for these intellects a kind of horticulture, whose principal charm, as that of
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