BEAUTY INHERES NOT IN THE ORGANISM'S PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS, BUT IN ITS COLOR AND FORM.
2. Now let us turn away from the arts and consider the objects they imitate, such as natural beauties, namely, rational and irrational creatures, especially the more perfect, in which the creator was able to master matter, and endue it with the desired form. What then constitutes the beauty in these objects? Surely not (the physical characteristics, such as) blood or menstrual discharges, but the color and figure, which differ essentially therefrom; otherwise that which constitutes beauty is something indifferent—either something formless, or something that contains a simple nature (that is, the "seminal reason"), as does matter, for instance.