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| "So. Admit you're beaten." "Never. On any terms. For any reason. And on both counts." . . . The war without surrender between beauty and love . . . 13. Caress of Humility, Scald of Pride Moral beauty. The beauty of modesty, of humility, of the self withdrawn, withheld. Held in suspense before my self. Teaching it honor of the other, courtesy, respect, the morality of consideration. Teaching it, indeed, honor. The beauty of action: ballet, sports, the hunt. The vivid line created by the motion of a human body. Moral beauty is also a beauty of action,  | but discovered in the interpretation of an action, not its immediate representation: hence its abstractness. A courageous deed is beautiful, but not because of its visual delightfulness. The same for the act of humility, of generosity, of mercy, of kindness: it is the motive that gives it radiance. Moral beauty is a beauty accessible through language, since it is a beauty of meaning. Indeed, without language, it might not have existed at all. When I try to think of instances of moral beauty seen in my own life, I think, strangely enough, of pets - dogs and cats, especially dogs, loyal to their masters and mistresses beyond reason, waiting patiently for them to recognize who their saints really are. Of course, the one dog I ever owned ran away from me one day and never came back. So maybe after all, the stories of the  | |||
