Hay is curious and fascinating, and, like the announcement of
Haydon, may give practical hints to artists and others. But no
intellectual process or ingenuity can make up for the absence of
emotional warmth and refined selection. "Beauty, the foe of excess and
vacuity, blooms, like genius, in the equilibrium of all the forces,"
says Jean Paul. "Beauty," says Hemsterhuis, "is the product of the
greatest number of ideas in the shortest time," which is like the
Italian definition, _il piu nel uno_, unity in multiplicity, believed
by Coleridge to contain the principle of beauty. On another page of
the "Table Talk" Coleridge is made to say, "You are wrong in resolving
beauty into expression or interest; it is quite distinct; indeed, it
is opposite, although not contrary. Beauty is an immediate presence,
between which and the beholder _nihil est_. It is always one and
tranquil; whereas the interesting always disturbs and is disturbed."
Hegel, in his "AEsthetic," defines natural beauty to be "the idea as
immediate unity, in so far as this unity is visible in sensuous
reality." And a few pages earlier he is more brief and distinct,
calling the beautiful "the sensuous shining forth of the idea.
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