Why men's judgments on beauty differ so much.
I should say that the reason why even learned men differ so widely and display so great a range of opinion in judging the excellence of particular writers is that practically no one looks to reason and weighs the matter in the light of true and settled principles. Indeed everyone in the act of judging embraces a hastily conceived opinion and follows his impressions without reflection or judgment. Thus it is that few have made any attempt so far to arrive at an exact knowledge of the nature of true beauty, by which in the last analysis all else must be determined; rather, each has immediately pronounced that to be beautiful which affected him with some sort of pleasure. Yet there is no norm of judgment more misleading or more variable, for a false and adulterate beauty will give pleasure to minds imbued with deformed opinions whom a true and solid beauty often cannot affect. It follows there is nothing so ugly that it will not please someone or other, and nothing on the other hand so absolutely beautiful that it will not displease someone. Farmers will be found to dance to absurd songs, and whole theaters time and again roar at the tasteless jokes of the actors. Similarly, there are a good many who find little or no delight in Vergil or Terence, though there is nothing in the world of letters more polished—such is the power of custom and preconceived opinion to impart or preclude delight. Consequently, if we wish to dissociate ourselves from the fickle mob of opinions, we must have recourse to reason, which is single, fixed, and simple. We must discover by her aid that true and genuine figure of beauty with which is marked whatever is truly beautiful and finished, and from which whatever departs is justly called ugly and repugnant to taste.
Reason leads us directly to nature and establishes that to be generally beautiful which accords both with the nature of the thing itself and with our own. For example, if an object that is excessive or defective in some part is thought ugly, it is because it diverges from nature which demands a completeness in the parts and despises excess. Almost everything that is judged to be ugly is so judged for the same reason: you will always observe that there is here some flaw at variance with a rightly constituted nature. Nevertheless, for an object to be declared beautiful it is not enough that it answer to its own nature; it must also be congruent with ours. For our nature, being invariable both in the soul and in the body endowed with senses, has definite inclinations and aversions by which it is either attracted or estranged. Thus our eye is moved with pleasure by certain colors, our ear is drawn by a certain kind of sounds; one thing delights the soul, one repels it, each in the measure that it corresponds or is repugnant to our ways of feeling. However, what is meant by nature here is not any nature at all, since some are misshapen, perverse, and corrupt. What is meant is a nature corrected and well-ordered from whose inclinations must arise the judgement of beauty and charm.
However, the essence of true beauty is such that it is not fugitive, changeable, or of one time, but rather invariable, fixed, persistent and such as pleases all times equally. And although there may be found some men of so corrupt a nature that they despise beauty, nevertheless they are but few. And even these may be recalled to truth by reason, since false beauty though it may for a while have its admirers cannot long hold them, for nature itself which cannot be erased will gradually beget in them a distaste for it. For, as Cicero so notably says, time that erases the fictions of opinion only confirms the judgements of nature.[1]
If we may apply this maxim to literature we may say that that is truly beautiful which agrees both with the nature of things themselves and with the inclinations of our senses and of our soul. And since in a work of literature one takes account of sound, diction, and idea, the agreement of all these with nature in its two aspects is required for beauty. Hence we will take these up one by one, beginning with sound.
ON SOUND