THE BEAUTIFUL. 103 



tract us to the study of it and affiliate us to our heavenly 

 Father. Virtue has been made beautiful because we pos- 

 sess a capacity of admiring and seeking virtue, and we 

 have been gifted with this capacity to stimulate us to 

 the encouragement and the practice of virtue. The 

 genial light of love irradiates our households, not to lure 

 us to the service of the individual or the race, but to 

 make such service tributary to our happiness. 



Shall we not attempt to secure some glimpse of the na- 

 ture of beauty, the sources of beauty, and the faculties 

 by which we apprehend the beautiful? Far from us be 

 the phrases of metaphysics and the subtleties of the schools. 

 I think the nature of aesthetic perception is exposed to 

 common sense. There are ideas of reason, thoughts, 

 ideals, models of the beautiful uncreated, ideas of order, 

 harmony, fitness, symmetry, unity of plan. We cannot 

 define them or describe them. The more we attempt to 

 bring them forward into consciousness, the more fugitive 

 they seem ; but we know such ideas, principles, rules or 

 standards are there, in reason. Then the forms or re- 

 lations of things, or attributes of characters or lives, come 

 to our knowledge, this is an exercise of the 'understand- 

 ing. Next, judgment compares these cognitions of the 

 understanding with the imperishable ideals in the reason, 

 and pronounces an agreement or disagreement of the ob- 

 jects with those standards or criteria of the beautiful. 

 Lastly, if the judgment affirms a conformity of the ob- 

 ject with the standard of beauty, a peculiar sensibility is 

 awakened, which gives us pleasure ; if it is a disagree- 

 ment affirmed, the sensibility is painful. This sensibility 

 is the aesthetic feeling, and this is the only thing in the 

 complete process of aesthetic perception which is peculiar. 



