The Gaelic Manuscripts
by Betty White
with Stewart Edward White

Chapter 17
Getting on with the Job

1. The essence of beauty

"Anything in the world consists of two things", the principle was stated, "in spite of the underlying unity. We have the life force of a thing, and the material manifestation of that life force. Now, very simply, beauty is an exuberance of that life thing beyond the mere mechanical need of producing a manifestation.

"When this subtle, outspringing, basic quality is so abundant, so overflowing, so vital, so over-sufficient, that it not only models and molds and shapes its material into the forms of itself, but has to spare, so to speak – we have beauty. When the life force is not proportioned to the stubbornness of the material through which it pushes the pattern of itself – when it is so lacking in vitality that it barely suffices to shadow itself forth in form – - then we have ugliness.

"That applies through all that we call esthetics. It applies to material things of this world as we look about and see them; it applies also to the productions of men. If a man has spiritual capital enough, he can afford, and he delights in, the ornamentation of his structure. If he is straitened for funds, he creates a shed to contain merely his utilities."

2. The unconscious production of beauty

"You see all about you in nature things that you say have ‘grown naturally,’ grass, trees, flowers, rocks, birds, insects. And after you have thought a little you see that they are material manifestations or shadowings forth of the within-contained reality – that they are all outpourings of Universal life: taking their form from the shape of their intention, which proceeds undiluted, as we may say, from the All-Consciousness.

"But have you ever looked down the vista of a great canyon in a city; or have you stopped short in admiration of a serrated skyline of the piled up masses of man’s habitations, milky with mist of fading light: and have you ever thought that this thing too is an upspringing Fountain of Life – exactly as the mobile hills of the forest area? And if you have, have you gone one step further and realized that this could conglomerate idea of beauty and grandeur of the shadowing of basic life comes, not undiluted and direct from the pattern of the All-consciousness, as do trees in the forest – but have been condensed through the medium of man’s creative power? So that, at a certain point in the creative process, man’s personality has intervened, to gather to itself an attribute of the All-consciousness that no other thing in nature has yet attained. And that is real creative power – to fashion from the raw material his own intention.

"But note this: man’s intention in building the great city whose mass has so impressed you, has not been consciously the intention to produce this thing in the wholeness you have seen. He has erected his buildings according to his needs; he has grouped them according to his convenience; he has not thought to the arrangement, to that general aspect that has made for beauty. But it was, it is beautiful. The reason is that in his reaching for and exercise of this creative power, which he alone in animated nature possesses, he has a again joined forces with powers of which he has been unconscious. And if his city is really beautiful – not in detail perhaps, but in effect – it is because in his creation have been infused the exuberant qualities – faith, enthusiasm, confidence, overflowing vitality. These, in spite of an ill-directed esthetic sense; in spite of the deterrent qualities that make for ugliness; have had their mysterious and invisible influence on the whole. Those influences are very subtle."

3. The Recording Angel

"Each honest and vital effort, whether conscious or unconscious, toward beauty or that overflow that makes for beauty, is a constructive power. And the sumtotal of those efforts, whether in a humble crocheted lamp-mat: or in an attempt at stage effects in the theater: or in an honest though pathetic effort at decorating a hotel lobby, or a flower over the flower girl’s ear; all make in the aggregate a formidable force of onward-pushing construction, which, even though scattered and comparatively unmarked, go far to over-balance the spectacular disheartening destructions that get into the newspaper headlines and worry everybody with the idea that the country is going to the dogs.

"That is the justification that would comfort many a sad comedian, doubtful whether his silly bit of slapstick fooling, is worthy of a human on two legs. Its the aggregate. The Recording Angel idea is not so far off – with his debits and credits."