The Beautiful

The Beautiful BY NEPHI JENSEN Truth, goodness and beauty are the great trinity of eternal realities. Deep, lasting love for this trinity, coupled with large capacity to express that love, is greatness. If we write an interrogation point after "truth," we have the question before which the profoundest thinkers of all ages have stood baffled. Why do we say some things are beautiful? is a question almost as difficult to fully answer. Why is the blending of colors on the petals of a flower that defies human skill at imitation, pleasing? If we really find the answer to this question, we shall find it in the word infinite. The blending of the tints in the flower is so varied and so exquisitely dainty that we cannot count the number of tints nor tell where one begins and another ends. The Maker of the flower wrote his name in its heart. What God does is true, and the true is beau- tiful. Goodness is the soul's expression of the true. If the expres- sion is finished, it is beautiful. Truth is the test of reality, beauty is the proof of completeness. Truth is the soul of poetry ; beauty is the body. Truth is the solid foundation of the law that holds the stars in their orbits ; beauty is the poetry that speaks from the fire-shot heavens. Truth is the balance-wheel of the soul ; beauty is the grandeur of the actions of the soul that walks in majestic poise, hand in hand with truth. The chords of the soul were originally tuned true to truth. It is for this reason that every note, whether in song, poem, or eloquence, pleases us. It harks back to the soul's native hearth- stone ; and stirs in the heart the gladness of primeval recollections. The child taken from its mother in infancy, after a few years becomes so completely estranged from her, that neither her wooing words nor winsome smiles can revive in it recollections of former associations, but the instant the mother sings some lullaby as of yore, the mirth of the other days appears in the child's eyes, and its arms are outstretched for the mother's embrace. What the mother's lullaby is to this child, the note of truth is to the soul. No matter whether it speaks to us from the poet's words woven of truth and beauty ; the prophet's lips, touched by the finger of God, or from nature's thousand tongues; in some mysterious way.

114 IMPROVEMENT ERA it brings to us a vague remembrance of the olden days when we were nurtured at truth's hearthstone, and walked and talked with God. Beauty is the mark God places upon his work to indicate that it is completed. Symmetric forms are lovely because they fill the eye with the sense of completeness. But real beauty is deeper than form. It is more than graceful lines. It is always associated with the human. At lunch one day with a doctor, our conversation turned to artists. The medical man said: "I don't understand artists. When at Chicago studying, I met a noted painter who would leave the majestic buildings of the business section and go out to some dilapidated hovel and spend days paint- ing an old, grizzly man. I asked him why he didn't paint the Marshal Field building, and the artist said, 'Nature is reality, and reality is the only thing worth painting.' ' The "old grizzly man" is a fit subject for the brush because, as the negro says, "He is just what he is and not any isser." Only in human actions do we find the perfectly beautiful. The soul that is held in sublime poise by truth's strong arms, and expresses, in looks and actions, naturally and completely, the truth that reigns within, is the most beautiful object we see on this side of immortality. One test of the beautiful is that it is delightsome. But that is not the only proof. Comedy pleases for a while, but comedy is never beautiful. Whether it appears in words, song, or act, the comic in some way is a distortion of the natural. The artificial breaking of the harmony in music, at intervals, is comedy ; but only the perfect harmony in song is beautiful. Fitness is a test of the beautiful. We are all pleased with things that are in proper proportion. Too many, or the wrong adjectives may obscure the truth expressed in the word they qualify. If they do. the ornamentation is overdone. The adage, "Art for art's sake," should read "Art for beauty's sake." And beauty should always be the servant of truth. A truth too elabor- ately adorned loses much of its force, because we are apt to think of its form rather than of its fact. When form, color, or act, speaks louder than the spirit within, it is imperfect. Perfection is the fit blending of grace with rugged reality. Completeness is a mark of things that are pleasing. Defects are always distasteful. If defects appear in personal features they excite pity; if they appear in some expression of art, they excite laughter. But we neither laugh nor weep in the presence of the truly beautiful. Our impression is deeper than mirth, and not quite SO sad as tears. Because the beautiful is true in its com- pleteness, it imparts the joy which blends the seriousness of reality with mirthful pleasantness. Tt is the mission of art to express the beautiful, and yet the

Ill E BEAUTIFUL LIS beautiful is deeper and truer than art. Indeed, it is because we depart from the truth of nature that art has a place in human activities. If we always maintained childlike naturalness, truth and beauty would reign in our souls, and our actions would be the natural expression of what is within. Art is the studied effort to express perfection in form, color, tone, word, and act. Nature is the spontaneous expression of truth. For this reason nature is always beautiful. The slightest wave of a child's hand is graceful, because it is natural, spontaneous expression of its true emotion. Art never succeeds unless it disguises itself. No matter what we witness, song, speech or act, we are not pleased if the performer gives us the impression that he is striving to capture our approval. We are only pleased when the performer expresses the truth that is in him with the exact intensity he feels it. Rev. Reynolds Holes' conclusion about raising flowers, that to "succeed with roses one must have roses in his heart." is profoundly true of every effort at the expression of the beautiful. The highest aim of art is artlessness. Artificiality always detracts from grace. Nature is true. The truest in nature truly expressed, whether in color, form, or word, is delightsome. The false is always ugly. Tt is abnormal. Truth is the native atmosphere of the soul. As long as the soul lives, moves and has its being in its native at- mosphere, its ways are ways of grace. Those who are "touched to tears in the presence of flowers" have fine taste. The lack of love for flowers is evidence of coarseness and want of culture. The love of the beautiful is close to the love of truth ; and the love of truth is the certain badge of greatness. They only live completely who see in the heart of the flower what the artist sees, hear in the song of the bird what the singer hears, find in rhythmic words what the poet finds, and feel in the word of God what the prophets feel. Beauty is not confined to any age. The prattling babe, whose dimple is a dint made by the touch of love, and whose cry is so true that you have to listen twice to be sure it is not laughter, is God's living, breathing expression of the true and beautiful. When twenty-five springs and autumns have passed over the child, and she bends graciously over her darling, and mingles with her smiles the holy love which holds her soul in ''stainless peace." she is as fair a subject for the artist's brush as can be found in all the realms of living things. And then, at last, when seventy winters have come and gone and she who. through lung years of devotion and service, has gathered into her heart life's unmeasured wealth of beaiitv and truth.— and she stands at the sunset of life. with the o-olden light of eternity's dawn mingling with her silvery hair we ^eek in vain for words full enough of meaning to draw her picture and at last exclaim. "She is the beauty of holiness/

116 IMPROVEMENT ERA It is but trite to say that a healthy brain must have a healthy body. It is profoundly true that our bodies never can be more healthy and beautiful than our spirits. Every muddy thought puts mud in the blood. Every vicious emotion puts a scar on the cheek of beauty. Purity is beauty. It is the only cosmetic. Beauty is more than skin deep. In some inscrutable way every vicious or ugly act or emotion places its hideous impress upon the cheek, and looks through the eye. Nature is not mocked. Go where you will, live as long as you will, the only beauty that will smile from your lips, and shine from your eyes, will be the beauty that is reflected from the heart's fountain of purity. "Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue." FOREST DALE, UTAH A Temple in Hawaii Sound forth your strains of gladness, ye islands of the sea, And lift your hearts in praises, O Saints of Hawaii : The Lord hath heard your pleadings, your long-sought day is here When to the great Jehovah a temple you shall rear. A temple, a temple, in Hawaii ! Foreshadowing the splendors and glories yet to be. The spirit of Elijah shall rest upon its walls ; A choice, beloved Remnant, within its sacred halls, Receive the promised blessings their father Lehi saw The Lord would surely give them when they obeyed his law. Samuel, the Lamanite, forecast this blessed day ; Nephi and Moroni, and the faithful passed away, Who lived, believed, and perished on this your glorious land. Unite with you in praises for God's all-guiding hand. A temple, a temple, in Hawaii ! Foreshadowing the splendors and glories yet to be. Ruth M. Fox.