Now, so it has always been and so men have always longed to be the
worshipers of beauty. Therefore they have believed in a conscious and
eternal Spirit behind it. Because again we know that personality is
the only thing we have of absolute worth. A man cannot, therefore,
worship beauty, wholly relinquish himself to its high delights, if he
conceives of this majestic grace as impersonal and inanimate. For that
which we worship must be greater than we. Behind it, therefore, just
because it seems to us so beautiful, must be something that calls to
the hidden deeps of the soul, something intimately akin to our own
spirits. So man worships not nature, but the God of nature; senses an
Eternal Presence behind all gracious form. For that interprets beauty
and consecrates the spell of beauty over us. This gives a final
meaning to what the soul perceives is an utter loveliness. This gives
to beauty an eternal and cosmic significance commensurate to its charm
and power. As long as men's hearts surge, too, when the tide yearns
up the beach; as long as their souls become articulate when the birds
sing in the dawn, and the flowers lift themselves to the sun; so long
will men believe that only from a supreme and conscious Loveliness,
a joyous and a gracious Spirit could have come the beauty which is so
intimately related to the spirit of a man.
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