[00:01.49]Lesson 24
[00:03.72]Beauty
[00:11.42]What do glimpses of beauty, either in nature or art,
[00:15.41]often suggest to the human mind?
[00:20.11]A young man sees a sunset and,
[00:22.89]unable to understand or to express the emotion that it rouses in him,
[00:27.30]concludes that it must be the gateway to a world that lies beyond
[00:32.45]It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience
[00:37.56]to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light
[00:42.21]that shines down to us from a different realm of existence, different and,
[00:47.75]because the experience is intensely moving, in some way higher.
[00:52.84]And, though the gleams blind and dazzle, yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity
[00:59.31]greater than we have known or imagined. Greater too than we can describe;
[01:05.40]for language, which was invented to convey the meanings of this world
[01:09.93]cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another.
[01:14.60]That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable.
[01:21.65]In some moods, nature shares it.
[01:24.88]There is no sky in June so blue that it does not point forward to a bluer,
[01:30.55]no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty,
[01:36.33]a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed,
[01:41.00]and in passing leaves an indefinable longing and regret.
[01:45.80]But, if this world is not merely a bad joke,
[01:48.94]life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars,
[01:53.14]and existence an empty laugh braying across the mysteries;
[01:57.82]if these intimations of a something behind and beyond
[02:02.10]are not evil humour born of indigestion,
[02:05.16]or whimsies sent by the devil to mock and madden us, if, in a word
[02:11.75]beauty means something yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning.
[02:17.88]If we glimpse the unutterable, it is unwise to try to utter it,
[02:23.05]nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp.
[02:28.86]Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.