Finally, the Manichean conception of two Supreme, Self-Existent, Independent First Principles is obviously self-contradictory. As is shown in Natural Theology, Being that is absolutely Supreme, Self-Existent and Necessary, must by Its very nature be unique: there could not be two such Beings.
Chapter VII. Reality And The Beautiful.
53. The Concept of the Beautiful From the Standpoint Of Experience.—Truth and Goodness characterize reality as related to intellect and to will. Intimately connected with these notions is that of the beautiful,[193] which we must now briefly analyse. The fine arts have for their common object the expression of the beautiful; and the department of philosophy which studies these, the philosophy of the beautiful, is generally described as Esthetics.[194]
Like the terms “true” and “good,” the term “beautiful” (καλόν; pulchrum, beau, schön, etc.) is familiar to all. To reach a definition of it let us question experience. What do men commonly mean when, face to face with some object or event, they say “That is beautiful”? They give expression to this sentiment in the presence of a natural object such as a landscape revealing mountain and valley, lake and river and plain and woodland, glowing in the golden glow of the setting sun; or in contemplating some work of art—painting, sculpture, architecture, music: the Sistine Madonna, the Moses of Michael Angelo, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, a symphony of Beethoven; or some literary masterpiece: Shakespeare's Macbeth, or Dante's Divina Commedia, or Newman's Apologia, or Kickham's Knocknagow. There are other things the sight of which arouses no such sentiment, but leaves us indifferent; and others again, the sight of which arouses a contrary sentiment, to which we give expression by designating them as “commonplace,” “vulgar,” “ugly”. The sentiment in question is one of pleasure and approval, or of displeasure and disapproval.
Hence the first fact to note is that the beautiful pleases us, [pg 193] affects us agreeably, while the commonplace or the ugly leaves us indifferent or displeases us, affects us disagreeably.
But the good pleases us and affects us agreeably. Is the beautiful, then, identical with the good? No; the really beautiful is indeed always good; but not everything that is good is beautiful; nor is the pleasure aroused by the good identical with that aroused by the beautiful. Whatever gratifies the lower sense appetites and causes organic pleasure is good—bonum delectabile—but is not deemed beautiful. Eating and drinking, resting and sleeping, indulging the senses of touch, taste and smell, are indeed pleasure-giving, but they have no association with the beautiful. Again, the deformed child may be the object of the mother's special love. But the pleasure thus derived from the good, as the object of appetite, desire, delight, is not esthetic pleasure. If we examine the latter, the pleasure caused by the beautiful, we shall find that it is invariably a pleasure peculiar to knowledge, to apprehension, perception, imagination, contemplation. Hence in the domain of the senses we designate as “beautiful” only what can be apprehended by the two higher senses, seeing and hearing, which approximate most closely to intellect, and which, through the imagination, furnish data for contemplation to the intellect.[195] This brings us to St. Thomas's definition: Pulchra sunt quæ visa placent: those things are beautiful whose vision pleases us,—where vision is to be understood in the wide sense of apprehension, contemplation.[196] The owner of a beautiful demesne, or of an art treasure, may derive pleasure [pg 194] from his sense of proprietorship; but this is distinct from the esthetic pleasure that may be derived by others, no less than by himself, from the mere contemplation of those objects. Esthetic pleasure is disinterested: it springs from the mere contemplation of an object as beautiful; whereas the pleasure that springs from the object as good is an interested pleasure, a pleasure of possession. No doubt the beautiful is really identical with the good, though logically distinct from the latter.[197] The orderliness which we shall see to be the chief objective factor of beauty, is itself a perfection of the object, and as such is good and desirable. Hence the beautiful can be an object of interested desire, but only under the aspect of goodness. Under the aspect of beauty the object can excite only the disinterested esthetic pleasure of contemplation.
But if esthetic pleasure is derived from contemplation, is not this identifying the beautiful with the true, and supplanting art by science? Again the consequence is inadmissible; for not every pleasure peculiar to knowledge is esthetic. There is a pleasure in seeking and discovering truth, the pleasure which gratifies the scholar and the scientist: the pleasure of the philologist in tracing roots and paradigms, of the chemist in analysing unsavoury materials, of the anatomist in exploring the structure of organisms post mortem. But these things are not “beautiful”. The really beautiful is indeed always true, but it cannot well be maintained that all truths are beautiful. That two and two are four is a truth, but in what intelligible sense could it be said to be beautiful?
But besides the scientific pleasure of seeking and discovering truth, there is the pleasure which comes from contemplating the object known. The aim of the scientist or scholar is to discover truth; that of the artist is, through knowledge to derive complacency from contemplating the thing known. The scientist or scholar may be also an artist, or vice versa; but the scientist's pleasure proper lies exclusively in discovering truth, whereas that of the artist lies in contemplating something apprehended, imagined, conceived. The artist is not concerned as to whether what he apprehends is real or imaginary, certain or conjectural, [pg 195] but only as to whether or how far the contemplation of it will arouse emotions of pleasure, admiration, enthusiasm; while the scientist's supreme concern is to know things, to see them as they are. The beautiful, then, is always true, either as actual or as ideal; but the true is beautiful only when it so reveals itself as to arouse in us the desire to see or hear it, to consider it, to dwell and rest in the contemplation of it.