The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National PolicyVarious
History
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863: Devoted to Literature and National Policy
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- 19th century -- Periodicals
[Footnote 11: A gradual change is, indeed, observable, but as yet, it is
only an incipient one.]
REASON, RYHME, AND RYTHM.
CHAPTER III.--THE INFINITE.
The Divine Attributes are the base of all true Art.
No work of art can be considered truly beautiful unless it recalls or
reproduces, even in its finite form, some of the divine attributes; not
that the work must treat of them, or consciously suggest them to the
intellect, but that they must enter into the creation of the artist,
that the immediate and intuitive perception of beauty, always attached
to their manifestation, may appeal to those faculties or instincts which
ever answer in delight when these attributes are suggested to the human
spirit; for, consciously or unconsciously, the soul yearns for a clearer
view of the beauty of God.
Whatever good there may be desirable by man, more especially good
belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding
agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good,
whether it remind him by arbitrary association, by typical resemblance,
or by awakening intuitions of the divine attributes, which he was
created to glorify and to enjoy eternally. Leibnitz says:
'The perfections of God are those of our own souls, but He
possesses them without limit; He is the exhaustless ocean from
which we have received but a drop; we have some power, some wisdom,
some love; but God is all power, all wisdom, all love. Order,
unity, proportion, harmony, enchant us; painting, sculpture, music,
poetry, charm us in the degree in which, in their appropriate
spheres, they have succeeded in manifesting fragments of the above:
but God is all order, all proportion, all unity, all harmony; and
all beauty visible here is but a dim reflex of the eternal rays.'
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