The Excellent Beauty!

Such a lovely topic. Can beauty be defined? I believe yes, to an extent. I spent most of the day last Monday thinking about this question. Before asking if beauty can or cannot be defined, I asked, "What is a definition? How does one go about defining anything?". I came up with this, and tell me what you think.

In order for man to acknowledge and remember his experience with beauty, he must retain in his mind all emotions, images, and words that it provokes. When he stores in his psyche that which accurately conveys his relation and experience with beauty, he may remember it. Man can have memory of his experience with beauty in one of two means. He may remember beauty in the physical as well as the spiritual realm. For example, a man may remember the beauty in his wife as well as the beauty in his love for Christ. Man will not attribute all to the spiritual realm that he does to the physical. He will remember the beauty in the spiritual realm by attributing only words and emotions to it, for except by Christ he has, by no means, perceived the spiritual in human form. He will attribute the same for the physical realm save for one additional property. Along with words and emotions, a man will attach in his mind, a mental image of the physical properties of an entity. A man will remember the nightstand in his bedroom by the mentioning of its name, which then rouses the mental image and his emotion towards it and vice versa. All emotions, pictures, and words are accumulated into the memory so that one may recall an experience of an object or the divine at another point in time. If a man were not competent in doing so, he would never be aware of what he encounters, and would have no knowledge of it. He may see another man, yet when he turns his eyes away, he will have no recognition of ever having seen him. God has bestowed upon man the gift of memory and definition in order that man may behold Him in His divine sublimity and beauty as well as in that which he has created. Beauty must, at least to some degree, be able to be defined; otherwise, man would have no knowledge of it. Though a man may accurately define beauty, he may not completely define it. It is for the same reason why one cannot fully define his neighbor; though he may know a great deal about him, he has not experienced the life of his neighbor from within. He is neither beauty nor its creator. When one realizes his inability to fully and completely define beauty, he attains an idea of how vast and great the splendor of God is upon the human understanding. He has a far greater chance to contain the earth into a one-foot square container then to fully define and comprehend God. God does not define beauty, beauty defines God; it shines upon man a dim reflection of His absolute, undeniable, and righteous perfection.

I leave you open to annihilate my theory if you will. Do not hold back, for it is not by the preservation and praise of false claims that truth is found. 8)

In Christ, †††
-Brian