Crystallisation having once begun, we enjoy with delight each new
beauty discovered in that which we love.
But what is beauty? It is the appearance of an aptitude for giving you
pleasure.
The pleasures of all individuals are different and often opposed to one
another; which explains very well how that, which is beauty for one
individual, is ugliness for another. (Conclusive example of Del Rosso
and Lisio, 1st January, 1820.)
The right way to discover the nature of beauty is to look for the
nature of the pleasures of each individual. Del Rosso, for example,
needs a woman who allows a certain boldness of movement, and who by her
smiles authorises considerable licence; a woman who at each instant
holds physical pleasures before his imagination, and who excites in him
the power of pleasing, while giving him at the same time the means of
displaying it.
Apparently, by love Del Rosso understands physical love, and Lisio
passion-love. Obviously they are not likely to agree about the word
beauty.[1]
The beauty then, discovered by you, being the appearance of an aptitude
for giving you pleasure, and pleasure being different from pleasure as
man from man, the crystallisation formed in the head of each individual
must bear the colour of that individual's pleasures.
[Pg 44]
A man's crystallisation of his mistress, or her _beauty_, is no other
thing than the collection of all the satisfactions of all the desires,
which he can have felt successively at her instance.
[1] _My Beauty_, promise of a character useful to _my_ soul, is above
the attraction of the senses; that attraction is only one particular
kind of attraction(7). 1815.
[Pg 45]