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the rectangle, always avoids them when possible and eternally seeks the curve. In all Creation man alone violates this cosmic law-in his more or less ugly art. Hence the gentle, shockless repetition of the wave movement gives us a distinct physical delight. But above all, because such a line is still more melodious. In other words, undulatory cradle-like movement is the basis of all Graceful beauty and gives us Delight.

Supposing now there appeared on the cell-wall of the blind man two Perpendicular lines, Fig. 13, he would feel a LIFTING movement. Then suppose these lines should meet and form a Pyramid, Fig. 14,

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say six feet tall. The man would at once experience a stronger Lifting movement; because, while two perpendicular lines already lift the eyes in rapid Upward movement, when these two lines meet and become a PYRAMID, the following by the eyes of these two lines from the base of the pyramid to the top increasingly pushes the eyes aloft and flings the sight into the infinite; and while we enjoy simple forward movement, and still more undulatory cradling movement, there is nothing we enjoy quite so much as being lifted-when we apprehend no danger in the process. Hence the intense fascination of going up in a balloon, of mounting in an aeroplane and of climbing alpine heights; of looking at skyrockets, the moon and evening star-they lift us. All children love being gently lifted off the ground, even dogs love it. In fact the lifting-power of anything in life and Nature, from a man to a mountain, is its most precious power or quality. Why do we love to be lifted? Because we are so organized. Why? We do not know. Is it the eternal beckoning of the Creator-lifting us to look at Him and His love of the beautiful?

Finally, supposing there should appear on the wall of the blind man a line or pattern composed of all the varied elements I have spoken of-of the Angular, of the Serpentine and Pyramidal, Fig. 15, the

Nature demands, and has implanted in each of us, a hunger for Variety, of which I will speak later.

I will now define Objective Beauty by answering the question of Socrates thus:-THE ESSENCE OF ALL BEAUTY, WHICH WE PREDICATE OF OBJECTIVE THINGS IN NATURE OR ART, IS -A CERTAIN MELODY, PRODUCED IN US BY THE PATTERING UPON OUR EYES OF VARIOUSLY COLORED RAYS OF LIGHT INTERSPERSED WITH VARIOUSLY AGREEABLE PATTERNS OF LINES, THE FOLLOWING OF WHICH, BY OUR EYES, VARIOUSLY STIRS OUR EMOTIONS.

That is to say-Melody is the fundamental essence of all Beauty. No melody, no beauty!

Both in Nature and Art there are Three Categories of Beauty-first: Picturesque Beauty; second: Graceful Beauty; third: Sublime Beauty.

Responding to these three categories of Beauty are three categories of Emotion. We experience many different kinds and degrees of emotion, physical, intellectual and spiritual-low and high emotions.

The Highest emotions are those which Lift us— fling us the farthest away from ourselves and the commonplace facts and things of life.

These Highest emotions may be divided into three categories-MIRTH, DELIGHT, AWE-which we feel in various degrees of intensity.

Picturesque Beauty is that in which angular lines predominate-accompanied by a certain amount of disorder, Fig. 16, page 93. As our eyes are jostled about among the angular forms of this scene on the Danube and the mind notes the slight disorder, there is aroused in us a certain melody of line, disorder, color, etc., of a quality that stirs our emotion of MIRTH. Hence the emotion of mirth is a corollary of Picturesque Beauty. This element of disorder in the picturesque must not be forgotten. Nature is order. Hence, I repeat, all supreme order is sublime and awe-inspiring. Per contra-all disorder is comic and mirth-inspiring. We do not exactly laugh over this scene, it is not mirthful enough for that; but, with a budding smile and slightly closing eyes, we say: "Isn't it charming!" This mirth-provoking composition could easily be exaggerated into a laugh-provoking composition-by making the squares and angles much larger, and so grotesque.

Mirth, being one of the three highest categories

Fig. 15

man would be lifted to the highest emotion of Delight. Why? Because here he would find a combination of lines offering the most varied elements of melody of line, united in a proportioned HARMONY of line.

Now these statements are not opinions. They are physical facts and govern all normal mankind, and the few abnormals do not count.

These facts at once destroy the foolish dictum "Beauty is relative." Beauty is not relative-it is Absolute.

Taste is relative. Why? Because here again

of emotion-because lifting us away from ourselves and the commonplace drudgery of our daily lives, up towards the Creator, is therefore a spiritual emotion. Hence it is one of the most precious things in life. Therefore a clean, funny story told anywhere, or a fine comedy played in a theatre, should be studied and supported at all hazards by the public interested in a higher life and art.

Graceful Beauty is that in which serpentine lines predominate accompanied by Logic and Order, Fig. 17, page 93. As our eyes follow the graceful, serpentine lines of this picture, and are Cradled about in

FIG. 16. AN EXAMPLE OF Picturesque BEAUTY, OF ANGULAR LINES PLUS DISORDER See page 92

FIG. 17. AN EXAMPLE OF Graceful BEAUTY, OF SERPENTINE LINES PLUS ORDER See page 92

FIG. 18. AN EXAMPLE OF Sublime BEAUTY, OF PYRAMIDAL LINES PLUS ORDER See page 95

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the undulatory and varied curves of the pattern, the cradling of which gives us a variety of shockless, easy, rippling movement which pleases the eyes and then our soul, it fills us with a still higher emotion than mirth, an emotion I call DELIGHT. This delight is enhanced by the absence of all disorder. Delight is also a spiritual, because lifting emotion, and higher than mirth only, because it lifts us farther away from the commonplaces of life towards the Creator. Moreover the savant composition, and the proportioning of the whole into a harmonious order, please our intellectual hunger for logic.

Sublime Beauty is that in which pyramidal lines predominate, Fig. 20, page 97. No one can appreciate the wonderful lifting power of the Great Pyramid until he has stood at evening on the roof of the Mena House at the foot of the pyramid when the sun gives a rosy tinge to the majestic pile. Nor can one then avoid feeling an emotion I call AWE, a higher emotion than Delight only, because it lifts us still farther away from the earth-earthly towards the infinite. This is not simply because of its size or sunset color, but because of its outside lines converging to a point and then rapidly forcing the eyes and mind along the ever-diminishing lines to the apex and-beyond. This, I repeat, lifts and flings the eyes into infinite space, and so rouses in us an emotion of awe, the highest we can feel, because of the awe-inspiring uncertainty and MYSTERY of the beyond towards that Creator with whom the Soul and Ego ever long to be united, the atheist to the contrary notwithstanding.

This is true of all normal men. As an evidence of the abnormality of some men: I once sat at a table in front of Sheppard's Hotel in Cairo. Near by sat a family of four Americans. Father looked bored. Approached another man, and: "Hello, Bill?" "Hello, old man!"

"Well, well, I never expected to see you here! How comes it?"

"Well, I just had to give in finally and come here to see these damned Ruins!"

The only sublime thing he knew of was his angular, smoke-spitting Pittsburgh factories! It is this lifting and upward projecting power that makes such a mountain as Orizaba so awe-inspiring. Fig. 18, page 93.

It is this lifting power of the Pyramidal which invests every object that is pyramidalized with that noble character we call Monumental.

If we now combine a certain quantity of all the elements of the Picturesque, Graceful and Sublime in one composition, and proportion them into a Melodious harmony, we have the most ecstasizing arrangement or pattern of beautiful lines possible Fig. 19, page 94.

Here we have Claude Lorraine's "Landscape," judged by Turner and most other critics as the most skilful composition or all-round beautiful landscape in the world. And in this there are angular linesto jostle the eye and arouse our mirth; serpentine lines to cradle the eyes and give us delight; and pyramidal forms to lift the eye and arouse our emotion of awe. These lines are all arranged with such perfect proportion into such a harmony that we call this picture Sublime. Added to this is a delicious color-scheme. So that this whole work throws us into such an ecstasy of delight as to force some persons to tears, the first time they see the picture.

If then we notice that the technique of the "painting" is so perfect, its atmosphere so marvelously rendered as to bathe the whole in a flood of shimmering light, the demands of our mind for skill and sufficiency of truth are so well satisfied-that our criticism is disarmed, and we instinctively and instantly abandon ourselves to the spiritual enjoyment of this foretaste of Elysium!

But in Art, to obtain the best results, viz.: a Harmony capable of stirring our highest emotions, nothing must be done to excess. Example: Del Sarto in his "Charity," Fig. 21, page 97, has not only made one pyramid of his group, but three in one-making four. It is so evident that we notice the pyramidalization too much. This is again shown by the picture of "The Descent from the Cross" by Vicenzo, Fig. 22, page 97, in which we see two ladders so evidently used because he had heard of the power of the pyramid to lift the soul that he overdid it. His work is a picture of two ladders, with accessories. But Rubens, who was a great composer, and also used two ladders in his 'Descent from the Cross" Fig. 23, page 98, veiled these so skilfully that we do not notice them. We do not notice the pyramidalization of the picture but we feel it, and so our mind is not forced to ask, as in Vicenzo's picture "Why so much ladder and pyramid?" And therefore we are spiritually free to be highly and quickly emotioned-because of the absence in our mind of all mental speculation. For every Work of Art will fail to, quickly, create an emotional state of the soul: in ratio of the amount of intellectual speculation it arouses-before we are emotioned; and if our emotions are not aroused quickly on the first impact upon us of the work, they will never be aroused afterward, however much the intellect may admire it—as time goes on. But the Ego is always more in search of spiritual emotion than of intellectual emotion, because spiritual Awe is higher than intellectual Delight. This must never be forgotten. This is why all talk of "intellectualizing our emotions" is childish.

In this picture by Rubens, one of the four greatest altar-pieces on earth, we see a marvelous pattern of a great lifting pyramidal mass interspersed with various graceful cradling lines, sending forth variously colored rays of light which, pattering upon our eyes, and again through our eyes upon our mind and soul, these are jostled, then cradled, but, principally, lifted.

Moreover, and this is very important, he not only pyramidalized his mass of figures but he curved -domed the top of his pyramidal mass. The reason why the Dome of St. Peter's is more awe-inspiring even than the Pyramids is: because the pyramidal mass is domed by exquisite curves. Therefore the always-critical mind, instantly seeing here an order and perfection of arrangement and technical execution, and a satisfying adequacy and appropriateness of expression on the faces and in each detail, the mind and soul are free to abandon themselves to the physical, intellectual, above all spiritual lifting power of this wonderfully melodious telling of a sublime story, and we are instantly emotioned by this grand harmony into rapture and awe! Of course, only once-the first time we see it-not afterwards. Because, alas! "familiarity breeds contempt" -even of the highest.

This is strictly true only for the normal majority

of those who lived in the epoch for which this picture was painted and in which the Bible stories were generally believed, or of those who still have faith in the Bible and the mission of Christ. Because to-day there are many laymen and artists who call all religious pictures "junk" and hate the very sight of them. These of course, being prejudiced, are incompetent judges.

We must never forget that as there are various degrees of primary colors—the Red, Blue and Yellow, so there are various degrees of primary categories of lifting emotion-Mirth, Delight and Awe, for which we use various terms from smiling to rapture. So much for objective things that we call Beautiful.

Now, what is true of objective things is true also of semi-objective Music: Melody is the essence of all "beautiful" music. Angular, jostling trains of melody Amuse or charm us; serpentine, cradling trains of melody Delight us; pyramidal, lifting trains of melody Awe us.

There is much so-called music of to-day which is not music at all, it is nothing but organized noise, jarring to the nerves, disgusting to the mind and revolting to the soul. It is utterly devoid of the easy, shockless, undulatory movement and of the proportion necessary to create a melodious harmony. This is no doubt because "modernistic" musicians, like "modernistic" painters, feel that they cannot go beyond the classic, melodist-musicians of the past, and so they have conjured up scientific "musical problems" which they must solve; and the modernistic painters have fished out of nothingness scientific "color problems," with the solution of which they bore mankind, until "technique" and "virtuosity" have taken the place of melody and music. And in music-as well as in painting-because the public knows nothing about the technical tricks of musical composition and cares little, however much they may interest "musical artists"-the modernistic musicians, like the modernistic painters, must needs howl: "The blockhead public knows nothing about musical art!" As if the solution of scientific problems in sound and color alone make Art!

But the fact is, there is a lot of degenerates in the field of music as well as in the field of the other arts, who do not yet know that they are decadents, and that "novelty" is not originality; that what is intellectually "interesting" to the mind in science has little place in Art. Because, while it may interest the mind, it can never emotion the soul; and what is clever or novel is not necessarily Beautiful and is often distressingly Ugly.

What is true of music is true of poetry-such as is not to be acted on the stage. No poetry will ever be called beautiful which lacks the easy, shock-less, undulatory, cradling, rhythmic, well-ordered, balanced and lifting movement of lines and of words. The Vers-Librists may protest against this until black in the face, it will not avail them! The very constitution of our entire organism is eternally against them. Their stuff may be "interesting" scientifically, as "intellectualized-emotion"; but, as sure as oil and water will eternally reject each other, so the soul will eternally ward off the coldly intellectual; and, however interesting to the observing mind of the psychologist "intellectualized emotion" may be, the soul will have none of it-because all

the soul has any use for is truly spiritual emotion. And in this the Ego will forever sustain the soul, since, in the last analysis and by a fiat of Nature, the soul-the "Minister Spiritual," as I have said— is and will remain the favorite and Prime Minister of the Ego.

Therefore the "novelty" cranks as well as crooks among Critics and Artists in the World of Art who, in our spiritual life, wish to eject the Soul from its supremacy and replace it by the Intellect, for the sake of novelty and because of the atrophy of their imaginations; and who aim to substitute cold Intellectuality for warm Emotion in Art and try, by all sorts of charlatan tricks and cuttle-fish methods, to befog and to mislead the public in order to unload their degenerate art, are making out of themselves nothing but donkeys at whom the next generation will staringly wonder with a boisterous ha-ha!

Space limit prevents a discussion of all the different degrees of different kinds of emotions. But it must be remembered that Wonder is not Awe. Wonder is an intellectual and Negative emotion, giving us-like surprise-neither pleasure nor pain. We wonder, to an equal degree daily, over the telephone, but it is a cold, mental emotion. Whereas the awe we feel in face of the Pyramids at sunset is a varying but Positive emotion, lifting some persons to a tear-compelling awe.

Abstract thought being entirely subjective, it is a fundamental error to call any mere thought Beautiful, no matter how original and great. Face to face with Le Verrier's conception that, because of the variation in the orbit of Uranus, there must be a planet beyond, one which could be found by mathematics, we may say: "It is a sublimely beautiful thought!" But this would be a wrong use of language, because we cannot SEE thought, except in the mind. We can call it an astonishing, great, noble thought, but not a beautiful thought. In fact, slipshod adjectivizing, like slipshod thinking, is one of the vices of our mental processes and very common.

Nevertheless there is a slight justification for calling a thought Picturesque-because of its jolting angularity and amusing disorder; or graceful, because of its soothing, cradling, delight-giving quality; or sublime, because of its lifting and aweinspiring grandeur. In this subjective sense, then, the same law: that Melody is the Essence of all Beauty and of all kinds of Beauty, may be applied to subjective Thought.

I would like to know which bunco-metaphysicjuggler first strove to astonish the gadabouts in æsthetics with the notion: "All beauty is relative!" an utterly absurd idea. But it was the cranks and crooks in the World of Art who instantly adopted this as a slogan-to defend their artistic tergiversations. Those art crooks and crooked critics, when they invent a new art-fad and then, in order to "work it," invent, as Tolstoi said, a new and cryptic æsthetic theory to square with and defend as gospel their new fad, always hark back to this fustian of the "Relativity of Beauty." And just as for some generations the childish æstheticians confounded beauty with art, so our art-crooks today slily confound beauty with Taste; and, since taste is really relative, and the carps in the World of Art are too lazy to think, they swallow this plausible bait.

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