r liquid, big or small, warm or cold, and
these qualities are variously modified. The coolness of a water-lily
rounding into bloom is different from the coolness of an evening wind in
summer, and different again from the coolness of the rain that soaks
into the hearts of growing things and gives them life and body. The
velvet of the rose is not that of a ripe peach or of a baby's dimpled
cheek. The hardness of the rock is to the hardness of wood what a man's
deep bass is to a woman's voice when it is low. What I call beauty I
find in certain combinations of all these qualities, and is largely
derived from the flow of curved and straight lines which is over all
things.

"What does the straight line mean to you?" I think you will ask.

It _means_ several things. It symbolizes duty. It seems to have the
quality of inexorableness that duty has. When I have something to do
that must not be set aside, I feel as if I were going forward in a
straight line, bound to arrive somewhere, or go on forever without
swerving to the right or to the left.

That is what it means. To escape this moralizing you should ask, "How
does the straight line feel?" It feels, as I suppose it looks,
straight--a dull thought drawn out endlessly. Eloquence to the touch
resides not in straight lines, but in unstraight lines, or in many
curved and straight lines together. They appear and disappear, are now
deep, now shallow, now broken off or lengthened or swelling. They rise
and sink beneath my fingers, they are full of sudden starts and pauses,
and their variety is inexhaustible and wonderful. So you see I am not
shut out from the region of the beautiful, though my hand cannot
perceive the brilliant colours in the sunset or on the mountain, or
reach into the blue depths of the sky.

Physics tells me that I am well off in a world which, I am told, knows
neither cold nor sound, but is made in terms of size, shape, and
inherent qualities; for at least every object appears to my fingers
standing solidly right side up, and is not an inverted image on the
retina which, I understand, your brain is at infinite though unconscious
labour to set back on its feet. A tangible object passes complete into
my brain with the warmth of life upon it, and occupies the same place
that it does in space; for, without egotism, the mind is as large as the
universe. When I think of hills, I think of the upward strength I tread
upon. When water is the object of my thought, I