[al:新概念英语（四）] [ar:MP3 同步字幕版（美音）] [ti:Beauty] [by:更多学习内容，请到yingyu.chazidian.com搜索“新概念”] [00:00.53]Lesson 24 [00:02.18]Beauty [00:08.00]What do glimpses of beauty, either in nature or art, often suggest to the human mind? [00:17.37]A young man sees a sunset and, [00:20.00]unable to understand or to express the emotion that it rouses in him, [00:25.08]concludes that it must be the gateway to a world that lies beyond [00:29.91]It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience [00:35.38]to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light [00:39.50]that shines down to us from a different realm of existence, different and, [00:45.52]because the experience is intensely moving, in some way higher. [00:50.94]And, though the gleams blind and dazzle, yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity [00:57.44]greater than we have known or imagined. Greater too than we can describe; [01:02.99]for language, which was invented to convey the meanings of this world [01:08.00]cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another. [01:12.82]That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable. [01:19.84]In some moods, nature shares it. [01:23.37]There is no sky in June so blue that it does not point forward to a bluer, [01:29.09]no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision of a greater beauty, [01:34.63]a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, [01:38.23]and in passing leaves an indefinable longing and regret. [01:42.48]But, if this world is not merely a bad joke, [01:45.95]life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars, [01:50.05]and existence an empty laugh braying across the mysteries; [01:54.91]if these intimations of a something behind and beyond [01:59.14]are not evil humour born of indigestion, [02:03.00]or whimsies sent by the devil to mock and madden us, if, in a word [02:08.80]beauty means something yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning. [02:14.61]If we glimpse the unutterable, it is unwise to try to utter it, [02:19.73]nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp. [02:25.93]Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.