eeks distinguished from beauty
grace and the divinities styled the Graces, as they expressed the ideas
by proper attributes, separable from the goddess of beauty. All that is
graceful is beautiful, for the girdle of love winning attractions is the
property of the goddess of Cnidus; but all beauty is not of necessity
grace, for Venus, even without this girdle, does not cease to be what she
is.

However, according to this allegory, the goddess of beauty is the only
one who wears and who lends to others the girdle of attractions. Juno,
the powerful queen of Olympus, must begin by borrowing this girdle from
Venus, when she seeks to charm Jupiter on Mount Ida [Pope's "Iliad," Book
XIV. v. 220]. Thus greatness, even clothed with a certain degree of
beauty, which is by no means disputed in the spouse of Jupiter, is never
sure of pleasing without the grace, since the august queen of the gods,
to subdue the heart of her consort, expects the victory not from her own
charms but from the girdle of Venus.

But we see, moreover, that the goddess of beauty can part with this
girdle, and grant it, with its quality and effects, to a being less
endowed with beauty. Thus grace is not the exclusive privilege of the
beautiful; it can also be handed over, but only by beauty, to an object
less beautiful, or even to an object deprived of beauty.

If these same Greeks saw a man gifted in other respects with all the
advantages of mind, but lacking grace, they advised him to sacrifice to
the Graces. If, therefore, they conceived these deities as forming an
escort to the beauty of the other sex, they also thought that they would
be favorable to man, and that to please he absolutely required their
help.

But what then is grace, if it be true that it prefers to unite with
beauty, yet not in an exclusive manner? What is grace if it proceeds
from beauty, but yet produces the effects of beauty, even when beauty is
absent. What is it, if beauty can exist indeed without it, and yet has
no attraction except with it? The delicate feeling of the Greek people
had marked at an early date this distinction between grace and beauty,
whereof the reason was not then able to give an account; and, seeking the
means to express it, it borrowed images from the imagination, because the
understanding could not offer notions to this end. On this score, the
myth of the girdle deserves to fix the attention of the philosopher, who,
however, ought to be satisfied to seek