Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

How God is beauty itself.

« Just as God is truth itself and goodness itself, so he is beauty itself, and therefore the exemplar and efficient cause of all derived beauty. »

Moreover, the beautiful is closely connected with the good. Thus God is, like truth itself and goodness itself, essential beauty itself. The beautiful is defined a posteriori from its effect by St Thomas, 1. q. 5. a. 4. ad 1: « those things are called beautiful which, being seen, please. » Hence the same Holy Doctor observes that the beautiful relates to the cognitive power, as the good to the appetite. Wherefore, in the definition given, if it is extended to the beautiful as widely as it reaches, the seeing is to be understood not only of the sensible but also, and above all, of the intellectual. In this way the definition comprehends under itself those things which agree not univocally but only analogically in the reason by which they are called beautiful. Therefore there ought not to be postulated one and the same reason of the beautiful, but only an analogous one in the diverse things which are and are called beautiful. The beautiful of the lowest reason can be called that which by itself and immediately delights the sense of sight and hearing alone, in which there is a greater analogy with the knowing faculty than in the other senses: as a beautiful colour and a beautiful sound are called. The beautiful is of a second and more perfect grade, which reaches the intellectual power, through sight and hearing or through the imagination, and delights it. It is easy to see that the beautiful in either of these senses cannot be formally except in sensible things, which are either sensible in themselves and in reality, or are presented as sensible.¹

But since that definition, drawn from the effect, does not declare what the beautiful is in itself, « for things are not beautiful because they delight, but they delight because they are beautiful » (cf. Aug. de vera relig. c. 32.): the intrinsic reason and essence of beauty remains to be inquired into. This is generally thought to consist in the unity of multiplicity: « things are beautiful because their parts are like one another, and are brought together by a certain joining into one fitting whole » Aug. de ver. relig. c. 32. n. 59. Therefore it must be said that many things are as it were matter, and unity itself is the form of beauty: « the form of all beauty is unity, » says the same St Augustine, ep. 18. al. 63. ad Coelestin. n. 2. Whence the greater and more distinct multiplicity, provided that the intensity of unity corresponds to it, the greater will be the beauty, whether it is a multiplicity simultaneous in space, as the beauty of a painting; or successive in time, as the beauty of music. But where unity and commensuration are lacking, the formal reason of beauty is wholly lacking. On the contrary, if unity were the greatest in utter simplicity, and the greatest virtual multiplicity, beauty would be greatest. This, however, cannot be in sensible things.

Hence there is another beauty, and that a higher and nobler one, in purely intelligible and intellectual things. For those things which are the object neither of the senses nor of the imagination, but which, seen by the sole intuition of the mind, delight it, are most beautiful with a beauty to which that other, sensible beauty is not of the same reason, but only analogous. Hence intelligible beauty is found even in the abstract truths themselves, which, seen in their wonderful connection, and thus in the unity and simplicity of principles and in the marvellous variety and harmony of their consequences, fill the rational mind with the purest delight. In really existing things, unity in multiplicity and beauty are to be perceived by the mind first of all in every life, whether vegetative or sensitive, from which life, as effects and messengers of intrinsic beauty, there proceed the most beautiful sensible phenomena, for example in flowers, in the eye, and universally in animal bodies. Hence it can be understood how much more noble is the beauty in the rational soul, and still more exalted in pure spirits, where there is the greatest unity and simplicity of a most noble substance, and wonderful variety of faculties, powers, and virtues.² Finally, most sublime is the beauty of soul and spirit in supernatural elevation through sanctifying grace, through the habits and virtues divinely infused into it, and through the fellowship of the divine nature; which beauty is completed in consummation through beatific glory.

Indeed, that supreme unity which God is, is the exemplary and efficient cause, infinitely eminent, of all beauty, order, harmony, multiplicity and unity, whether in corporeal or in spiritual things, in natural and in supernatural things; so that all this beauty comprehended together in created things, and all the splendour of truth and goodness shining forth in all spiritual creatures, is nothing but a faint image and dim shadow of the beauty of God, who is « itself, according to itself and with itself, always existing uniformly beautiful, and eminently anticipating in itself the fountain-like beauty of all that is beautiful »³ Dionys. div.nom. c. 4. §. 7. For its essence, one and most simple, in this its simplicity first comprehends all the reasons of all perfections, which we can distinguish; it then comprehends, precisely as imitable outside itself, eminently all the reasons of all things, not only of existing but also of possible things; moreover it comprehends, by one infinite thought, which is its very substance, all the reasons of all truth in its own essence; and it comprehends, by one substantial volition, all the reasons of all good in that same essence. And all these things are in it one most simple intellectual Esse, so that the unity of perfection, to which all diversity is repugnant, by its infinite intensity equals and surpasses infinitely many distinct things, if a mind could conceive it. If furthermore we consider the most simple unity of the infinite essence together with the real and necessary distinction of the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit among themselves, in perfect identity with the essence, we can, by thinking, conceive in some measure, or rather, in this our darkness, surmise, how God is absolute beauty in himself⁴⁵, in whose comprehension and infinite love the divine blessedness itself consists, and by whose clear vision every created mind is rapt into love and is at once blessed.