ntention good? That is the initial question, for the
intention determines the nature of the essence in everything. What is
the most beautiful form in which I can express the good I intend? That
is the ultimate question; for the true Beauty which our work expresses
is the measure of the Power, Intelligence, Love--in a word, of the
quantity and quality of our own life which we have put into it. True
Beauty, mind you--that which is beautiful because it most perfectly
expresses the original idea, not a mere ornamentation occupying our
thoughts as a thing apart from the use intended.

Nothing is of so small account but it has its fullest power of
expression in some form of Beauty peculiarly its own. Beauty is the law
of perfect Thought, be the subject of our Thought some scheme affecting
the welfare of millions, or a word spoken to a little child. True Beauty
and true Power are the correlatives one of the other. Kindly expression
originates in kindly thought; and kindly expression is the essence of
Beauty, which, seeking to express itself ever more and more perfectly,
becomes that fine touch of sympathy which is artistic skill, whether
applied in working upon material substances or upon the emotions of the
heart. But, remember, first Use, then Beauty, and neither complete
without the other. Use without Beauty is ungracious giving, and Beauty
without Use is humbug; never forgetting, however, that there is a region
of the mind where the use is found in the beauty, where Beauty itself
serves the direct purpose of raising us to see a higher ideal which will
thenceforward permeate our lives, giving a more living quality to all we
think and say and do.

Seen thus the Beautiful is the true expression of the Good. From
whichever end of the scale we look we shall find that they accurately
measure each other. They are the same thing in the outermost and the
innermost respectively. But in our search for a higher Beauty than we
have yet found we must beware of missing the Beauty that already exists.
Perfect harmony with its environment, and perfect expression of its own
inward nature are what constitute Beauty; and our ignorance of the
nature of the thing or its environment may shut our eyes to the Beauty
it already has. It takes the genius of a Millet to paint, or a Whitman
in words, to show us the beauty of those ordinary work-a-day figures
with which our world is for the most part peopled, whose originals we
pass by as having no for