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TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY HE cosmological view of things is not only legitimate, but richly :rewarding, for a consideration of the inner constitution and activity of even inanimate things reveals their integrity, harmony of parts and splendor of form, and thus beauty is perceived and relished. There is a degree of beauty in everything, just as there is a certain amount of truth, at least as long as man does not intervene with his productions and constructions that destroy and profane iL The experimental scientist observes that inward truth, as it unfolds before his eyes, in the laws of nature, in formulas, in statistics, in action and reaction, and unless he be lacking even the rudiments of a philosophy, he advances beyond aU the limits of experiment and scientific hypothesis to an ineffable quid, the principle of coherence and of activity, cosmic being, concretized and, as it were, solidified into a formality which gives to things substance, unity, truth. But, this same palpitating :reality thrusts itself upon the eyes and the heart of a poet, and he delights in it. Through the vehicle of his senses the poet attains truth, vibrant and resplendent in its concreteness , as it irradiates his soul, and echoes in all his being. There is here a ' sympathy " (in the Bergsonian sense) with things, and the fulness of joy. It is this intoxicating discovery of beauty which endows the poet-anyone who can :recreate in himself the beauty of things and communicate its fascinationwith the magic power of lively impression and of life-like expression. Pulchrum est quod visu placet, the ancients said, e. g., St. Thomas; 1 and whatever be the esthetic theory devised to explain or to describe the phenomenon, it is difficult to express 1 Summa Theologiae. I, q. 5, a. 4, ad l; I-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad !!; II-II, q. 145, a. 2, ad L 350 TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF BEAUTY 351 more synthetically the wonder of a thing revealing what it is: a positive value of entity and truth, richly attractive and productive of delight. Beauty addresses itself not only to speculative reasoning (scientific and philosophic truth) only, nor to the senses (animal pleasure), but to the whole man. It seizes him, inebriates and startles him, giving to his mind the gleam of a thought, however confused; to his heart and senses a joyous vibration; to all his faculties a cohesive, delectable movement, which i£ it be not the highest, is certainly the most intense of human activity, and if it finds an adequate outlet fo:r re-expression and :revelation, it transforms itself into artistic operation, reproducing by a marvelous paternity, as it were, in lines, volumes, words, in sounds and colors harmoniously blended and truly :representative, that quid secretum which palpitated interiorly. Both the metaphysician and the theologian can know, consider and even experience this phenomenon. The metaphysician cannot ignore the reality of things, the object of the senses and intelligence, if :is to avoid shipwreck in a vast ocean. From beings he ascends to being, and returns to the former~to aU beings: cosmic, historic, psychologic, ethic and artistic-in order to review and :revaluate them in the light of the universal notion he has :reached, a notion which he meets and rediscovers in all of them as their fundamental constitutive -being. He can, then, start from beauty and return to beauty; he can rise from esthetic intuition to metaphysical speculation and return in a circular movement from one form of knowledge and enjoyment to another, strengthening the bonds of reality, expanding his power, until he collates all formalities about the supreme concept of the metaphysician in a perfect synthesis. The metaphysician, and even more the theologian, sees that the :reality of things, although substantial in itself, is referred to the First Being, the Supreme Value, the Absolute on which aU depend. This is not the ens commune, in which every being shares, it is Ens a Se, Subsistent Being, the Being-Person who is the fount of all :reality. The reference is necessary because no created thing-an actuality, true, but a limited one-has RAYMO~D SPIAZZI in itself the sufficient reason...

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