[00:00.49]A young man sees a sunset and, unable to understand or to express the emotion that it rouses in him, concludes that it must be the gateway to world that lies beyond.
[00:12.35]It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light that shines down to us from a different realm of existence,
[00:26.07]different and, because the experience is intensely moving, in some way higher.
[00:32.36]And, though the gleams blind and dazzle, yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity greater than we have known or imagined.
[00:42.02]Greater too than we can describe;
[00:44.74]for language, which was invented to convey the meanings of this world, cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another.
[00:52.77]That all great has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable.
[00:59.20]In some moods, Nature shares it.
[01:02.13]There is no sky in June so blue that it does not point forward to a bluer,
[01:07.46]no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty, a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, and in passing leaves and indefinable longing and regret.
[01:22.31]But, if this world is not merely a bad joke, life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars,
[01:29.57]and existence an empty laugh braying across the mysteries;
[01:34.14]if these intimations of a something behind and beyond are not evil humour born of indigestion, or whimsies sent by the devil to mock and madden us.
[01:46.07]if, in a word, beauty means something, yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning.
[01:53.14]If we glimpse the unutterable, it is unwise to try to utter it,
[01:57.75]nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp.
[02:03.39]Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.
