The Indivisibility of Truth and Beauty

by

John Stephen Mauldin, MLA (not AI assisted)

All right reserved, copyright © 2025

The English poet John Keats said, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Why did he say they are synonymous, all we can know, and all we need to know? Perhaps because we are permanently in a flux of balancing, in the throes of equalization, measuring ourselves with an idea of truth and beauty presented to us unconsciously, continuously, for they are the ultimate mater and pater to whom we are involuntarily drawn.

The light infractions of these truths and beauties do not always occur through our retinas, yet their invisibility is immaterial, for if we are fully alive, we behold it as an idea, not unlike the goddess Pallas Athena, whom the ancient Greeks worshiped.

To be sure, they were worshiping a notion of the truthful and beautiful, a concept transcending their struggles, their sometimes-mundane lives, and themselves.

Of course, a beautiful girl can possess a duplicitous, unlovely mind, for, in such a case, her form alone is lovely simply because it is the true notion of physical womanhood. Thus, she tells the truth with her body but lies with words. Yet Athena possessed both—a figure and face of alluring charm and a mind of graceful virtues. Thus, she was a beautiful concept of truth: the figure and thoughts of exquisite womanliness.

The quest to offer a worthy sacrifice unto her elegance requires a hardihood few are willing to endure, for it is distinction amidst banality, the prism of colors against deathly pallor, the raising of a brave face unto sunlight—the gauntlet thrown down to Odysseus.

On that journey, we are pressed, tempted. We are enticed, invited to compromise, but should we choose the light of that godly smile, we win a victory, and, I think, heaven rejoices.  After making such steps toward the light, I dreamt of my parents, radiant with brilliant smiles, aflame, as it were, with life. They approved.

I wish my beloved Blackjack would come to me in a similar dream with his divine smile filled with all the playful, puppy hilarity he kept throughout his blessed life. Such a visitation from that superior being would lighten the journey along this long yet beautiful cavalcade.

Blackjack was a big handsome fellow with jet-black fur like angora and a noble head and eyes. I doubt I shall ever be so attuned to another person (biped or quadruped), for his beautiful ways were redeeming. That is why Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky declared, "The world will be saved by beauty."

Yes, the world's redemption depends upon that tune, that vibration that seems to "laugh and run away like a child at play," only because we reject it, although it is all about us in an infinity of divine messages, even in the heavenly bodies.

What causes Earth to travel around the Sun, its gravitational pull counterbalancing Earth’s centrifugal force so that it proceeds in a predictable orbit?

It is virtually identical, say physicists, to a central nucleus having several electrons revolving around it in mutual electric attractions, all within a given atomic boundary.  In other words, nucleoli and electrons are subatomic replicates of our solar system, or vice versa.

What keeps everything from the planetary to the molecular spinning in such a way—in such a similar way? May I take a guess?

Is it something the ancient Greeks sought in their gods, particularly Pallas Athena? Is it the axis upon which everything spins and to which we are unconsciously magnetized?

Is it the indivisibility of truth and beauty?