with love of the object, then with the
perception of kindness in a superior Intelligence, finally with
thankfulness and veneration towards that Intelligence itself, and as no
idea can be at all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, until it
be made up of these emotions, any more than we can be said to have an
idea of a letter of which we perceive the perfume and the fair writing,
without understanding the contents of it, or intent of it; and as these
emotions are in no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any operation
of the intellect, it is evident that the sensation of beauty is not
sensual on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is
dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the heart, both for its
truth and for its intensity, insomuch that even the right after action
of the intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is dependent on
the acuteness of the heart feeling about them; and thus the Apostolic
words come true, in this minor respect as in all others, that men are
alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them,
having the understanding darkened because of the hardness of their
hearts, and so being past feeling, give themselves up to lasciviousness;
for we do indeed see constantly that men having naturally acute
perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart,
nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from
it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, and accompaniment and
seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take the
same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty sinks into the servant of
lust.

Sec. 9. How degraded by heartless reception.

Sec. 10. How exalted by affection.

Nor is what the world commonly understands by the cultivation of taste,
anything more or better than this, at least in times of corrupt and
over-pampered civilization, when men build palaces and plant groves and
gather luxuries, that they and their devices may hang in the corners of
the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like
lusts in the middle. And this, which in Christian times is the abuse and
corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that Pagan life of which St.
Paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had;
for I know not that of the expressions of affection towards external
nature to be found among Heathen writers, there are any of which the
balance