* * * * *

Yet how transient is the appearance of beauty. It has an eternity not
in itself but in the heart. Thus I look out at the ever-changing ocean
and suddenly, involuntarily ejaculate, "How beautiful!" yet before
I can call another to witness the scene it has changed. Only in the
heart the beauty is preserved. Thus we see a woman in her youth and
beauty, and then in a few years look again and find her worn and old.
The beauty has passed away; its eternity is in the heart.

We have a choice, to live in the shadow and shine of the outer life
where visions fade, or to live with all the beauty we have ever known,
where it is treasured, in the heart. Choosing the former we at last
perish with the world, but choosing the latter we ourselves receive an
immortality in the here and now. The one who chooses the latter shall
never grow old, and the beauty of his world can never pass away.

* * * * *

Nietzsche could not tolerate the doctrine of the "immaculate
perception" of Beauty. To him Beauty was _une promesse de bonheur_;
Beauty was a lure and a temptation, it had no virtue in itself, but
its value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature.
Thus the beauty hung in woman's face was a device of the Life-force
for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange
ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named
as the Superman. Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation of
man's will. The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplation
of Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at night
and giving the earth only dreams; but the Stendhalian conception of