A problem with beauty

The issue is close to everyone. A person in their respect to beauty shows all good aspects of themselves and many bad ones beside. And because of the most altruistic/relativistic quote handed down to us(beauty is in the eye of the beholder). And I would say because of this few have tried to pin the concept to a specific set of characteristics. At least if many people have analyzed this problem most keep it to themselves.

Beauty doesn't just apply to the opinions of people but to things. It is an interaction between animate and animate; as well as animate and inanimate. I can think of many people who went up into the mountains to become inspired. The question is: from what?
The beauty of a woman can alter a man's path but so can a mountain? That doesn't say much for the woman. Unless this is simply a matter of size?

The other old adage that we all know and repeat is 'the eye is the window to the soul'. Which in my mind means that either the eyes expose the world to the soul in a similar fashion as a south facing window soaks up passive solar heat. Or the window is more of a peephole and the soul is a voyeur searching to look at what it desires. Both occur simultaneously. We collect experience unintentionally and intentionally.

So beauty is an idea that is a response to someone, an action or a thing. Anything, good or evil, can be deemed beautiful. What part of the human complex contains the mechanism that decides that? Or is it beyond all human control? The mathematical formula for beauty is, I'm sure, numerically correct. But I reject it as the true notion of beauty. Numerals do nothing but state a level of correctness. And of all the ugly things in the world a good many are considered numerically desirable.

Let us think about the appearance of beauty. It occurs at memory or first inclination toward it. It could coexist with us our entire lives before it becomes beautiful to us. It is something within us that turns it from foreign or commonplace into something altogether other. It is this turning that concerns beauty.

It occurs in three ways:

1. The object of immensity. Something greater than oneself, impervious to all attempts to change or alter it. Invulnerable.

2. The object of vulnerability. Almost the perfect opposite of the first item.

3. The object of complexity. It is rare for this to be the sole reason of beauty. Complexity exists for one reason: to show there is a reason; whether that reason be simple or complex.

Beauty then is a realization of existence beyond one's self and of a system that has put it in one's path. I have no real reasoning to explain this properly. But what I think is happening when the sense of beauty occurs is a connection is formed. Not of self to object, but of self to idea. The object is merely medium.

We are unaware of the billions of things going on around us. The thing that attracts our attention is the comprehension of the idea of what we are seeing. Not actually seeing it, but seeing it work out in our mind's eye. The sense of beauty comes from a clear connection to the eternal idea behind the object, animate or inanimate, that are brought before our eyes.

It stirs the soul, an inspiration, a cry for more. Eyes or ears or none at all. The voiceless idea speaks every language, but most importantly it speaks soul. And beauty is how it speaks.