Beauty by David Neagle
Do we sufficiently direct our thoughts to the subject of Beauty? I think not.
We are too apt to regard Beauty as a merely superficial thing, and do not realize all that it implies. This was not the case with the great thinkers of the ancient world -- see the place which no less a one than Plato gives to Beauty as the expression of all that is highest and greatest in the system of the universe. These great men of old were no superficial thinkers, and, therefore, would never have elevated to the supreme place that which is only superficial. Therefore, we shall do well to ask,
"What it is that these great minds found in the idea of Beauty which made it thus appeal to them as the most perfect outward expression of all that lies deepest in the fundamental laws of Being?" It is because, rightly apprehended, Beauty represents the most supreme living quality of Thought. It is the glorious overflowing of fullness of Love which indicates the presence of infinite reserves of Power behind it. It is the joyous profusion that shows the possession of inexhaustible stores of wealth which can afford to be thus lavish and yet remain as exhaustless as before. Read aright, Beauty is the index to the whole nature of Being.
Beauty is the externalization of Harmony, and Harmony is the coordinated working of all the powers of Being, both in the individual and in the relation of the individual to the Infinite from which it springs; and therefore this Harmony conducts us at once into the presence of the innermost undifferentiated Life.
Thus Beauty is in most immediate touch with the very Arcanum (secret known to few) of Life; it is the brightness of glory spreading itself over the sanctuary of the Divine Spirit. For if, viewed from without, Beauty is the province of the artist and the poet, and lays hold of our emotions and appeals directly to the innermost feelings of our heart, calling up the response of that within us which recognizes itself in the harmony perceived without, this is only because it speeds across the bridge of Reason with such quick feet that we pass from the
outmost to the inmost and back again in the twinkling of an eye; but the bridge is still there and, retracing our steps more leisurely, we shall find that, viewed from within, Beauty is no less the province of the calm reasoner and analyst.
What the poet and the artist seize upon intuitionally, he elaborates gradually, but the result is the same in both cases; for no intuition is true which does not admit of being expanded into a rational sequence of intelligible factors, and no argument is true which does not admit of being condensed into that rapid
suggestion which is intuition.
Thus the impassioned artist and the calm thinker both find that the only true Beauty proceeds naturally from the actual construction of that which it expresses. It is not something added on as an afterthought, but something pre-existing in the original idea, something to which that idea naturally leads up, and which pre-supposes that idea as affording it any raison d'être. The test of Beauty is, What does it express? Is it merely a veneer, a coat of paint laid on from without? Then it is indeed nothing but a whited sepulcher, (a sepulcher is a
burial place or container for relics. Pronounced (sepp'lker)) a covering to hide the vacuity or deformity which needs to be removed.
But is it the true and natural outcome of what is beneath the surface? Then it is the index to super abounding Life and Love and Intelligence, which is not content with mere utilitarianism hasting to escape at the earliest possible point from the labor of construction, as though from an enforced and unwelcome task, but rejoicing over its work and unwilling to quit it until it has expressed this rejoicing in every fittest touch of form and color and exquisite proportion that the material will admit of, and this without departing by a hairbreadth from the original purpose of the design.
Wherever, therefore, we find Beauty, we may infer an enormous reserve of Power behind it; in fact, we may look upon it as the visible expression of the great truth that Life-Power is infinite. And when the inner meaning of Beauty is thus revealed to us, and we learn to know it as the very fullness and overflowing of Power, we shall find that we have gained a new standard for the guidance of our own lives.
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Beauty.html
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"