The Form of Beauty

"The old masters,--they never hunted after it; it comes of itself into their compositions, God knows whence, from heaven or elsewhere. The whole world belonged to them, but we are unable to clasp its broad spaces; our arms are too short." Turgenieff

"They do not seek beauty--they are sought;Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick." Walt Whitman

Greeks did not separate beauty from form. Their bodies were beautiul; their buildings were pure structure without ornament. To them, beauty was the flower of necessity based on fitness and proportion. In other words, their art was structure shaped in beautiful forms, and not beautiful forms plastered onto the facade of structure, like you tended to find find with the Romans.

In Greek mythology, poetry, and art, Beauty rides upon the back of a lion. She not only rides upon the power and terror, she is mated to it. Aphrodite must have her Ares.

The same can be said for nature. As John Burroughs says, "Nature does nothing merely for beauty; beauty follows as the inevitable result; and the final impression of health and finish which her works make upon the mind is owing as much to those things which are not technically called beautiful as to those which are. The former give identity to the latter. The one is to the other what substance is to form, or bone to flesh. The beauty of nature includes all that is called beautiful, as its flower; and all that is not called beautiful, as its stalk and roots."

We breathe Beauty life air, since it is absolutely intrinsic to the fabric of the experience we call life.