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Beauty says its 'I' sovereignly against our 'I': I will make you love me. In that moment we will be melted into one single thing. And yet, at the same time, our individuality is affirmed, our boundaries are sharpened; our selves by no means relinquished - rather they are reinforced, strengthened; we are not melted but firmed into power. Our pride is quickened at the same time as our humility, which may be one of the rea-sons we often take with us from artistic beauty (sometimes even from natural beauty) the wrong lessons: rather than the lesson of humility before the sovereign Other that reflects back to us the aura of being - and therefore, reflected within that, our own radiance - we take the lesson of pride in recognizing a social value, plume our-selves on our judgment, our intelligence, and despise our supposedly less sensitive and dis-cerning neighbors: in this way, we protect our-  | selves from the vastness of our experience, but also from its profoundly generous glory. The beautiful thing becomes a pawn in the social game of one-upmanship, the chronic jockeying for position and advantage. It can be frightening, the joy that beauty con- fers: it strikes the foundations of our practical, cynical, suspicious judgments of the world like an earthquake. It says, "Wrong - there is joy. Wrong - there is love, and it is ruler here, of you." 4. The Labyrinth in the Mirror ... and beauty's wild reflection - beauty's other self, to which it calls: love. We know beauty for this sole reason: it awakens in us "the one thing needful"; indeed, whatever awakens love in us we will henceforward call beautiful. This is dis-  | |||
