Moral beauty

“ Thus in these sorts of actions we could not find moral beauty, because an action is morally good only as far as inclination has taken part in it, and here the inclination protests against much more than it concurs with it. But these actions have moral grandeur, because all that testifies to a preponderating authority exercised over the sensuous nature has grandeur, and grandeur is found only there. ”

“ As we have said, they excel in composition, especially in expression. They always have a thought, and a moral and elevated thought. For this reason they are dear to us, their cause interests us, is in some sort our own cause, and so this homage rendered to their misunderstood glory naturally crowns these lectures devoted to true beauty, that is to say, moral beauty. ”

“ We must now seek the unity of these three sorts of beauty. Now, we think that they resolve themselves into one and the same beauty, moral beauty, meaning by that, with moral beauty properly so called, all spiritual beauty. ”

“ Such principles impart new light and vigor to the mind, and secure to its possessor a safe passage through all the temptations of the world to the abodes of eternal purity and blessedness. A character without fixed moral principles has impressed on it the deformity of a great and palpable defect. Whatever virtues it does not possess are like flowers planted in the snow or withered by the drought—wanting the life vigor and beauty which principles alone can impart. ”

“ This lesson of philosophy, even a romance, a poem, or a play may teach us.... Let poets or the men of harmony deny, if they can, this force of nature, or withstand this moral magic.... Every one is a virtuoso of a higher or lower degree; every one pursues a grace ... of one kind or other. The venustum, the honestum, the decorum of things will force its way.... The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth; for all beauty is truth.”
Accordingly, virtue being only one kind of beauty, the principle which determines what is virtuous is, not conscience, but taste. ”

“ Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if unaccompanied by them. ”

“ This opposition between the instincts of nature and the exigencies of the moral law, exigencies, however, that we recognize as legitimate, brings our feelings into play and awakens a sentiment that we name esteem, which is inseparable from dignity.
With grace, on the contrary, as with beauty in general, reason finds its demands satisfied in the world of sense, and sees with surprise one of its own ideas presented to it, realized in the world of phenomena. ”

“ The man rightly practiced in all noble exercises of life—in moral fidelity, in reverence and sympathy, in observation and conformity to the actual conditions of the world about him—will find pouring in upon him a beauty, a love, a divinity, which fill the soul with a heavenly vision. ”

“ Yet we think we are borne out by example. We do not maintain, it will be remembered, that beauty of person must necessarily be the representative of moral beauty, according to the best and highest definition of that term. That definition, we presume, would include the virtuous and the heavenly. That these traits are unfailing accompaniments of noble features—the beautiful countenance—the finished form—it would be hazardous and foolish to assert. What we intend to say is this—that we believe external beauty is the representation of an internal and spiritual quality of the same nature. ”

“ True principles of justice, true types of beauty, all moral relations between man and man, all ideas of order, these are engraved on his understanding; he sees the right place for everything and the causes which drive it from that place; he sees what may do good, and what hinders it. Without having felt the passions of mankind, he knows the illusions they produce and their mode of action. ”

“ Take out, then, from any such emotion, what Imagination, and Love, and Sympathy have supplied, and leave only what the Moral Spirit recognises of Moral Will in the act, and you will find that much of that dazzling and splendid Beauty which produced the transport of loving admiration is removed. ”

“ I have long entertained a suspicion, all that has been said by the novel-writers and dramatists and poets of our age to the contrary notwithstanding, that personal beauty and intellectual beauty, or personal beauty and moral beauty, are not inseparably connected with, nor apportioned to each other. ”

“ If, instead of seeking for pleasure, as the chief object in view, she would seek to be useful in her sphere of life, she would lay in her mind the basis of a true character, that active virtue would build up into a beautiful, harmonious, and ever-to-be-loved and admired superstructure of moral excellence and beauty. ”

“ If the beauty of virtue, and the grandeur of truth, and the sublimity of invisible things, have been able to make such an impression upon your intellects, and your tastes,—upon that part of your constitution which is fixed and stationary, which responds organically to such objects, and which is not the seat of moral character,—then why is there not a corresponding influence and impression made by them upon your heart? ”

“ To avoid this contradiction we must admit that the moral cause, which in our soul is the foundation of grace, brings, in a necessary manner, in the sensibility which depends on that cause, precisely that state which contains in itself the natural conditions of beauty. ”

“ To a true scholar the attraction of the aspects of nature, the departments of life, and the passages of his experience, is simply the information they yield him of this supreme nature which lurks within all. That reality, that causing force is moral. The Moral Sentiment is but its other name. It makes by its presence or absence right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, genius or depravation. ”

“ As the strongest proof that the moral sense is the governing principle of beauty, we may remark, that the human form, from infancy to old age, has its peculiar beauty annexed to it from the virtue or affection that nature gives it, and which it exhibits in the countenance. ”

“ As these two requirements, although coming from the principles of the appreciation of different degrees, address themselves to the same object, also both one and the other must be given satisfaction by one and the same cause. The disposition of the soul which places man in the best state for accomplishing his moral destiny ought to give place to an expression that will be at the same time the most advantageous to his beauty as phenomenon; in other terms, his moral exercise ought to be revealed by grace. ”

“ In other words the end, sought for by morality, is above it and is super-moral. Let us gain a general view of the moral demands which call for satisfaction.
The first of these is the suppression of the divorce between morality and goodness. We have seen that every kind of human excellence, beauty, strength, and even luck, are all undeniably good. It is idle pretence if we assert that such gifts are not desired, and are not also approved of. And it is a moral instinct after all for which beauty counts as virtue. ”

“ And as men are endowed with senses which recognise light and fragrance and every [p. 726] form of physical beauty, so there is a moral sense in man which compels him to discern moral excellence or moral superiority. ”

“ The primal virtues are first made habits of the unceasing consciousness and of the daily life, and the moral power no longer needed for these is then employed in the cultivation of the finer traits of superior excellence,—the shaping of the delicate lines, roundings, and proportions, which constitute "the beauty of holiness," the symmetry and grace of character that win not only abounding respect and confidence, but universal admiration and love. ”

“ The moral sense, which will, at this period, be developed by pictures of life and by standard authorities, will also gain a certain stability if, through the sense of beauty, the good is recognized as beautiful and the bad as ugly. ”

“ In fine, example is of service to us, not in pointing out the precise things to be done, but in exhibiting the beauty, loveliness, and majesty of moral goodness, the possibility of exalted moral attainments, and the varied scope for their exercise in human life. ”

“ And we are taught that man was originally made in the image and likeness of this One Good. Therefore all the finite expressions of this Good, are always pleasing to men in the degree that their moral integrity has been preserved, or the lovely image of their Maker been retained. They interest and attract every mind, from which the native hues of innocence have not faded or been blotted out. ”

“ Well, you must have the skill, you must have the beauty, which is the highest moral element; and then, lastly, you must have the verity or utility, which is not the moral, but the vital element; and this desire for verity and use is the one aim of the three that always leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, without any exception. ”

“ We perceive too, if we examine with care the operations of our own mind, that an æsthetical judgment includes an intuition or intellectual perception, and an emotion of attraction or admiration, very similar to those which compose a moral judgment. The very idea of beauty again implies that it should be admired, as the idea of happiness implies that it should be desired, and the idea of duty that it should be performed. ”

“ What objections may be made to this conclusion.moral part of us to which beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it?
On the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty, and insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture. ”

“ This established order for the attainment of happiness, is in society most strangely inverted. Beauty, strength, honour, and riches,—mere physical qualities,—are generally preferred to the qualities of the mind;—and mental attainments, again, too often command more consideration than moral worth. ”

“ Such is the moral miracle wrought by our excellence which itself is begotten of love and beauty. But the intellectual marvels which have issued from the same source, merit a still more extended notice. ”

“ "Believe me, there is none fraught with such deep, such vital interest. If you talk, indeed, of the capricious inclination awakened by the mere charm of perishable beauty, I grant it to be idle in the extreme; but that love which springs from the concordant sympathies of virtuous hearts; that love which is awakened by the perception of moral excellence, and fed by meditation on intellectual as well as personal beauty; that is a passion which refines and ennobles the human heart. ”

“ Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection. ”

“ This aesthetic sensitiveness is, however, properly enough called moral, because it is the effect of conscientious training and is more powerful for good in society than laborious virtue, because it is much more constant and catching. ”

“ The perception of beauty is a moral test. ”

“ that any extraordinary degree of beauty in man or woman involves a moral charm. ”

“ moral ugliness when interpreted by minds so clear and penetrating becomes a marvellous theme of beauty. ”

“ All who aspire to virtue and the beautiful must study in their words, deeds, conversation, in short, in all the affairs of life, great and small, to aim in every way at beauty. Now what sensible man would deny that virtue is of all things the most beautiful? ”

“ Their position so conflicting with the smiling destiny they reject, the reward of misery given to virtue—all here awakens in us the feeling of impropriety: it ought to fill us with great distress. What is nature, and what are her ends and laws, if all this impropriety shows us moral propriety in its full light. We here see the triumph of the moral law, so sublime an experience for us that we might even hail the calamity which elicits it. For harmony in the world of moral freedom gives us infinitely more pleasure than all the discords in nature give us pain. ”

“ It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? ”

“ My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. ”

“ All persons are just, through Justice — wise, through Wisdom — good, through Goodness or the Good — beautiful, through Beauty or the Beautiful. Now Justice, Wisdom, Goodness, Beauty or the Beautiful, must each be something. ”

“ We have distinguished that particular sensibility, which is stirred in us in the train of reason itself, from physical sensibility, which needs an impression made upon the organs in order to enter into exercise.
All our moral judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to them. The sight of an action which we judge to be good gives us pleasure,—the consciousness of having performed an obligatory act, and of having performed it freely, is also a pleasure; the judgment of merit and demerit makes our hearts beat by taking the form of sympathy and benevolence. ”