e, for a false and
adulterate beauty will give pleasure to minds imbued with deformed
opinions whom a true and solid beauty often cannot affect. It follows
there is nothing so ugly that it will not please someone or other, and
nothing on the other hand so absolutely beautiful that it will not
displease someone. Farmers will be found to dance to absurd songs, and
whole theaters time and again roar at the tasteless jokes of the
actors. Similarly, there are a good many who find little or no delight
in Vergil or Terence, though there is nothing in the world of letters
more polished--such is the power of custom and preconceived opinion to
impart or preclude delight. Consequently, if we wish to dissociate
ourselves from the fickle mob of opinions, we must have recourse to
reason, which is single, fixed, and simple. We must discover by her
aid that true and genuine figure of beauty with which is marked
whatever is truly beautiful and finished, and from which whatever
departs is justly called ugly and repugnant to taste.

Reason leads us directly to nature and establishes that to be
generally beautiful which accords both with the nature of the thing
itself and with our own. For example, if an object that is excessive
or defective in some part is thought ugly, it is because it diverges
from nature which demands a completeness in the parts and despises
excess. Almost everything that is judged to be ugly is so judged for
the same reason: you will always observe that there is here some flaw
at variance with a rightly constituted nature. Nevertheless, for an
object to be declared beautiful it is not enough that it answer to its
own nature; it must also be congruent with ours. For our nature, being
invariable both in the soul and in the body endowed with senses, has
definite inclinations and aversions by which it is either attracted or
estranged. Thus our eye is moved with pleasure by certain colors, our
ear is drawn by a certain kind of sounds; one thing delights the soul,
one repels it, each in the measure that it corresponds or is repugnant
to our ways of feeling. However, what is meant by nature here is not
any nature at all, since some are misshapen, perverse, and corrupt.
What is meant is a nature corrected and well-ordered from whose
inclinations must arise the judgement of beauty and charm.

However, the essence of true beauty is such that it is not fugitive,
changeable, or of one time, but rather invariable, fixed, persiste