The Natural Beauty In the World
By: Felicity Loveheart
We are thus brought to the conclusion that man is not this sorry insect, this bug feebly crawling upon the face of the real and tangible earth, but in our essential nature we are the real, we the enduring; we project and contain it. In the immeasurable abyss of the soul rises and sets the sun; within, the stars take their course; within us is the dawn of the worlds, the twilight of the gods.
Within are the seasons: there sit night and day; from thence flow the hours. It is we who give birth to the Graces and the Muses. In the soul, beauty has its origin. Its source is spiritual and that is to say ethical its purpose ethical. Whatever beauty we appear to see without we are to refer to the soul; its perception, soul-perception, its perception spiritual, purposeful, educational with reference to the consciousness. We may infer the central purpose to be the education of the world-consciousness to perceive all-beauty, all-truth, all-love.
Beauty thus comes to be to us a certain measure of soul-perception. It is unthinkable that we see in the reflection or other than we bring to bear. We find without exactly as we have realized within. It is thus to an inner poverty the world is barren. Let the world separate the esthetic from the moral sense as it will, the fact remains that beauty ever springs from moral grounds.
It is our life, the quality of our thought, which makes the lake to be beautiful, the springtime fresh and joyous. Pervert the one and we mar the other. Beginning with a perception of an apparent sensuous beauty alone, there tends always to a more spiritual perception, and with the higher feeling the early illusion of any purely sensuous beauty is destroyed.
In our unfolding soul-perception, the idea of womanly beauty constantly evolves to higher and still higher standards. Only moral grandeur can know sublimity. Immorality must always invest its object with a coating of slime. The perception of beauty with reference to art then must in the nature of things of its devotee, moral culture, purity of life, singleness of purpose; of its master and adept, moral grandeur. It takes sacred devotion indeed to paint the divine face of woman. Nothing less than a perception of the divine feminine is adequate to the task.
Beauty is perceived in the ratio in which the consciousness is educated and developed, spiritually, morally, esthetically. The very meanest man perceives somewhat of beauty, is aware of colour effects, and to a slight degree of concordant sounds, and responds to these dimly in feeling and a sort of dull emotion, if not yet in intelligence and that higher feeling we name worship. And here, be it said, begins the Ministry of Beauty beauty which portrays itself first as objective, leading man ever on and up the moral scale; educating him to perceive its subjective character and leading him thus ever out and away from his besetting materialism.
We shall divest ourselves of the notion that beauty is incidental or haphazard, or that it exists merely to please. It is the cosmic necessity, and leads us whenever we are able to perceive it, from beauty of appearance to beauty of fact ; from this outer world to an inner radiant one where moral beauty sits enthroned. It is not accident that these young leaves of the oak have such rich hue, and shall again in autumn be transfigured, and these unfolding grape leaves and the blossoming sassafras such loveliness. The cones cannot fall from the pine nor the petals from the rose without arranging themselves in lines of beauty.
Rubies and emeralds and diamonds are scattered over the lawn, and vanish but to reform again. What can the jeweller show us equal to a white clover blossom ? Nor is it accident the summer pastures are touched with sorrel and with the wild mustard, the waste places with riot of sunflower and joepye-weed. The plumage of grosbeak and oriole, the music of crickets, the perfume of flowers, operate that there shall be eggs laid and seeds formed and again orioles and wild roses and dreaming crickets. And what is this but beauty perpetuating itself?
Whether we consider the constellations or the commonest shrub in the bogs, it is all the same. There is one law of beauty for Perseus in the heavens and Andromeda in the swamp. Nature blossoms into beauty, and out of decay springs ever a new beauty. The fallen leaves nourish the tree that it shall be clothed anew. The grasses clothe the fields, the lichens and mosses the rock. The scarred and desolate face of the moon shines with a silver light. Dust in the sunlight is gold. Bare branches are fine fret-work against the winter sunset. Snowflake and dewdrop are fashioned according to this law as surely as the snowy range of the Himalaya. If we dig into the bowels of the earth it is there in the crystal of beryl, in sapphire and ruby. The sea obeys it when it lays down its marble floors. So too does Pluto serve in the depths. To think that clay and muck should conceal diamonds ; that whole mountains should be filled with garnet crystals, and again others should be made of dolomite, and islands of coral; that a little mist should make the rainbow, that ice should imprison it and it should live in the opal and the oyster shell.
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