that modern life lays upon us. It freed Goethe even from Germany.




CHAPTER IV

BEAUTY


I

How is beauty to be judged?--upon that we have to deliberate.

A man by skill may bring it into every single thing, for in some things
we recognise that as beautiful which elsewhere would lack beauty.

Good and better in respect of beauty are not easy to discern; for it
would be quite possible to make two different figures, one stout, the
other thin, which should differ one from the other in every proportion,
and yet we scarce might be able to judge which of the two excelled in
beauty. What beauty is I know not, though it dependeth upon many things.

I shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstone
as that by which we decide what is right. For as what all the world
prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemeth
beautiful that we will also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive to
produce the like.

There are many causes and varieties of beauty; he that can prove them is