Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen amongst unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man’s soul. It takes those of its characteristics which have been developed by his bodily constitution, both in combination and singly; first singly, by analysis, and then in that living combination which makes the personality of the subject. As regards the inquiry into the nature of beauty, we see, again, that the man of half-grown intelligence, when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming beauty, thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what it is that so prepossesses him with the pleasure of the eye. He will not go deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind’s eye is clear, and who can inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements which are the material only upon which the Form of Beauty works; to him they will be but the ladder by which he climbs to the prospect of that Intellectual Beauty, in accordance with their share in which all other beauties get their existence and their name. But for the majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the immanent beauty, and thereby of grasping the actual nature of the Beautiful; and if any one wants to know the exact source of all the false and pernicious conceptions of it, he would find it in nothing else but this, viz. the absence, in the soul’s faculties of feeling, of that exact training which would enable them to distinguish between true Beauty and the reverse. Owing to this men give up all search after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple, immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men’s love, be they never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift them to that height to which sense can never reach. Admiration even of the beauty of the heavens, and of the dazzling sunbeams, and, indeed, of any fair phenomenon, will then cease. The beauty noticed there will be but as the hand to lead us to the love of the supernal Beauty whose glory the heavens and the firmament declare, and whose secret the whole creation sings. The climbing soul, leaving all that she has grasped already as too narrow for her needs, will thus grasp the idea of that magnificence which is exalted far above the heavens. But how can any one reach to this, whose ambitions creep below? How can any one fly up into the heavens, who has not the wings of heaven and is not already buoyant and lofty-minded by reason of a heavenly calling? Few can be such strangers to evangelic mysteries as not to know that there is but one vehicle on which man’s soul can mount into the heavens, viz. the self-made likeness in himself to the descending Dove, whose wings¹⁴⁰²

1402 Ps. lv. 6.

1403 Cf. Augustine, Tract. 6 in Joann.: “Columba fel non habet. Simon habebat; ideo separatus est a columbæ visceribus.” Aristotle asserts the contrary; but even Galen denies that it possesses a bladder (lib. de atr. bil. sub fin.).

1404 διᾴττοντας, corrected by Livineius, the transcriber of the Vatican ms., for διατάττοντας. Cf. Arist. Meteor. I. iv: καὶ ὁμοίως κατὰ πλάτος καὶ βάθος οἱ δοκοῦντες ἀστέρες διᾴττειν γίνονται: and, in the same chapter, διαθέοντες ἀστέρες. Cf. Seneca. Nat. Quæst. iii. 14: “Videmus ergo ‘Stellarum longos a tergo albescere tractus.’ Hæc velut stellæ exsiliunt et transvolant.” This and much else, in the preceding and following notes to this treatise, is taken from those of Fronto Ducæus, printed in the Paris Edit. The Paris Editors, Fronto Ducæus and Claude Morell, used Livineius’ edition (1574) of this treatise, which is based on the Vatican Cod. and Bricman’s (of Cologne); and they corrected from the Cod. of F. Morell, Regius Professor of Theology; and from the Cod. Regius.

1405 S. Matt. xiii. 43.

1406 S. John ix. 5; i. 9.

1407 τὰ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ τηλαυγῶς καθορᾶται. The same word in S. Mark viii. 25 (“clearly”) evidently refers to the second stage of recovered sight, the power of seeing the perspective. The mss. reading is ἐν τῷ ἁγίω, for which ἀέρι and ἡλί& 251· have been conjectured; οὐρανῷ is due to Galesinius; there is a similar place in Dio Chrys. (de regno et tyrann.): “impaired sight,” he says, “cannot see even what is quite close, ὑγιὲς δὲ οὖσα μέχρις οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ ἀστέρων ἐξικνεῖται, i.e. the distant sky. Just above, ἀποῤ& 191·υψαμένῳ (purged) is a better reading than ἀποῤ& 191·ιψαμένῳ, and supported by F. Morell’s ms.

1408 μόνως.

1409 Gen. v. 24; vi. 9.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH