The Images or Shadows of Divine Things
(1758)
The beauty of the world
The beauty of the
world consists wholly of sweet mutual consents, either within
itself or with the supreme being. As to the corporeal world, though
there are many other sorts of consents, yet the sweetest and most
charming beauty of it is its resemblance of spiritual beauties. The
reason is that spiritual beauties are infinitely the greatest, and
bodies being but the shadows of being, they must be so much the
more charming as they shadow forth spiritual beauties. This beauty
is peculiar to natural things, it surpassing the art of
man.
Thus there is the
resemblance of a decent trust, dependence and acknowledgment in the
planets continually moving around the sun, receiving his influences
by which they are made happy, bright and beautiful: a decent
attendance in the secondary planets, an image of majesty, power,
and glory, and beneficence in the sun in the midst of all, and so
in terrestrial things, as I have shown in another
place.
It is very probable
that the wonderful suitableness of green for the grass and plants,
the blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, the colours of
flowers, consists in a complicated proportion that these colours
make one with another, either in their magnitude of the rays, the
number of vibrations that are caused in the atmosphere, or some
other way. So there is a great suitableness between the objects of
different senses, as between sounds, colours, and smells; as
between colours of the woods and flowers and the smells and the
singing of birds, which it is probable consist in a certain
proportion of the vibrations that are made in the different organs.
So there are innumerable other agreeablenesses of motions, figures,
etc. The gentle motions of waves, of the lily, etc., as it is
agreeable to other things that represent calmness, gentleness and
benevolence, etc., the fields and woods seem to rejoice, and how
joyfull do the birds seem to be in it. How much a resemblance is
there of every grace in the field covered with plants and flowers
when the sun shines serenely and undisturbedly upon them, how a
resemblance, I say, of every grace and beautiful disposition of
mind, of an infenour towards a supenour cause, preserver,
benevolent benefactor, and a fountain of happiness.
How great a
resemblance of a holy and virtuous soul is a calm, serene day. What
an infinite number of such like beauties is there in that one
thing, the light, and how complicated an harmony and proportion it
is probable belongs to it.
There are beauties
that are more palpable and explicable, and there are hidden and
secret beauties. The former pleases, and we can tell why; we can
explain the particular point for the agreement that renders the
thing pleasing. Such are all artificial regularities; we can tell
wherein the regularity lies that affects us. [The] latter sort are
those beauties that delight us and we cannot tell why. Thus, we
find ourselves pleased in beholding the colour of the violets, but
we know not what secret regularity or harmony it is that creates
that pleasure in our minds. These hidden beauties are commonly by
far the greatest, because the more complex a beauty is, the more
hidden is it. In this latter fact consists principally the beauty
of the world, and very much in light and colours. Thus mere light
is pleasing to the mind. If it be to the degree of effulgence, it
is very sensible, and mankind have agreed in it: they all represent
glory and extraordinary beauty by brightness. The reason of it is
either that light or our organ of seeing is so contrived that an
harmonious motion is excited in the animal spirits and propagated
to the brain. That mixture we call white is a proportionate mixture
that is harmonious, as Sir Isaac Newton has shown, to each
particular simple colour, and contains in some harmony or other
that is delightful. And each sort of rays play a distinct tune to
the soul, besides those ; lovely mixtures that are found in nature.
Those beauties, how lovely is the green of the face of the earth in
all manner of colours, in flowers, the colour of the skies, and
lovely tinctures of the morning and evening.
Corollary: Hence the
reason why almost all men, and those that seem to be very
miserable, love life, because they cannot bear to lose sight of
such a beautiful and lovely world. The ideas, that every moment
whilst we live have a beauty that we take no distinct notice of,
brings a pleasure that, when we come to the trial, we had rather
live in such pain and misery than lose.
