§ 55
It is a complex, it is a profound enigma, this of the appeal of the beauty of nature to the senses and emotions of man. For Beauty, we must remember, is not an attribute of the external thing. Beauty is in the soul that feels, the mind that thinks, the memory that remembers. That is beautiful which brings to mind and memory and soul, ecstatic thrill, exalted feeling. That is beautiful which makes for the preservation and propagation and (which should make for the) elevation of the race.—And this is why Beauty is of various kinds. There is a Beauty of the senses, and there is a beauty of the soul—as there is a terrestrial Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite uranian.[38] Though why the earthly and the heavenly Aphrodites should not join hands, I do not know. Perhaps it is only when they do join hands—when there is at one and the same time a spiritual obsession and a physical oblation—that Beauty becomes transfigured before us, reveals her divine nature radiant through fleshly vestments. Ah! this occurs only when we are on the Mount.