To draw one beauty into the heart's core
And keep it changeless.
* * * * *
Yet how transient is the appearance of beauty. It has an eternity not
in itself but in the heart. Thus I look out at the ever-changing ocean
and suddenly, involuntarily ejaculate, "How beautiful!" yet before
I can call another to witness the scene it has changed. Only in the
heart the beauty is preserved. Thus we see a woman in her youth and
beauty, and then in a few years look again and find her worn and old.
The beauty has passed away; its eternity is in the heart.
We have a choice, to live in the shadow and shine of the outer life
where visions fade, or to live with all the beauty we have ever known,
where it is treasured, in the heart. Choosing the former we at last
perish with the world, but choosing the latter we ourselves receive an
immortality in the here and now. The one who chooses the latter shall
never grow old, and the beauty of his world can never pass away.
* * * * *
Nietzsche could not tolerate the doctrine of the "immaculate
perception" of Beauty. To him Beauty was _une promesse de bonheur_;
Beauty was a lure and a temptation, it had no virtue in itself, but
its value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature.
Thus the beauty hung in woman's face was a device of the Life-force
for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange
ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named
as the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation of
man's will. The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplation
of Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at night
and giving the earth only dreams; but the Stendhalian conception of
Beauty as a promise of happiness he likened to the sun looking at the
earth and causing her to bear fruit.
Darwin as much as said, "Beauty has been the gleam which the instinct
of the race has followed in its upward development. Beauty has been
the genius of Evolution." Thus science has lent its authority to
philosophy. The idea is charming. In its power it is irresistible. It
certainly dominates modern literary art, being the principal dynamic
of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw and all their followers.
It is a very important matter. There can be nothing more important in
literary art, and indeed in one's articulate conception of the meaning
of life, than the notion of what is beautiful. What if this conception
be narrow, what if it be simply a generalisation, a generalisation
from too few observations? What if the wish were father to the
thought?
The only test of philosophy and art is experience. And it is the
wanderer, the life-explorer without irrelevant preoccupations, who
is the true naturalist, collecting experiences and making maps for
spiritual eyes. What then does the wanderer note?
First, that the knowledge of the beautiful is an affirmation.
Something in the soul suddenly rises up and ejaculates "Yes" to some
outside phenomenon, and then he is aware that he is looking at Beauty.
As he gazes he knows himself in communion with what he sees--sometimes
that communion is a great joy and sometimes a great sadness. Thus,
looking at the opening of dawn he is filled with gladness, his spirits
rising with the sun; he wishes to shout and to sing. He is one with
the birds that have begun singing and with all wild Nature waking
refreshed after the night. But looking out at evening of the same day
over the grey sea he is failed with unutterable sorrow.
I remember how all night long in the North region, where the light
does not leave the sky, I looked out at the strange beauty of the
white night and felt all the desolateness of the world, all the
exiledom of man upon it. There was no lure, no temptation in that. The
Aeolian harp of the heart does not always discourse battle music,
and on this night it was as if an old sad minstrel sat before me and
played unendingly one plaint, the story of a lost throne, of a lost
family, lost children, a lost world. Thus a thought came to me: "We
are all the children of kings; on our spiritual bodies are royal
seals. Sometime or other we were abandoned on this beautiful garden,
the world. We expected some one to return for us; but no one came.
We lived on, and to forget homesickness devised means of pleasure,
diversions, occupations, games. Some have entirely forgotten the lost
heritage and the mystery of their abandonment; their games absorbed
them, they have become gamblers, they have theories of chance, their
talk is all of Progress of one sort or another. They forget the great
mystery of life. We tramps and wanderers remember. It is our religion
to remember, to count nothing as important beside the initial mystery.
For us it is sweeter to remember than to forget. The towns would
always have us forget, but in the country we always remember again.
What is beautiful is every little rite that reminds us of our
mysteries."
This is a most persistent experience, and Beauty thereby promises us
happiness, but in a strange way seems to tell of happiness past. It
lures not forward unless to the exploration of the "prison-house" once
more.
Even the beauty of woman is not always a lure. There is a beauty in
woman which makes one glad, but there is the beauty that haunts one
like a great sadness, besides the beauty that draws one nearer to her.
There is the seductive beauty of Cleopatra, but there is also the
almost repulsive beauty of Medea, and besides both there is the
mysterious beauty of Helen or of Eve.
Beauty is also a great possession, and that is another conception,
another mystery. We lie like a mirror in the presence of Beauty, and
it builds the very temple of our souls. Beauty is the gold of earthly
experience. It is essentially that which in looking round our eyes
like best, that which they say swiftly "Yes" to. We enter into
communion with the beautiful as with a beloved object. We make it
part of ourselves. We absorb it into that which is integral and
immortal--our very essence. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: its
loveliness can never pass away" is a truth of experience, not the
idle fancy of the poet. For to have seen the beautiful is not
inconsequential, it is not even a responsibility entirely your own;
the beautiful thing has also seen you. Henceforth your life can never
be quite the same, and the beautiful thing looked upon has either
become less or more beautiful.