ne of the conditions of beauty, but only one. An
ill-proportioned object cannot be beautiful, but the exact correspondence
of parts, as in geometrical figures, does not constitute beauty.

A noted ancient theory makes beauty consist in the perfect suitableness
of means to their end. In this case the beautiful is not the useful, it
is the suitable; and the latter idea is more akin to that of beauty. But
it has not the true character of the beautiful. Again, order is a less
mathematical idea than proportion, but it does not explain what is free
and flowing in certain beauties.

The most plausible theory of beauty is that which makes it consist in two
contrary and equally necessary elements--unity and variety. A beautiful
flower has all the elements we have named; it has unity, symmetry, and
variety of shades of color. There is no beauty without life, and life is
movement, diversity. These elements are found in beautiful and also in
sublime objects. A beautiful object is complete, finished, limited with
symmetrical parts. A sublime object whose forms, though not out of
proportion, are less determined, ever awakens in us the feeling of the
infinite. In objects of sense all qualities that can produce the feeling
of the beautiful come under one class called physical beauty. But above
and beyond this in the region of mind we have first intellectual beauty,
including the laws that govern intelligence and the creative genius of
the artist, the poet, and the philosopher. Again, the moral world has
beauty in its ideas of liberty, of virtue, of devotion, the justice of
Aristides, the heroism of Leonidas.

We have now ascertained that there is beauty and sublimity in nature, in
ideas, in feelings, and in actions. After all this it might be supposed
that a unity could be found amidst these different kinds of beauty. The
sight of a statue, as the Apollo of Belvedere, of a man, of Socrates
expiring, are adduced as producing impressions of the beautiful; but the
form cannot be a form by itself, it must be the form of something.
Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral
beauty which is the basis, the principle, and the unity of the beautiful.

Physical beauty is an envelop to intellectual and to moral beauty.

Intellectual beauty, the splendor of the true, can only have for
principle that of all truth.

Moral beauty comprehends two distinct elements, equally beautiful,
justice and charity. Thus God is