Now we went on to our subject of beauty. What, I asked, was the one truly beautiful perfect thing, the thought of which gives us more delight than any other? They said—bit by bit—that it was complete understanding, unity, sympathy. I said I believed every beautiful thing was one which symbolized this completeness, something that in itself seemed complete and perfect and fulfilled. It took some time to explain this. Florence, of course, already understood it. Virginia and Marian caught at it as a new and elusive and valuable idea. All except Henry saw what I meant. Marian had said, even before I expressed this idea, that beauty was symmetry. Henry said: “I don’t see what you mean, or why you need question it. A beautiful thing is one that gives us a thrill of delight.” “Yes,” I answered, “certainly. That is like saying a thing is red because it has a red color. What I want to know is why things delight us with their beauty, so that we may make a standard from these, whereby to judge all things.” I stopped them when they began to speak of special works of art, because, I insisted, we would first speak of beauty in all things in the world. Virginia said: “When I am in a field among animals, playing with them all, that to me seems beautiful. I do feel sympathy with them, but it isn’t completeness.” “No,” I answered, “and it isn’t beautiful, though it is delightful in another way. Beauty is something apart from us, which we see and hear, and which wakes in us a sense of completeness, of harmony within itself, as if _there_ were the whole world, nothing lacking, nor yet too much. A landscape, for instance.” “It is sometimes not beautiful at all,” said Henry. “No,” I answered, “surely not. A landscape, no matter how beautiful and wonderful, would be spoiled by a big sign on the nearest tree, advertising ‘Babbitt’s Soap.’” “Or a sign ‘To Let,’” said Henry. “Yes,” I answered, “though that might not be as bad, yet that, too, would be inharmonious, and suggest all sorts of irrelevant things.” “But,” said Henry, “a burnt wood is harmonious, I suppose, and yet it would be ugly.” “Not always,” said I, “not if it were blended into the landscape, and mellowed.” “No,” Henry answered, “perhaps not, if the colors were beautiful.” “But if it were ugly,” I said, “it would be inharmonious. A newly burnt forest suggests death and desolation in the midst of life and summer—an incongruity. It suggests destruction where the thought is most unwelcome and horrible.” “Then,” said Marian, “it is not the thing itself, but the feeling which it gives us, that is beautiful.” “Yes,” I said, “it gives us the thrill of that complete joy. We seem to see something which is what cannot be; complete harmony. The sight of the sea makes Virginia feel so. And you, the out-of-doors.” Virginia said: “I have sometimes thought beauty is light, because the sun is most beautiful—and, at night, the moon.”