Beauty and Perfection

More from Alexander McCall Smith:

“Beauty … gave us completeness, peace, a glimpse of the divine.  We wanted beauty; we wanted to take it into ourselves, to possess it, to absorb it, so that it became part of us.”

What is it about beauty that makes us want to become one with it, soaking it up through a form of osmosis?  And why does exceptional beauty almost make us cry? Can make us cry, on occasion.  Leaving aside the tug on the emotional heart-strings of a piece of music or poetry, what is there about beauty that calls to us so?

Is it, as McCall says, because it’s a glimpse of the divine?  I think he’s nearer the truth when he talks about completeness.  If we recognise that we are incomplete, that our persona, outlook, attitudes etc, are less than perfect, then it is logical that we are drawn to something that completes us, supplies the missing bits of our jigsaw puzzle.  That may be why we all aim for the highest in whatever attracts our interest – the top job, the biggest prize, the toughest challenge.  Ambition aside, the lure of perfection draws us on.

Would a theosopher then argue that this desire for perfection, this need to fulfil the highest in ourselves, is in a fact the Godhead calling us home? In which case, maybe the purpose of evolution  is to draw us ineluctably nearer perfection, the divine, call it what you will.

We know that those who have had ‘a glimpse of the divine’ have been irrevocably changed.  If we have a glimpse of perfection or perfect beauty, does it change us?  Possibly, but in a much more transient way.  There may be a connection between divineness and beauty, but they are not the same.  In the world of manifestation, perfection and beauty are an ultimate form of the human experience; unlike divinity which is something completely outside of it.

Yet beauty still calls to us at a deep level.  My feeling is that it is the soul within us, the divine spark, recognising its own kind, that prompts such a strong reaction.  But because we don’t allow our souls to control our daily lives – would that we did! – we undergo no fundamental change.  Or do we?  Now that is even more thought provoking …

From John Masefield:

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.