is beautiful to
him who sees that it accomplishes a necessary function in the great
scheme of life. Beauty is adaptation. Whatever is truly useful is in so
far truly beautiful. The steam engine and the battleship are beautiful
just as truly as Titian's Madonna, glorified and sweeping upward
into the presence of God the Father. Only what is vital and
serviceable, and whatever is that, is beautiful.

When the spirit of man perceives a unity in things, a working
together of parts, there beauty exists. It resides in the synthesis of
details to the end of shaping a complete whole. This perception, this
synthesis, is a function of the human mind. Beauty is not in the
landscape, but in the intelligence which apprehends it. Evidence of
this fundamental truth is the fact that the same landscape is more
"beautiful" to one man than to another, or to a third, perhaps, is not
beautiful at all. It is only as the individual perceives a relation
among the parts resulting in a total unity that the object becomes
beautiful for him.

This abstract exposition may be made clearer by a graphic
illustration. Here are four figures composed of the same elements:--

* *** ** * ***
* ***** * ******
* ** * * * *
*
************* *
* * * *
**
Fig. I.

* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * *
Fig. II. Fig. III. Fig. IV.

Figure I., far from being pleasing, is positively disquieting. With the
other three figures, the perception of their form is attended with a
kind of pleasure. Whereas the first figure is without form and is
meaningless, each of the second group exhibits harmony, balance,
proportion, interrelation of parts: each is perceived to be a whole.
Although experience itself comes to men in fragments and
seemingly without order, yet the human mind is so constituted as to
require that an idea or a truth be shown to be a whole before the
mind can comprehend it In considering the element of balance, it
should be noted, as illustrated by Figure IV., that balance is not
necessarily perfect symmetry. A Gothic cathedral is beautiful no less
than a Greek temple. In a painting of a landsc