Article June 16, 1917 Issue

"The recipe for beauty"

FLORENCE DAVIS KELLER

"The recipe for beauty," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 247 of Science and Health, "is to have less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of spiritual harmony."

The question What is beauty? like Pilate's question of olden time, has aroused much comment and controversy among those who in reasoning from the basis of the carnal mind, or mind in matter, think of beauty as a material quality. From the artist's point of view a descriptive definition of beauty that has any approach to completeness would not only give the conditions which an object would have to satisfy in order to express beauty, but would have to make clear how, why, and whence came beauty into being. In other words, an answer to the question must give an explanation of the qualities of beauty as well as its reason for being.

It is generally understood that the appreciation of beauty is a perception of certain qualities, and one writer has said that we may search the whole world over to find the beautiful, but except we carry it with us we shall not find it. It is seen, then, that the definition of beauty as well as the definition of truth, must be sought in the realm of metaphysics; for to regard the quality of beauty as belonging to a material object is a survival of the primitive tendency to look for the quality of intelligence in non-intelligent matter.

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