 2
1) We all love beauty yet,
such a distinction causes us to disdain much as ugliness.(1)
2) We all like to appreciate
what is good in life. Yet this causes us to reject much as bad. Something
and nothing give a place to each other, like figure and ground. High and
low enrich each other like soprano and bass. To prefer one at the expense
of the other would be foolishness.(2)
3) Therefore the mastercraftsman
acts precisely upon what the circumstance calls for and, in so doing, eliminates
choice-making. In this way he follows exactly the flow of harmony without
imposing his will.
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 footnotes
1) There is beauty of form,
of color, of line, of manner, of character. In some persons beauty is lacking,
in other persons there is more of it; it is only the comparison that makes
us think that one person is better than the other. If we did not compare,
then every person would be good; it is the comparison which makes us consider
one thing more beautiful than another. But if we looked more carefully
we should see the beauty that is in that other one too. Very often our
comparison is not right for the very reason that although today we determine
in our mind what is good and beautiful, we are liable to change that conception
in a month's, a year's time. That shows us that when we look at something,
we are capable of appreciating it if its beauty manifests to our view.
Harzat Inayat
Khan, Mental Purification
2)...Beauty deprived of its
proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light
deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white canvas cannot
produce the effect of sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places
before he can make it look luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted
succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must be foiled
by inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for the
most part mingled her inferior and noble elements as she mingles sunshine
with shade, giving due use and influence to both... It is only by the habit
of representing faithfully all things, that we can truly learn what is
beautiful, and what is not. The ugliest objects contain some elements of
beauty; and in all it is an element peculiar to themselves, which cannot
be separated from their ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together with
it or not at all. The more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the
more unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despises; but once
let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually contract
his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be nobleness of selection
ends in narrowness of perception. Dwelling perpetually upon one class of
ideas, his art becomes at once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot
faithfully represent even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination
contracts into darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity.
John Ruskin;
The Lamp of Beauty; Writings on Art, page 79-80
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