But whoever has resolved the common illusions of the meaning of life, and has seen even in glimpses the naked mystery of our being, finds that he absolutely must live in the world which is outside city walls.  He wants to explore this desert island in space, and with it to explore the unending significance of his deathless spirit.

VI

A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER

Rostof on the Don is always beautiful when one leaves it to go south.  Nothing can efface from my mind the picture of it as I saw it when first going to the Caucasus.  The sunset illumined it with the hues of romance.  All the multiplicity of its dingy buildings shone as if lit up from within, and their dank and mouldy greens and blues and yellows became burning living colours.  The town lay spread out upon the high banks of the Don and every segment of it was crowned with a church.  The gilt domes blazed in the sunlight and the crosses above them were changed into pure fire.  Round about the town stretched the grey-green steppe, freshened by the river-side, but burned down to the suffering earth itself on the horizon.  Then over all, like God’s mercy harmonising man’s sins, the effulgence of a light-blue southern sky.

By that scene I have understood the poet’s thought—­

  To draw one beauty into the heart’s core
  And keep it changeless.

* * * * *

Yet how transient is the appearance of beauty.  It has an eternity not in itself but in the heart.  Thus I look out at the ever-changing ocean and suddenly, involuntarily ejaculate, “How beautiful!” yet before I can call another to witness the scene it has changed.  Only in the heart the beauty is preserved.  Thus we see a woman in her youth and beauty, and then in a few years look again and find her worn and old.  The beauty has passed away; its eternity is in the heart.

We have a choice, to live in the shadow and shine of the outer life where visions fade, or to live with all the beauty we have ever known, where it is treasured, in the heart.  Choosing the former we at last perish with the world, but choosing the latter we ourselves receive an immortality in the here and now.  The one who chooses the latter shall never grow old, and the beauty of his world can never pass away.

* * * * *

Nietzsche could not tolerate the doctrine of the “immaculate perception” of Beauty.  To him Beauty was une promesse de bonheur; Beauty was a lure and a temptation, it had no virtue in itself, but its value lay in the service rendered to the ulterior aims of Nature.  Thus the beauty hung in woman’s face was a device of the Life-force for the continuance of the race; strange beauty lured men to strange ends, and one of these ends the German philosopher divined and named as the Superman.  Even the beauty of Nature was merely a temptation of man’s will.  The Kantian conception of the disinterested contemplation of Beauty Nietzsche likened to the moon looking at the earth at night and giving the earth only dreams; but the Stendhalian conception of Beauty as a promise of happiness he likened to the sun looking at the earth and causing her to bear fruit.