But beauty is
_felt_, not intellectually apprehended or logically deduced. Its
presence is acknowledged by a gush from the soul, by a joyous
sentimental recognition, not by a discernment of the understanding.
When we exclaim, How beautiful! there is always emotion, and
delightful, expansive, purifying emotion. Whence this mysterious
cleansing thrill? Thence, that the recognition of beauty ever denotes,
ever springs out of, sympathy with the creative spirit whence all
things have their being.
The beautiful, then, is not subject to the intellect. We cannot
demonstrate or coldly discover it; we cannot weigh or measure it.
Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward
eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus
is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown
through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this
does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor,
carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of
the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not
until then is its individuality and are its various physical
qualities, size, shape, etc.
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