But, Memory of what sort of experiences ?
Memory either of formerly attained wisdom and virtue — in which case we have a better man and the argument from memory is given up — or memory of past pleasures, as if the man that has arrived at felicity must roam far and wide in search of gratifications and is not contented by the bliss actually within him.
And what is there pleasant in the memory of pleasure ? What is it to recall yesterday’s excellent dinner ? Still more ridiculous, one of ten years ago. So, too, of last year’s morality.
But is there not something to be said for the memory of the various forms of beauty ?
That is the resource of a man whose life is without beauty in the present, so that, for lack of it now, he grasps at the memory of what has been.
But, it may be said, length of time produces an abundance of good actions missed by the man whose attainment of the happy state is recent — if indeed we can think at all of a state of happiness where good actions have been few.
Now to make multiplicity, whether in time or in action, essential to Happiness is to put it together by combining non-existents, represented by the past, with some one thing that actually is. This consideration it
I. 6. i]
was that led us at the very beginning to place Happiness in the actually existent and on that basis to launch our enquiry as to whether the higher degree was determined by the longer time. It might be thought that the Happiness of longer date must surpass the shorter by virtue of the greater number of acts it included.
But, to begin with, men quite outside of the active life may attain the state of felicity, and not in a less but in a greater degree than men of affairs.
Secondly, the good does not derive from the act itself but from the inner disposition which prompts the noble conduct : the wise and good man in his very action harvests the good not by what he does but by what he is.
A wicked man no less than a Sage may save the country, and the good of the act is for all alike, no matter whose was the saving hand. The contentment of the Sage does not hang upon such actions and events : it is his own inner habit that creates at once his felicity and whatever pleasure may accompany it.
To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul ; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself ; and this, this alone, is Happiness.
Beauty
Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight ; but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations of words and in all kinds of music, for melodies and cadences are beautiful ; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect ; and there is the beauty of the virtues. What loftier beauty there may be, yet, our argument will bring to light.
What, then, is it that gives comeliness to material forms and draws
the ear to the sweetness perceived in sounds, and what is the secret of the beauty there is in all that derives from Soul ?
Is there some One Principle from which all take their grace, or is there a beauty peculiar to the embodied and another for the bodiless ? Finally, one or many, what would such a Principle be ?
Consider that some things, material shapes for instance, are gracious not by anything inherent but by something communicated, while others are lovely of themselves, as, for example. Virtue.
The same bodies appear sometimes beautiful, sometimes not ; so that there is a good deal between being body and being beautiful.
What, then, is this something that shows itself in certain material forms ? This is the natural beginning of our enquiry.
What is it that attracts the eyes of those to whom a beautiful object is presented, and calls them, lures them, towards it, and fills them with joy at the sight ? If we possess ourselves of this, we have at once a standpoint for the wider survey.
Almost everyone declares that the symmetry of parts towards each other and towards a whole, with, besides, a certain charm of colour, constitutes the beauty recognised by the eye, that in visible things, as indeed in all else, universally, the beautiful thing is essentially sym- metrical, patterned.
But think what this means.
Only a compound can be beautiful, never anything devoid of parts ; and only a whole ; the several parts will have beauty, not in themselves, but only as working together to give a comely total. Yet beauty in an aggregate demands beauty in details ; it cannot be constructed out of ugliness ; its law must run throughout.
All the loveliness of colour and even the hght of the sun; being devoid of parts and so not beautiful by symmetry, must be ruled out of the realm of beauty. And how comes gold to be a beautiful thing ? And lightning by night, and the stars, why are these so fair ?
In sounds also the simple must be proscribed, though often in a whole noble composition each several tone is dehcious in itself.
Again since the one face, constant in symmetry, appears sometimes
fair and sometimes not, can we doubt that beauty is something more than symmetry, that symmetry itself owes its beauty to a remoter principle ?
Turn to what is attractive in methods of life or in the expression of thought ; are we to call in symmetry here ? What symmetry is to be found in noble conduct, or excellent laws, in any form of mental pursuit ?
Wliat symmetry can there be in points of abstract thought ?
The symmetry of being accordant with each other ? But there may be accordance or entire identity where there is nothing but ugliness : the proposition that honesty is merely a generous artlessness chimes in the most perfect harmony with the proposition that morahty means weakness of will ; the accordance is complete.
Then again, all the virtues are a beauty of the soul, a beauty authentic beyond any of these others ; but how does symmetry enter here ? The soul, it is true, is not a simple unity, but still its virtue cannot have the s}^mmetry of size or of number ; what standard of measurement could preside over the compromise or the coalescence of the soul’s faculties or purposes ?
Finally, how by this theory would there be beauty in the Intellectual- Principle, essentially the solitary ?
Let us, then, go back to the source, and indicate at once the Principle that bestows beauty on material things.
Undoubtedly this Principle exists ; it is something that is per- ceived at the first glance, something which the soul names as from an ancient knowledge and, recognising, welcomes it, enters into unison with it.
But let the soul fall in with the Ugly and at once it shrinks within itself, denies the thing, turns away from it, not accordant, resenting it.
Our interpretation is that the soul — by the very truth of its nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being —
when it sees anything of that kin, or any trace of that kinship, thrills with an immediate dehght, takes its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature and of all its affinity.
But, is there any such likeness between the lovehness of this world and the splendours in the Supreme ? .Such a likeness in the particulars would make the two orders alike : but what is there in common between beauty here and beauty There ?
We hold that all the loveliness of this world comes by communion in Ideal-Form.
All shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly by that very isolation from the Divine-Thought. And this is the Absolute Ugly : an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and in all respects to Ideal- Form.
But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and co- ordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity : it has rallied confusion into co-operation : it has made the sum one harmonious coherence : for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may.
And on what has thus been compacted to unity. Beauty enthrones itself, giving itself to the parts as to the sum : when it lights on some natural unity, a thing of like parts, then it gives itself to that whole. Thus, for an illustration, there is the beauty, conferred by craftsmanship, of all a house with all its parts, and the beauty which some natural quahty may give to a single stone.
This, then, is how the material thing becomes beautiful — by com- municating in the thought that flows from the Divine.
And the soul includes a faculty peculiarly addressed to Beauty — one incomparably sure in the appreciation of its own, never in doubt whenever any lovely thing presents itself for judgement.
Or perhaps the soul itself acts immediately, affirming the Beautiful
where it finds something accordant with the Ideal-Form within itself, using this Idea as a canon of accuracy in its decision.
But what accordance is there between the material and that which antedates all Matter ?
On what principle does the architect, when he finds the house standing before him correspondent with his inner ideal of a house, pronounce it beautiful ? Is it not that the house before him, the stones apart, is the inner idea stamped upon the mass of exterior matter, the indivisible exhibited in diversity ?
So with the perceptive faculty : discerning in certain objects the Ideal-Form which has bound and controlled shapeless matter, opposed in nature to Idea, seeing further stamped upon the common shapes some shape excellent above the common, it gathers into unity what still remains fragmentary, catches it up and carries it within, no longer a thing of parts, and presents it to the Ideal-Principle as something concordant and congenial, a natural friend : the joy here is like that of a good man who discerns in a youth the early signs of a virtue consonant with the achieved perfection within his own soul.
The beauty of colour is also the outcome of a unification : it derives from shape, from the conquest of the darkness inherent in Matter by the pouring-in of light, the unembodied, which is a Rational-Principle and an Ideal-Form.
Hence it is that Fire itself is splendid beyond all material bodies, holding the rank of Ideal-Principle to the other elements, making ever upwards, the subtlest and sprightliest of all bodies, as very near to the unembodied ; itself alone admitting no other, all the others penetrated by it : for they take warmth but this is never cold ; it has colour primally ; they receive the Form of colour from it : hence the splendour of its light, the splendour that belongs to the Idea. And all that has resisted and is but uncertainly held by its light remains outside of beauty, as not having absorbed the plenitude of the Form of colour.
And harmonies unheard in sound create the harmonies we hear and wake the soul to the consciousness of beauty, showing it the one essence in another kind : for the measures of our sensible music are not
arbitrary but are determined by the Principle whose labour is to dominate Matter and bring pattern into being.
Thus far of the beauties of the realm of sense, images and shadow- pictures, fugitives that have entered into Matter — to adorn, and to ravish, where they are seen.
But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense- bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place.