Real beauty may be further divided into _material_ or _sensible_ or _physical_, and _intellectual_ or _spiritual_. The former reveals itself to hearing, seeing and imagination; the latter can be apprehended only by intellect; but intellect depends for all its objects on the data of the imagination. The beauty of spiritual realities is of course of a higher, nobler and more excellent order than that of the realities of sense. The spiritual beauty which falls directly within human experience is that of the human spirit itself; from the soul and its experiences we can rise to an apprehension—analogical and inadequate—of the Beauty of the Infinite Being. In the soul itself we can distinguish two sources of beauty: what we may call its _natural_ endowments such as intellect and will, and its _moral_ dispositions, its perfections and excellences as a free, intelligent, moral agent—its _virtues_. Beauty of soul, especially the moral beauty of the virtuous soul, is incomparably more precious than beauty of body. The latter, of course, like all real beauty in God’s creation, has its proper dignity as an expression and revelation, however faint and inadequate, of the Uncreated Beauty of the Deity. But inasmuch as it is so inferior to the moral beauty proper to man, in itself so frail and evanescent, in its influence on human passions so dangerous to virtue, we can understand why in the Proverbs of Solomon it is proclaimed to be vain and deceitful in contrast with the moral beauty of fearing the Lord: _Fallax gratia et vana est pulchritudo; mulier timens dominum ipsa laudabitur_.(213) 58. THE BEAUTIFUL IN ART. SCOPE AND FUNCTION OF THE FINE ARTS.—The expression of beauty is the aim of the fine arts. Art in general is “the proper conception of a work to be accomplished”: “ars nihil aliud est quam recta ratio aliquorum operum faciendorum”.(214) While the _mechanical_ arts aim at the production of things useful, the _fine_ arts aim at the production of things beautiful, _i.e._ of works which by their order, symmetry, harmony, splendour, etc., will give such apt expression to human ideals of natural beauty as to elicit esthetic enjoyment in the highest possible degree. The artist, then, must be a faithful student and admirer of all natural beauty; not indeed to aim at exact reproduction or imitation of the latter; but to draw therefrom his inspiration and ideals. Even the most beautiful things of nature express only inadequately the ideal beauty which the human mind may gather from the study of them. This ideal is what the artist is ever struggling to express, with the ever-present and tormenting consciousness that the achievement of his highest effort will fall immeasurably short of giving adequate expression to it.