THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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lectual ambition. The body is the temple and agent of the mind; without it the soul has no earthly mission. But the more than incidental factor of higher culture is the aesthetic; it is by this that refinement distinguishes itself from the crudities of uncult­ivated nature, even as the loveliness and fragrance of the rose asserts its difference to the wild brier bloom; it is this that hangs the diamond-bestudded drapery about the portals and columns and corridors of the temple of humanity. If there were no love in man for the beautiful in nature and in human life, the uplifting of humanity above its conditions of savagery were a hopeless prospect. What makes life more than a struggle for existence? What dignifies labor above the demands of animal nature? What inspires human enterprise to more than a conflict with hunger and cold? Is it not a response of the spirit of man to the language of the beautiful? What has made homes more than the hovel, the wigwam and the hut? Have we not in ornate architecture, in decorated drawing-rooms, in cultured music and bower-bedecked lawns a symbol of the Divine impress upon the soul? Does not all nature voice God’s love of the beau­tiful? We shadow the Divine image in man when his aesthetic culture is neglected. It is, indeed, next to impossible to intelligently think of a pure life and high social con­ditions where there is no development of the latent aestheticism of the soul. If man’s material surroundings awakened in him no thought but that of sensual gratifications, and inspired no effort but for aggrandizement, what were he but a savage did he see no beauty in the sparkling worlds above ? If to him there were no music of the spheres, no mountain grandeur, no awe in the fathomless deep, whence could come aspirations for soul-uplifting, and what could inspire heroic contests for the freedom of thought from the bondage of animalism? In every human soul there are germs of the beauti­ful; they may be hidden and suppressed by unpropitious conditions. The Divine mis­sion of culture is to evolve from lowest to highest forms all that is excellent,

Forms nearly angelic have been evolved from «prude and rude originals. Sym­phonies as sweet as Apollo’s lute have been tempted from rustic lips. The spirit and genius of a Mendelssohn or a Wagner may linger pent up in some breast waiting the touch of generous circumstances, that it may break forth in harmonies divine. Some­where in obscurity lives today one “who sees in stately trees, in frowning cliffs, in rolling clouds and in majestic rivers the symbols of that personal greatness, purity and lofti­ness of thought, splendor of diction, that is to enthuse multitudes, enchain senates and indelibly write his name upon his country’s heart. If the aesthetic is a real force, can it be intelligently denied that the ethical element of our nature is quickened and refined by aesthetic culture? May I not the better express my thought by re-shaping my ques­tion? Can there be, is there any true culture where the aesthetic is ignored, or even neglected? He who sees no beauty in an autumnal sky as the luminous king slips behind the gilded curtains of the Occident, no charms in the morning beauty of the diamond-decked grass and flower, is he who sees no beauty in virtue, no charm in pure love, no merit in right, and no loveliness in sympathy; such a one, be he an astute logician or an accomplished linguist, an expert mathematician, a skillful chemist, a learned jurist, a Napoleon of finance, or a prince of politicians, yet void of sympathy with life as it is, has not met the demands of his nature. For true culture is the modi­fication of intellect under the force of ethical principles, developed and refined by cult­ured love of the beautiful in nature and in life. My plea is for the rounded, symmet­rical development of humankind into the highest forms of culture, that man may be a full expression of power and beauty.