(no subject)
a nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of Beauty... such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye. that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight i and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline, color, motion, and grouping. this seems partly owing to the eye itself. the eye is the best of artists. by the mutual action of its structure and of the laws, perspective is produced, which integrates every mass of objects, of what charater soever, into a well colored and shaded globe, so that where the particular objects are mean and unaffecting, the landscape which they compose is round and symmetrical. and as the eye is the best composer, so light is the frist of painters. there is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful. and the stimulous it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath, like space and time, make all matter gay. even the corpse has it's own beauty. but besides this general grace diffused over nature, almost all the individual forms are agreeable to the eye, as is proved by our endless imitations of some of them, as the acorn, the grape, this pine-cone, the wheat-ear. the egg, this wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw, the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames, clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many trees, as the palm.
--ralph waldo emmerson nature