CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 141

APHORISM 19. All beauty is founded on the laws of natural forms.¹

of every reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are directly taken from natural objects; because I would fain be allowed to assume also the converse of this, namely, that forms which are not taken from natural objects must be ugly.* I know this is a bold assumption; but as I have not space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form consists,² that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no other resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since forms are not beautiful because they are copied from Nature; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe the reader will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced; the degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it; but if it be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter of very essential importance, namely, what is or is not ornament. For there are many forms of so called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received, therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture at expression of dislike, which I have no hesitation in asserting to be not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the expense of which ought in truth

* The aphorism is wholly true; but the following application of it, often trivial or false. See the subsequent notes. [1880.]

¹ [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “Now, I would insist ...” down to “must be ugly.”]

² [In the MS. Ruskin had written here, “to do this has taken me more than three years of thought.” He erased the words, reflecting, no doubt, that his years of thought on the subject were not yet ended. It had, indeed, taken him three years (1843-1846) to write the second volume of Modern Painters, in which he formulated a theory of beauty implying the conclusion here stated; but the illustration of this conclusion was still the task in front of him in the remainder of that work (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xiv. § 24): “The reader must yet remember that our special business in this section of the work is the observance of the nature of beauty, and of the degrees in which the aspect of any object fulfils the laws of beauty stated in the second volume.” With what is said in the text above, compare the passage from The Two Paths cited above, p. 101 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]