Only what is vital and serviceable, and whatever is that, is beautiful. When the spirit of man perceives a unity in things, a working together of parts, there beauty exists. It resides in the synthesis of details to the end of shaping a complete whole. This perception, this synthesis, is a function of the human mind. Beauty is not in the landscape, but in the intelligence which apprehends it. Evidence of this fundamental truth is the fact that the same landscape is more "beautiful" to one man than to another, or to a third, perhaps, is not beautiful at all. It is only as the individual perceives a relation among the parts resulting in a total unity that the object becomes beautiful for him. This abstract exposition may be made clearer by a graphic illustration. Here are four figures composed of the same elements:-- * *** ** * *** * ***** * ****** * ** * * * * * ************* * * * * * ** Fig. I. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Fig. II. Fig. III. Fig. IV. Figure I., far from being pleasing, is positively disquieting. With the other three figures, the perception of their form is attended with a kind of pleasure. Whereas the first figure is without form and is meaningless, each of the second group exhibits harmony, balance, proportion, interrelation of parts: each is perceived to be a whole. Although experience itself comes to men in fragments and seemingly without order, yet the human mind is so constituted as to require that an idea or a truth be shown to be a whole before the mind can comprehend it In considering the element of balance, it should be noted, as illustrated by Figure IV., that balance is not necessarily perfect symmetry. A Gothic cathedral is beautiful no less than a Greek temple. In a painting of a landscape, for example, it is necessary simply that the masses and the tones stand in balancing relation; the perfect symmetry of geometric exactness, characteristic of Hellenic and Renaissance art, is not required. In the work which embodies the artist's perception of the universal harmony, there must be rhythm, order, unity in variety; so framed it becomes expressive and significant