BEAUTY & THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER
It is always the formation of strong characters that is the goal of education. Nobody expressed this better than Pope Pius XI in his magnificent encyclical on the Education of the redeemed man, December 31, 1929, in which he had this to say:
“Hence the true Christian, product of Christian education, is the supernatural man who thinks, judges and acts constantly and consistently in accordance with right reason illumined by the supernatural light of the example and teaching of Christ; in other words, to use the current term, the true and finished man of character.”
Such a character is impossible without a formation of the mind, that its aptitude to receive the truth be no longer hampered by the wound of ignorance, but that it might have the sincere and honest joy in discovering that which is true — whether it be in the realm of science, mathematics, language, history, human psychology, or any other human endeavor for that matter. It is furthermore character in the most complete and most human sense of the term that loves to contemplate supernatural revelation, God’s truth about Himself and what He has done for us, His creatures, and that draws the highest and most profound personal convictions from such contemplation.
However, there is another aspect of character that might seem unnecessary, and even quite irrelevant for those of us raised in a materialistic world. It is the perception of beauty, inseparable from truth and goodness as it is, connecting up mind and will as it does, giving the longing in the will for that which is known to be beautiful because it is completely true and right, that is essential to the oneness of a man’s character. Modern man, lost in his subjective confusion, considers beauty as a purely subjective thing, according to the common adage - “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth. Beauty is no less objective than truth and goodness, and is defined by St. Thomas Aquinas as consisting in three elements: - completeness, and due proportion, and that they shine out. Everything which is true to itself, complete and undivided, not defaced, mangled, diseased, infected by sin, has this beauty, and it applies just as much to spiritual things as to physical ones. This is the beauty of nature, of a healthy animal or bee hive, of good music, art, literature, and even of good science and mathematics.
This perception of beauty is inseparable from the understanding of the truth, and moreover moves the will and forms character. This is what makes Father Leen write: “It is as important, from the point of view of education, to develop the sense of the beautiful as to cultivate the faculty of perceiving the truth, always remembering that nothing is perfect in beauty except it is clothed in truth…The aesthetic side of education cannot be neglected without disastrous results…” (What is true education, p. 41). The development of the sense of beauty in the proportion and order of nature, in science, in mathematical equations, in language, literature, art and music is consequently fundamental to the sense of the truth, leading in turn to the love of that which is good.
The rebellion of modern youth and the ugliness of the empty materialistic culture promoted by TV, rock music and video games etc. is an immediate consequence of the failure of any formation of character as to beauty. The disorder of the passions destroys that innate sense of beauty that must be developed if a man is to be one of character. It is for this reason that we make no apology for developing every aspect of the aesthetic side of education that we can. It leads to the third aspect of character, which is the love of goodness, the goodness of God’s creation, of the uprightness that can be seen in one another despite the stains of original sin, the goodness of the practice of virtue, the goodness of God’s love for us manifested in the Incarnation and the Cross, and ultimately the Goodness of God Himself. If we fear our inconsistency, it is because we do not know the Truth, perceive Beauty or appreciate Goodness enough. The man of character is one who has been educated to consistently and constantly seek and recognize the Truth, look and yearn for Beauty, and aim to be good in himself in imitation of God who alone is all-Good.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.