“Beauty is only skin deep,” cries Ugliness, pinning her faith on the fascination of the Intelligence. “And ugliness goes to the bone,” Beauty replies, though she fears that that shaft of “wit” must have originally been spoken by a pantomime librettist. “Handsome is as handsome does,” retorts Ugliness, quoting from the Plain Woman's volume of Copy-Book Maxims. And so this battle of words goes on.

But Beauty cares nothing at all for maxims. She puts on her most becoming hat, her daintiest dress, and goes forth careless and indifferent to anything except Middle Age. No shaft of Puritanical censure, she feels, can hurt her. Beauty is its own raison d'etre—its own excuse for being gloriously alive. It needs no apology, no panic balancing of its debit account by moral and intellectual compensations hurriedly placed to its credit. In Heaven, it knows, more people will want to call upon Ninon de l'Enclos than wish to leave cards on St. Theresa of Spain. And what is more satisfying to Beauty than a large audience? Only two things really terrify her—the loss of her Good Looks and the loss of her Youth. That may be the reason why, au fond, she sometimes envies her plainer sisters almost as much as they envy her. Perhaps she knows that they play a waiting game, and that at fifty-five it might have been as well for her had she been born “plain” too, since henceforward she must enter the “plain” woman's world as a stranger, to live as they live, but, unlike them, to be for ever tortured by the remark: “All the same, she was a great beauty ‘In Her Day!’ ” It is the way her friends apologize for her false teeth.

In the meanwhile, however, she triumphs—triumphs overwhelmingly. To the purely physical lure Reason is as unreasoning as Lunacy. In spite of that French saying which states that “il faut souffrir pour etre belle,” how often great suffering and great happiness go through life hand in hand, the one utterly dependent upon the other. Only the commonplace “soul” revels in the smug security of the commonplace. Life at its fullest is surely a great joy, as well as a great pain!

And Beauty—how glibly we utter the word! Indeed, how glibly we utter all those words, the meaning of which is so difficult clearly to define! “Democracy,” “Liberty,” “Freedom,” “Friendship,” “Love”—and, let it be owned, the “Hereafter”!—how often we use the words as a kind of final argument, and how often, so mesmerized has become our Intelligence by these words, do we accept them without question as something appertaining to finality. It is the same with Beauty. To call a woman “beautiful” requires no corollary. That is all that need be said! Merely to say it, especially if the word is spoken by some one in High Authority, is sometimes sufficient to create a reputation for loveliness—as women who have been the mistresses of kings know full well. The world asks so little more of a beautiful woman than her beauty. Which perhaps accounts—though in a book of Beautiful Women let it be printed in small type—for so many lovely women being intellectually dull! But then, if one is good to look upon, one can afford to be dreary company. Loveliness is its own forgiveness of intellectual sins. It is a “decoration,” and we do not ask of decorations to be more than perfect in regard to colouring and symmetry of line. Success is, after all, but a reflection of ourselves in the world, and Beauty finds its reflection in almost every human eye and in almost every human heart. Its way through life is indeed strewn with roses—those lovely flowers which hide such very vindictive thorns.

God makes beautiful women; a Plain Woman has to do the best she can for herself. Her only hope lies in the fact that what fascinates Tom may leave Dick indifferent—and who knows but that Harry will find that she herself is more attractive than any other woman? Which brings me back to a definition of Beauty, and that, being at heart a sluggard, I had purposely wished to avoid.

“Beauty” is to me but another name for “Harmony.” It is harmonious to some ideal indigenous to the “soul.” It may only be “skin deep,” as the Plain Woman likes to assert for the benefit of vain schoolgirls, but the beholding eye nevertheless endows it with “spirituality.” It likes to believe this loveliness is only an outer symbol of an inner spiritual grace. Which fact will account in some way for different types of beautiful women appealing to different types of men—so that even an ugly woman sometimes hears herself addressed in the language Mars probably used to Venus.

We find in Beauty something more than a realization of what we believe to be perfection; we find in it a “journey's end”—or perhaps I ought to say “lodgment,” seeing that Beauty is so often fleeting—in the lonely search of the “soul” after spiritual sustenance. We give to it our adoration, an adoration which none the less overwhelms us emotionally because, physically speaking, it is passionless. We bow in worship before it, without—if I may express myself in metaphor tinged with vulgarity—an insensate desire to Clutch. For Beauty is also a “message”; and, as it appeals to something within our “souls,” so does that “message” become the more eloquent. Moreover, it has a thousand facets. We can find it anywhere, in almost everything that is not mean or debased, hypocritical or dishonest. Nevertheless, there are some men who can find beauty only in sex; men who are deaf to that “song within a song” which in the hearts of so many is as the Psalm of Life. The view of distant mountains; the glowing, dancing reflection of the sun setting out at sea; the quiet, verdant valleys, whose peacefulness falls on the troubled spirit as a benediction; a voice, a memory, a prayer—all these things can uplift the heart until momentarily it may live in a whole world of beauty. For Beauty must be felt within the “soul.” The senses but convey an impression, the “soul” translates that impression into terms of Ecstacy. For when we come face to face with Beauty, in whatever guise, all that is best and purest in our Nature stirs in response, so that at last our “soul” cannot live without Beauty. Robbed, as it were, for ever of this harmony, which seems to reflect Heaven, even in lowly places, it withers and dies. The man who seeks not Beauty can scarcely be said to live; since without beauty Life is but a barren wilderness, sodden by the tears of men. The Road to God is paved by Music and Poetry, by Art and Literature, by all those manifestations of Beauty which are unselfishness, renunciation, friendship, love, sympathy, understanding, humility. Man is Spirit as well as Body, and just as the physical needs must be satisfied, so must the Spirit find Beauty if it wither not nor die. Through Beauty God speaks to men; and inasmuch as we seek to bring Beauty into our lives and into the lives of others, so we come into closer communion with Him.

Beauty, then, is something which is in complete harmony with the longings of the “soul,” and through the “soul” with God. The old belief [pg 14] that Beauty is the seed the Devil sows to reap his human harvest is an exploded blasphemy. Surround men with Ugliness and they will quickly qualify themseves for a place in Hell. We take from our surroundings as much, perhaps even more, than we give to them. Thus Beauty is surely the great ally of Virtue: to the extent that it sometimes fails in its alliance, so does it lack true perfection. For as much as our so-called civilization is worth to us in happiness, the gift has been a gift from the great poets, the great writers, the great thinkers, the great musicians and painters—all those who have sought to bring the message of beauty to this world, including that supreme artist Nature herself. And this is true, no matter how much the politicians, the commercial magnates, kings, princes, and potentates may preen themselves on their human importance, pointing to their laws, their factories, their palaces, all the evidences of their temporal power. Their “message” to humanity has only been the fact of their own success, whereas, the potent “message” of Beauty is at all times a silent one, though more eloquent, more uplifting, more encouraging than all the pompous diatribes that were ever uttered. In the greatest, most inspiring moments of our lives we are always dumb. No words can then express the triumphant melody which is surging in our hearts. To the extent that we can explain our emotion, so we feel it less. Thus in the presence of something beautiful we are at all times mute. The strength of its appeal is shown in our subsequent ACTS; and actions, we know, speak far, far louder than words.

Beauty, then, is something which, uplifting us, strengthens the soul, helps the spirit to rise above the deadening influence of the commonplace monotony of the Everyday. It may not necessarily be essential to our success in this world, though to surround oneself with Beauty is surely one of the ideals which spur us onward to the attainment of riches, but it is surely essential to our salvation! It is, as it were, the golden thread which runs through the plain homespun of life. Without it the pattern of our days would be distinctly “drab” on a buff ground. Everything that is physically fine; everything that is noble and just, generous and kind; everything which gladdens our hearts and sends us on our way rejoicing; everything which, as it were, lifts our faces up towards God in the high heavens—that surely is Beautiful! I always like to think that [pg 15] Shelley in his essay on “Love” made Love synonymous with Beauty: “Thou demandest what is Love?” he wrote. “It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive of fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and sanction which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists.”

To make the world more and more beautiful, not in a narrow sense, but in the widest and deepest sense possible, that surely ought to be the ideal of civilization. And in this ideal, physical beauty has surely an important place allotted to it. One is virtuous, after all, for one's own benefit; one “makes the best of oneself” for the benefit of the whole world. There is no virtue in being plain, though I must confess it usually makes virtue a much easier achievement. As a rule, Nature is more often a conscientious than an inspired artist, and there is nothing mere conscientiousness requires more than a helping hand. That conscientiousness has also its divinely inspired moments—moments which come to it unpremeditated and unforeseen—that also is a fad. That is why Nature, who “bungle” her best points hopelessly so often, does occasionally achieve a veritable “masterpiece.” That, too, is why Beautiful Women have every reason to be proud of their loveliness and seek to preserve its colouring and its contour. Moreover, their beauty also absolves them from the necessity of being remarkable in any other direction. After all, if one is beautiful, it is not also obligatory to be useful. One does not demand of Leonardo da Vinci's “Mona Lisa” to be a screen as well as a picture, nor appreciate an exquisite piece of Sevres china any the less because it is also neither a candlestick nor an ash-tray! We demand from them nothing beyond their beauty, and, finding it, we are satisfied. Also we count our life worth while according to the loveliness which it contains. Every man starts out in the hope that he will marry a pretty [pg 16] woman. That most men's taste is not exacting, and love proverbially blind, is a blessing for which few lovers are sufficiently grateful. In the prayers of gratitude offered up by Humanity to God, such an one should be included: “Praise be unto Him who makes most of us beautiful at some time to some one!” Beauty is, after all, its own forgiveness of sins in the heart of those who love it. Only when a woman's looks are fading does her husband begin to realize that neither can she cook. Until then, he is only too glad to suffer indigestion at her hands. That a beautiful woman should die young is, after all, only to wish her the best of all possible blessings in this best of all possible worlds.

All the same, what a pleasant destiny! And yet, perhaps, those who are permitted to gaze upon beauty without being themselves beautiful are the most fortunate of all. And that is the position of most of us, thank God. As it is more thrilling to watch a pageant than to take part in one, so, to be able to gaze undisturbed upon the Pageant of Beauty as it passes before our generation to take its place in the wonderful procession marching down the ages, is a far more peaceful proceeding than to form part of that procession. After all, the most envied in a tableau vivant are not those who figure in it, but those who have been able to secure the best position from which to view it. The man who secures a “masterpiece” is far more gratified than the artist who created it. So, while we bow down in adoration before Beauty, let us also be thankful that the greatest privilege of all lies in an opportunity to regard it. “Beauty and sadness,” George Macdonald has written, “always go together.” But to be able to gaze on Beauty—that, surely, is the most undiluted joy in life.