|
||||
Beauty is the self meeting the objects outside it, its world, in a moment of harmony and accord. Some objects speak to a particular person's harmonies or disharmonies more readily than others, and for longer or briefer periods - but none do for long, and none can forever. Not even a person. Not even I. Not even you. Otherwise we would never have known that gray futility called boredom. Boredom, the frame of beauty. Boredom, that frustrated search for stimulation; hence the ache that attends it. Apathy, on the other hand, is simple lack of interest, indifferent to cause or consequence, the armor of the nerves. It has a bad reputation, undeservedly, since it is surely higher than the experience of pain (the motto "No pain, no gain" being based on a misunderstanding) and is often 
|
the prelude to serenity, which is, as a constant mood, the highest happiness we will know. "Ever," whispers beauty's honesty. What is the extent of the illusion of beauty - is beauty's illusion in a sense beauty's truth? Must it be that what appears always has to be belied by what is - or is that too merely an appearance to be torn from the next "is," and so on, until the end of time? Yet beauty is a perception - an act of thought and judgment - and not merely a sensation. To call something beautiful is to judge it, to call it good and true: we can trust its report to us and its effect on us. Beauty is indeed the visible embodiment and expression of goodness and truth; if not, we no longer feel quite right about  |
|||
