Week 3    Day 2

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The Origin of Beauty

CL 381. Once when I looked about into the world of spirits, I saw at a distance a palace, surrounded and seemingly besieged by a crowd of people.... Three newcomers from the world had been taken up into heaven and had seen magnificent things there, including maidens and wives of astonishing beauty. Having been let down from that heaven, they had now entered the palace over there and were recounting what they had seen, especially that they had found women of such beauty, the like of which their listeners’ eyes had never seen... and that they were now overcome with a desire to speak about the origin of beauty.... A multitude flocked in to hear them....

Presently one of them rose up on the step behind the pulpit to give his lecture on the origin of the beauty of the feminine sex, in which he presented the following:

CL 382. “What is the origin of beauty,” he said, “other than love? When love flows into the eyes of young men and sets them on fire, it becomes beauty. Therefore love and beauty are the same thing. For love from within pours through the face of a marriageable young woman with a kind of flame, from whose radiance comes the dawn and crimson glow of her life. Who does not know that that flame emits its rays into her eyes, and from these as centers spreads out into the circumference of her face? And also descends into her breast and kindles the heart, and thus affects one standing nearby, in the same way that fire does with its warmth and light? The warmth in this case is love, and the light, the beauty of love....

“Everyone is lovable and beautiful in accordance with his love. But still the love possessed by the masculine sex is one thing, and the love possessed by the feminine sex another. The love in males is a love of growing wise, and the love in females is a love of loving that love of growing wise in a male. Consequently, in the measure that a young man exhibits a love of growing wise, in the same measure he is lovable and beautiful to a maiden; and in the measure that a maiden exhibits a love of a young man’s wisdom, in the same measure she is lovable and beautiful to the young man. Accordingly, as the love of the one meets and kisses the love of the other, so also do the beauty of the one and the beauty of the other. I conclude, therefore, that love forms beauty into a likeness of itself.”

CL 383. After him the second speaker arose....

“I have heard [from the first speaker] that love is the origin of beauty, but I am not inclined to agree. Who among mortals knows what love is? Who has had any mental conception of it so as to examine it? Who has seen it with his eye? Tell me where he is.

“But I assert that wisdom is the origin of beauty—wisdom, which in women is inmostly hidden and concealed, which in men is apparent and visible. What makes a person human but wisdom? If it were not for wisdom, a person would be a sculpture or a painting. What does a maiden observe in a young man but the nature of his wisdom? And what does a young man observe in a maiden but the nature of her affection for his wisdom? By wisdom I mean genuine morality, because this is wisdom in life. So it is that when her hidden wisdom approaches and embraces his visible wisdom, which happens interiorly in the spirit of each, they kiss each other and unite, and this is called love; and then they appear to each other as pictures of beauty.

“In a word, wisdom is like the light or radiance of a fire, which strikes the eyes, and as it does, creates beauty.”

CL 384. After that the third speaker arose and spoke as follows:

“Love alone is not the origin of beauty, neither is wisdom alone, but the origin is a union of love and wisdom—a union of love with the wisdom in a young man, and a union of wisdom with its love in a maiden. For a maiden does not love wisdom in herself but in a young man, and on that account sees him as beautiful; and when the young man sees this in a young woman, he then sees her as beautiful. Therefore love through wisdom creates beauty, and wisdom from love receives it.

“The fact of this is clearly apparent in heaven. I saw maidens and wives there and observed their beauty; and I beheld one kind of beauty in the maidens and another altogether in the wives, seeing in the maidens only its sparkle, but in the wives its resplendent radiance. I saw the difference as being like that between a diamond sparkling with light and a ruby radiant at the same time with fire.

“What is beauty but something that gives delight to the sight? What is the origin of this delight but the interplay of love and wisdom? This interplay causes the sight to glow, and the glow radiates from eye to eye and presents beauty.

“What makes the beauty of a face but its ruddy glow and pearly radiance, and a lovely blending of the two? Is the ruddy glow not owing to love, and the pearly radiance to wisdom? For love glows with a ruddy glow from its fire, and wisdom shines with a pearly radiance from its light. I saw both qualities plainly in the faces of a married couple in heaven—a ruddy glow blended with a pearly radiance in the wife, and a pearly radiance blended with a ruddy glow in the husband. And I noticed that their looking at each other caused each to become brighter.”

When the third speaker said this, the crowd applauded and cried out, “He is the winner!” And suddenly a flaming light—which is the light of conjugial love also—filled the house with a radiant splendor, and at the same time their hearts with gladness.

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