GOD HAS GIVEN THE DIRECTION OF ALL THE POWERS OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT TO THE WILL FOR THE BEAUTY OF HUMAN NATURE
By uniting different things, we create order. Order produces harmony and proportion. Harmony in things that are whole and perfect produces beauty. An army is beautiful when all its divisions are well arranged according to their ranks. Their differences are reduced in relation to the whole to form a single army. For music, to be beautiful, it is not enough that the voices are pure, clear and quite distinct. They should also blend with one another in such a way that they produce one consonance and harmony. Thus there is unity in diversity and diversity in the unity of voices. So, not without reason do we say that music is a discordant harmony or better still, a harmonious discord.
Now beauty and goodness are not one and the same thing even though they have some similarity. Thus the angelic St. Thomas, following St. Denis, clearly pointed it out: Goodness is desireable and pleasing to the will. Beauty is pleasing to one’s understanding and intelligence. To put it differently, goodness is that which delights when we possess it. Beauty is that which pleases us when we know it. That is why, strictly speaking, we attribute physical beauty to the objects of the two senses, sight and hearing, which are most capable of knowing and they serve most the intellect. So we do not say: These are beautiful perfumes and beautiful tastes, But we do say: These are beautiful voices and beautiful colours.
Beauty, then, is called beauty because its knowledge delights us. For this, besides unity, variety, integrity, order and harmony of its parts, there should be splendour and brilliance so that it can be known and seen. To be beautiful, the voices must be clear and pure, the speech understandable, colours glittering and bright. Obscurity, shade, darkness are ugly and make all things ugly. In fact, there is nothing, neither order, nor diversity, nor unity, nor harmony, that can be known in them. This made St. Denis say that God as supreme beauty is the author of this beautiful harmony, splendid brilliance and elegance which pervade all things. By dividing and sharing his single ray of light, he makes it shine forth into streams of light. By this, all things are made beautiful, producing beauty by harmony, brilliance and gracefulness.
Surely, Theotimus, beauty is ineffective, useless and dead if charity and brilliance do not make it lively and give it effectiveness. We say that the colours are vivid when they are brilliant, and shining. Living beings require gracefulness to be perfect in beauty. Such gracefulness and the harmony of perfect parts make beauty.
Add to this, for the beauty of living things, the harmony of movements, gestures and actions which are like their soul and life. Thus we acknowledge unity in the supreme beauty of our God. Indeed, the unity of essence in the distinction of persons with an infinite brilliance joined to an inexpressible harmony of perfection of actions and movements is present within him in a sovereign manner. We may say that these perfections are joined to and perfectly integrated into the simple perfection of the pure divine act that is God himself, unchanging and unalterable as I shall explain later.[1]
God, then, desiring to make all things good and beautiful, transformed their multiplicity and variety into perfect unity. He set them in order, so to say, under a monarchy. He made all things depend on one another and subject themselves: him as their supreme Ruler. He joined together all limbs into one body under a head. He forms several persons into a family, many families into a town, many towns into a province, several provinces into a kingdom and subjects the whole kingdom to a single king. Similarly, Theotimus, God set the human will over a countless multiplicity and variety of actions, movements, feelings, tendencies, habits, passions, faculties and powers which are in the human person. This is like a natural monarchy. The will governs and controls all that is found in this little world. It would seem that God says to the will what Pharaoh said to Joseph: you shall have charge ofmy household; all the people shall obey your orders. Without your orders no one shall move (Gen 41:40,44). However, in practice, the will exercises its power of control quite differently.
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[1] TLG II.10