Is the beautiful that which seems ugly to no man? But it is a
question of being, not of seeming. Is it their fitness which makes
things seem beautiful? But in that case, the fitness which makes them
appear beautiful is one thing, the beautiful another. If the beautiful
be the useful or that which leads to an end, then evil would also be
beautiful, because the useful may also end evilly. Is the beautiful the
helpful, that which leads to the good? No, for in that case the good
would not be beautiful, nor the beautiful good, because cause and effect
are different.
Thus they argued in the Platonic dialogues, and when we turn to the
pages of Aristotle, we find him also uncertain and inclined to vary his
definitions.[5] Sometimes for him the good and pleasurable are the
beautiful, sometimes it lies in actions, at others in things motionless,
or in bulk and order, or is altogether undefinable. Antiquity also
established canons of the beautiful, and the famous canon of
Polycleitus, on the proportions of the human body, fitly compares with
that of later times on the golden line, and with the Ciceronian phrase
from the Tusculan Disputations. But these are all of them mere empirical
observations, mere happy remarks and verbal substitutions, which lead to
unsurmountable difficulties when put to philosophical test.
One important identification is absent in all those early attempts at
truth.
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