--No, said Lynch, give me the hypotenuse of the Venus of Praxiteles.
--Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beauty
is the splendour of truth. I don't think that it has a meaning, but the
true and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect which
is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible;
beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction
of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,
to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system
of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think,
rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time
and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject.
The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame
and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of esthetic
apprehension. Is that clear?
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