Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good

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D. Appleton, 1861 - Aesthetics - 391 pages
 

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Page 376 - might easily be introduced into France, to the decided advantage of art and taste. A society has been formed in England, called the British Institution for promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom. Every year it has, in London,
Page 224 - That every act contrary to justice deserves to be repressed by force, and even punished in reparation of the fault committed, and independently too of all law and all convention ; 4th, That man naturally recognizes the distinction between the merit and demerit of actions, as he
Page 283 - Moral truths considered in themselves have no less certainty than mathematical truths. The idea of a deposit being given, I ask whether the idea of faithfully keeping it is not necessarily attached to it, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may
Page 366 - profundities of the human soul, God escapes us in that inexhaustible infinitude, whence he is able to draw without limit new worlds, new beings, new manifestations. God is to us, therefore, incomprehensible; but even of this incomprehensibility we have a clear and precise idea ; for we have the most precise idea of infinity. And this idea is not in
Page 158 - in fine, the foundation of the beautiful is the idea; what makes art is before all, the realization of the idea, and not the imitation of such or such a particular form. At the commencement of our century, the Institute of France offered a prize for the best answer to the following question: What
Page 141 - beauty, and it is often late enough before we recognize the utility that is found in it. It even sometimes happens, that after having admired the beauty of an object, we are not able to divine its use, although it may have one. The useful is, then, entirely different from the beautiful, far from
Page 147 - by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates' contrasts strongly with the type of Grecian beauty; but look at him on his death-bed, at the moment of drinking the hemlock, conversing with his disciples on the immortality of the soul, and his face will appear to you sublime.*
Page 39 - as in all time, two great wants are felt by man. The first, the most imperious, is that of fixed, immutable principles, which depend upon neither times nor places nor circumstances, and on which the mind reposes with an unbounded confidence. In all investigations, as long as we have seized only isolated, disconnected facts, as long as we
Page 147 - beautiful, because it expresses the beauty of his soul. Perhaps, under all other circumstances, the face of the man is common, even trivial; here, illuminated by the soul which it manifests, it is ennobled, and takes an imposing character of beauty. So, the natural face of Socrates

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