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Union in distinction makes order; order produces
agreement; and proportion and agreement, in complete
and finished things, make beauty. An army has beauty
when it is composed of parts so ranged in order that
their distinction is reduced to that proportion which
they ought to have together for the making of one
single army. For music to be beautiful, the voices
must not only be true, clear, and distinct from one
another, but also united together in such a way that
there may arise a just consonance and harmony which
is not unfitly termed a discordant harmony or rather
harmonious discord.
Now as the angelic S. Thomas, following the great S.
Denis, says excellently well, beauty and goodness
though in some things they agree, yet still are not
one and the same thing: for good is that which
pleases the appetite and will, beauty that which
pleases the understanding or knowledge; or, in other
words, good is that which gives pleasure when we
enjoy it, beauty that which gives pleasure when we
know it. For which cause in proper speech we only
attribute corporal beauty to the objects of those two
senses which are the most intellectual and most in
the service of the understanding-namely, sight and
hearing, so that we do not say, these are beautiful
odours or beautiful tastes: but we rightly say, these
are beautiful voices and beautiful colours.
The beautiful then being called beautiful, because
the knowledge thereof gives pleasure, it is requisite
that besides the union and the distinction, the
integrity, the order, and the agreement of its parts,
there should be also splendour and brightness that it
may be knowable and visible.
Voices to be beautiful must be clear and true;
discourses intelligible; colours brilliant and
shining. Obscurity, shade and darkness are ugly and
disfigure all things, because in them nothing is
knowable, neither order, distinction, union nor
agreement; which caused S. Denis to say, that "God as
the sovereign beauty is author of the beautiful
harmony, beautiful lustre and good grace which is
found in all things, making the distribution and
decomposition of his one ray of beauty spread out, as
light, to make all things beautiful," willing that to
compose beauty there should be agreement, clearness
and good grace.
Certainly, Theotimus, beauty is without effect,
unprofitable and dead, if light and splendour do not
make it lively and effective, whence we term colours
lively when they have light and lustre.
But as to animated and living things their beauty is
not complete without good grace, which, besides the
agreement of perfect parts which makes beauty, adds
the harmony of movements, gestures and actions, which
is as it were the life and soul of the beauty of
living things. Thus, in the sovereign beauty of our
God, we acknowledge union, yea, unity of essence in
the distinction of persons, with an infinite glory,
together with an incomprehensible harmony of all
perfections of actions and motions, sovereignly
comprised, and as one would say excellently joined
and adjusted, in the most unique and simple
perfection of the pure divine act, which is God
Himself, immutable and invariable, as elsewhere we
shall show.
God, therefore, having a will to make all things good
and beautiful, reduced the multitude and distinction
of the same to a perfect unity, and, as man would
say, brought them all under a monarchy, making a
subordination of one thing to another and of all
things to himself the sovereign Monarch. He reduces
all our members into one body under one head, of many
persons he forms a family, of many families a town,
of many towns a province, of many provinces a
kingdom, putting the whole kingdom under the
government of one sole king.
So, Theotimus, over the innumerable multitude and
variety of actions, motions, feelings, inclinations,
habits, passions, faculties and powers which are in
man, God has established a natural monarchy in the
will, which rules and commands all that is found in
this little world: and God seems to have said to the
will as Pharao said to Joseph: Thou shalt be over my
house, and at the commandment of thy mouth all the
people shall obey.(1) This dominion of the will is
exercised indeed in very various ways.
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