Part 4 (2/2)
THE LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
MEMORY GEMS.
The beautiful can never die.--Kingsley
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.--Keats
The love of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature.
--Ruskin
The sense of beauty is its own excuse for being.--Dr. Hedge
If eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being.--Emerson
One of the princ.i.p.al objects of the large amount of ”nature study” that, within recent years, has been pursued in our public schools, is to develop in the pupils the love of the beautiful. The beautiful in nature and art is that which gives pleasure to the senses. The question might be asked, ”Why do some forms and colors please, and others displease?”
Yankee fas.h.i.+on, it might be answered by the question, ”Why do we like sugar and dislike wormwood?” It is also a fact that cultivated minds derive more pleasure from nature and art than uncultivated minds.
This fact is aptly ill.u.s.trated by the following remark of a little girl in one of the lower grades of our public schools. Shortly after she had taken up the study of plants and minerals she came to her teacher and said, ”Oh! we have a lovely time now when we go up to the reservoir to play. Before we studied about plants and stones, we used to go up there and sit down and look around; but now we find so many beautiful things to look at. We know the plants and stones; and what pleasure it does give us to find a new specimen!” This child's love of the beautiful was being intelligently developed.
Natural beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds into the numberless flowers of spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of gra.s.s. It haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams from the hues of the sh.e.l.l and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun--all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompa.s.sed with it on every side. This beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial to our tenderest and n.o.blest feelings, and so akin to wors.h.i.+p, that it is painful to think of the mult.i.tude of persons living in the midst of it and yet remaining almost as blind to it as if they were tenants of a dungeon.
All persons should seek to become sufficiently acquainted with the beautiful in nature to secure to themselves the rich fund of happiness which it is so well able to give. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor a rare leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect, destroys a work which the highest art could not create, nor man's best skilled hand construct.
One of the first forms in which man's idea of the beautiful shaped itself was in architecture. Extremely crude at first, this love for beautiful buildings has been highly developed among civilized nations.
Ruskin says, ”All good architecture is the expression of national life and character, and is produced by a permanent and eager desire or taste for beauty.”
A taste for pictures, merely, is not in itself a moral quality; but the taste for _good_ pictures is. A beautiful painting by one of the great artists, a Grecian statue, or a rare coin, or magnificent building, is a good and perfect thing; for it gives constant delight to the beholder.
The absence of the love of nature is not an a.s.sured ground of condemnation. Its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart, though by no means an evidence of moral practice. In proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which n.o.bleness and beauty of character will be attained.
One of our great artists has said, that good taste is essentially a moral quality. To his mind, the first, last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, What do you like? Tell me what you like, and I will tell you what you are.
Let us examine this argument. Suppose you go out into the street and ask the first person you meet what he likes? You happen to accost a man in rags with an unsteady step, who, straightening himself up in a half uncertain way, answers, ”A pipe and a quart of beer.” You can take a pretty good measure of his character from that answer, can you not? But here comes a little girl, with golden hair and soft, blue eyes. ”What do you like, my little girl?” ”My canary, and to run among the flowers,” is her answer. And you, little boy, with dirty hands and low forehead, ”What do you like?” ”A chance to hit the sparrows with a stone.” When we have secured so much knowledge of their tastes, we really know the character of these persons so well that we do not need to ask any further questions about them.
The man who likes what you like must belong to the same cla.s.s with you.
You may give him a different form of work to do, but as long as he likes the things that you like, and dislikes that which you dislike, he will not be content while employed in an inferior position.
Hearing a young lady highly praised for her beauty, Gotthold asked, ”What kind of beauty do you mean? Merely that of the body, or that also of the mind? I see well that you have been looking no further than the sign which Nature displays outside the house, but have never asked for the host who dwells within. Beauty is an excellent gift of G.o.d, but many a pretty girl is like the flower called 'the imperial crown,' which is admired for its showy appearance, and despised for its unpleasant odor.
Were her mind as free from pride, selfishness, luxury, and levity, as her countenance is from spots and wrinkles, and could she govern her inward inclinations as she does her external carriage, she would have none to match her.”
The power to appreciate beauty does not merely increase our sources of happiness,--it enlarges our moral nature too. Beauty calms our restlessness and dispels our cares. Go into the fields or the woods, spend a summer day by the sea or the mountains, and all your little perplexities and anxieties vanish. Listen to sweet music, and your foolish fears and petty jealousies pa.s.s away. The beauty of the world helps us to seek and find the beauty of goodness.
The love of the beautiful is an unfailing source of happiness. In his brief life, Regnault, the great painter, had more genuine enjoyment than a score of men of duller perceptions. He had cultivated his sense of color and proportion until nothing beautiful escaped his eye. If we are to enjoy the beauty about us, there is need of similar _preparation_.
What we get out of communion with the beauty of nature or art, depends largely on what we bring to that communion. We must make ourselves sensitive to beauty, or else the charms of form and color and graceful motion and sweet music will be unheeded or unappreciated. It is also true, as Lowell said:
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