us upon the earth--and, as that, she is necessarily the supreme danger
to that materialistic use and wont by which alone a materialistic
society remains possible. For this reason our young men and
maidens--particularly our young men--must be guarded against her, for
her beauty sets us adream, prevents our doing our day's work, makes us
forget the soulless occupations in which we wither away our lives. The
man who loves beauty will never be mayor of his city, or even sit on the
Board of Aldermen. Nor is he likely to own a railroad, or be a captain
of industry. Nor will he marry, for her money, a woman he does not love.
The face of beauty makes all such achievements seem small and absurd.
Such so-called successes seem to him the dreariest forms of failure. In
short, Beauty has made him divinely discontented with the limited human
world about him, divinely incapable of taking it seriously, or heeding
its standards or conditions. No wonder society should look upon Beauty
as dangerous, for she is constantly upsetting its equilibrium and
playing havoc with its smooth schemes and smug conventions. She outrages
the "proprieties" with "the innocence of nature," and disintegrates
"select" and "exclusive" circles with the wand of Romance. For earthly
possessions or rewards she has no heed. For her they are meaningless
things, mere idle dust and withered leaves. Her only real estate is in
the moon, and the one article of her simple creed--"Love is enough."

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills beheld shadows, and the sea a dark wonder
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter;
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

Those who have looked into her eyes see limitless horizons undreamed of
by those who know her not, horizons summoning the soul to radiant
adventures beyond the bounds of Space and Time. The world is so far
right in regarding beauty with a sort of superstitious dread, as a
presence almost uncanny among our mere mortal concerns, a daemonic
thing,--which is what the world has meant when it has, not unnaturally,
confused it with the spiri