Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1893 — Beauty and Expression. [ARTICLE]

Beauty and Expression.

It is in the vital part of every organism that its expression, and therefore that its beauty, lies. A face devoid of expression—and expression ever changing might be eveD faultless in form; but it would be totally devoid of charm— Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly nuil. This may explain why many types of beauty whioh have fascinated not only artists, but men and women in general, have been far from perfect in form. Some wtchery in expression, a grace behind the form, has been the source of the charm. A unity might bo lifeless; and it is only when life animates the harmonious forms of the phenomenal world that they become expressive, and that their beauty is disc osed. It was the principle of life that, in the first instance, shaped the forms; life, that is U> say, in the large sense of the cosmic force—the natura naturans —which evolved individual vital things; but then, those phenomenal forms, in wbieh beauty was for a time disclosed, was not the life itself. The universal life of the world always moves on and leaves each phenomenal form behind it that it may animate others aud disclose itself successfully by means of them. It is in this life that the ultimate beauty of the universe resides aud reveals itself.— [William Knight.