"Eternal beauty, unbegotten and imperishable, exempt from decay as well as increase, which is not beautiful in such a part and ugly in such another, beautiful only, at such a time, in such a place, in such a relation, beautiful for some, ugly for others, beauty that has no sensible form, no visage, no hands, nothing corporeal, which is not such a thought or such a particular science, which resides not in any being different from itself, as an animal, the earth, or the heavens, or any other thing, which is absolutely identical and invariable by itself, in which all other beauties participate, in such a way, nevertheless, that their birth or their destruction neither diminishes nor increases, nor in the least changes it!... In order to arrive at this perfect beauty, it is necessary to commence with the beauties of this lower world, and, the eyes being fixed upon the supreme beauty, to elevate ourselves unceasingly towards it, by passing, thus to speak, through all the degrees of the scale, from a single beautiful body to two, from two to all others, from beautiful bodies to beautiful sentiments, from beautiful sentiments to beautiful thoughts, until from thought to thought we arrive at the highest thought, which has no other object than the beautiful itself, until we end by knowing it as it is in itself. "O my dear Socrates," continued the stranger of Mantinea, "that which can give value to this life is the spectacle of the eternal beauty.... What would be the destiny of a mortal to whom it should be granted to contemplate the beautiful without alloy, in its purity and simplicity, no longer clothed with the flesh and hues of humanity, and with all those vain charms that are condemned to perish, to whom it should be given to see face to face, under its sole form, the divine beauty!"[111] FOOTNOTES: [103] If one would make himself acquainted with a simple and piquant refutation, written two thousand years ago, of false theories of beauty, he may read the _Hippias_ of Plato, vol. iv. of our translation. The _Phaedrus_, vol. vi., contains the veiled exposition of Plato's own theory; but it is in the _Banquet_ (_Ibid._), and particularly in the discourse of Diotimus, that we must look for the thought of Plato carried to its highest degree of development, and clothed with all the beauty of human language. [104] See the _Hippias_. [105] First _Ennead_, book vi., in the work of M. B. Saint-Hillaire, on the _School of Alexandria_, the translation of this morsel of Plotinus, p. 197.