MAR. In reference to this I told you that although one should be
attached to corporeal and external beauty yet he may honourably and
worthily be so attached; provided that, through this material beauty,
which is a glittering ray of spiritual form and action, of which it is
the trace and shadow, he comes to raise himself to the consideration and
worship of divine beauty, light and majesty; so that, from these visible
things his heart becomes exalted towards those things which are more
excellent in themselves and grateful to the purified soul, in so far as
they are removed from matter and sense. Ah me! he will say, if beauty so
shadowy, so dim, so fugitive, painted on the surface of bodily matter
pleases me so much, and moves my affections so much, and stamps upon my
spirit I know not what of reverence for majesty, captivates me, softly
binds me, and draws me, so that I find nothing that comes within the
senses that satisfies me so much,--how will it be with the
substantially, originally, primitively beautiful? How will it be with my
soul, the divine intellect, and the law of nature? It is right, then,
that the contemplation of this vestige of light lead me, through the
purification of my soul, to the imitation, and to conformity and
participation in that which is more worthy and higher, into which I am
transformed and unto which I unite myself: for I am certain that
nature, which has placed this beauty before my eyes and has gifted me
with an interior sense, through which I am able to infer a deeper and
incomparably greater beauty, wills that I be promoted to the altitude
and eminence of more excellent kinds.
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