Lynch made a grimace at the raw grey sky and said:
—If I am to listen to your esthetic philosophy give me at least another cigarette. I don't care about it. I don't even care about women. Damn you and damn everything. I want a job of five hundred a year. You can't get me one.—
Stephen handed him the packet of cigarettes. Lynch took the last one that remained, saying simply:
—Proceed!—
—Aquinas—said Stephen—says that is beautiful the apprehension of which pleases.—
Lynch nodded.
—I remember that—he said—Pulcra sunt quæ visa placent.—
—He uses the word visa—said Stephen—to cover esthetic apprehensions of all kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue of apprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keep away good and evil, which excite desire and loathing. It means certainly a stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also a stasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle.—
—No,—said Lynch—give me the hypothenuse 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.
[243]
