| [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. |
