(855) 4-ESSAYS

Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Aesthetics: The science of beauty


As long as the pursuit of pleasure is so leading a trait of man's character, is so prominent among the right incentives to effort, we surely need no other motive or justification of an action than that it repays us by an adequate and innocent pleasure. The gift of a perception, with so obvious and primary a reference to the enjoyment thereby to be conferred, marks the Creator's estimate of happiness, and severely rebukes the indolence which suffers a great faculty to become weak by inaction, and sink from its function and from the circle of powers. The peculiar and abundant pleasures designed to be conferred upon us in this intuition claim our grateful acceptance. The very nature, however, of the gratification afforded, and its relation to other gratifications, are additional motives for its pursuit. It does not belong to our animal nature, neither to the appetites or passions, but, as a higher and more spiritual enjoyment, can be thrown into the balance against these, and unite its forces with those other perceptions which release us from the sensuous and passionate. The love of the beautiful is often a powerful auxiliary of virtue, by engaging the faculties in an ennobling form of activity, thus at once preoccupying the ground against vicious inclinations, and bringing the mind nearer to the yet higher intuitions and enjoyments of right action. In the contest between the spiritual and physical which is waged in every man's nature, beauty arrays itself on the side of the former, and may often furnish that intellectual enjoyment by which the mind is first brought within the calmer, more profound and abiding pleasures which belong to the strictly rational intuitions. Beauty is often the door-keeper to those charmed precincts within which are truth and right. A fourth reason why we should render ourselves susceptible to the impulses which arise from a perception of beauty is, that they lend themselves as additional inducements to our best action, in a great variety of directions.


Essays Related to Aesthetics: The science of beauty


Got a writing question? Ask our professional writer!
Submit My Question