se. In moral
philosophy, it is the opposite of common.

This last variety of rare is what excites admiration. One never admires
what is common, one enjoys it.

An eccentric thinks himself above the rest of wretched mortals when he
has in his study a rare medal that is good for nothing, a rare book that
nobody has the courage to read, an old engraving by Albrecht Durer,
badly designed and badly printed: he triumphs if he has in his garden a
stunted tree from America. This eccentric has no taste; he has only
vanity. He has heard say that the beautiful is rare; but he should know
that all that is rare is not beautiful.

Beauty is rare in all nature's works, and in all works of art.

Whatever ill things have been said of women, I maintain that it is rarer
to find women perfectly beautiful than passibly good.

You will meet in the country ten thousand women attached to their homes,
laborious, sober, feeding, rearing, teaching their children; and you
will find barely one whom you could show at the theatres of Paris,
London, Naples, or in the public gardens, and who would be looked on as
a beauty.

Likewise, in works of art, you have ten thousand daubs and scrawls to
one masterpiece.

If everything were beautiful and good, it is clear that one would no
longer admire anything; one would enjoy. But would one have pleasure in
enjoying? that is a big question.

Why have the beautiful passages in "The Cid," "The Horaces," "Cinna,"
had such a prodigious success? Because in the profound night in which
people were plunged, they suddenly saw shine a new light that they did
not expect. It was because this beauty was the rarest thing in the
world.

The groves of Versailles were a beauty unique in the world, as were then
certain passages of Corneille. St. Peter's, Rome, is unique.

But let us suppose that all the churches of Europe were equal to St.
Peter's, Rome, that all statues were Venus dei Medici, that all
tragedies were as beautiful as Racine's "Iphigenie", all works of poetry
as well written as Boileau's "Art Poetique", all comedies as good as
"Tartufe", and thus in every sphere; would you then have as much
pleasure in enjoying masterpieces become common as they made you taste
when they were rare? I say boldly "No!"; and I believe that the ancient
school, which so rarely was right, was right when it said: _Ab assuetis
non fit passio_, habit does not make passion.

But, my dear reader, will it be the same with the wor