Henry said: “I don’t see what you mean, or why you need question it. A beautiful thing is one that gives us a thrill of delight.”
“Yes,” I answered, “certainly. That is like saying a thing is red because it has a red color. What I want to know is why things delight us with their beauty, so that we may make a standard from these, whereby to judge all things.”
I stopped them when they began to speak of special works of art, because, I insisted, we would first speak of beauty in all things in the world.
Virginia said: “When I am in a field among animals, playing with them all, that to me seems beautiful. I do feel sympathy with them, but it isn’t completeness.”
“No,” I answered, “and it isn’t beautiful, though it is delightful in another way. Beauty is something apart from us, which we see and hear, and which wakes in us a sense of completeness, of harmony within itself, as if there were the whole world, nothing lacking, nor yet too much. A landscape, for instance.”
“It is sometimes not beautiful at all,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered, “surely not. A landscape, no matter how beautiful and wonderful, would be spoiled by a big sign on the nearest tree, advertising ‘Babbitt’s Soap.’”
“Or a sign ‘To Let,’” said Henry.
“Yes,” I answered, “though that might not be as bad, yet that, too, would be inharmonious, and suggest all sorts of irrelevant things.”
“But,” said Henry, “a burnt wood is harmonious, I suppose, and yet it would be ugly.”