On grace and dignity

�On grace and dignity�: Mere submission to power being not a main goal of Humanity, therefore, one should always show grace when obliging and dignity when being the one who is obliged.

Grace

The Greek tale bestows the goddess of Beauty with a belt which possesses the power to confer grace and attain love to whoever carries it. This divinity will even be attended by the goddesses of kindness and graciousness. The Greeks still differ, hence, Beauty from grace and graciousness, even if they have expressed such differences through attribute which pertained only to the goddess of Beauty.

Any form of grace is beautiful, for the belt of attractiveness is a property of the goddess of Gnidus, however, not every beautiful thing has grace; for even without this belt; Venus remains what she is. According to this allegory, precisely, it is the goddess of Beauty alone who carries and confers the belt of attractiveness.

Juno, the revered queen of heaven, must, first, borrow this belt from Venus, if she wants to seduce Jupiter on Mount Ida. Hence, highness, even if it adorns a certain level of Beauty (of which one can not, by any means, dispute to Jupiter�s spouse), is not sure to please without grace; for it is not with her own charms but rather with the belt of Venus that the supreme queen of gods expects to win over Jupiter�s heart.

The goddess of Beauty can, however, retrieve her belt and transfer its power to a less beautiful person. Grace is, hence, not an exclusive prerogative of the beautiful person but rather, it can also, even though it is always taken from the hands of Beauty, be conferred to the less beautiful and really, even to the unattractive person.

The same Greeks recommended to the person to whom pleasantness and grace lacked among his or her other spiritual qualities, to offer sacrifices to the goddesses of graciousness. These goddesses would, hence, present themselves really as attendants of the beautiful genre, however, as such, they can also be of importance and even indispensable to men, if so it will please them.

Hence, what only is grace if it relates, in truth, preferably although not exclusively, to Beauty? What is it, if it comes really from the beautiful person but also reveals its actions in the unattractive one? What only is grace if it can really augur Beauty without being Beauty itself but can only stimulate an inclination towards it?

The delicate feeling of the Greeks already differentiated early on, something that reason was still not capable of discerning and still searching for its expression, it borrowed images from the capacity of conceptualization, as understanding could still not offer it a concept about the matter.

This myth is, for that reason, worthy of the respect of the philosopher who, anyhow, must content himself with seeking the concepts in the appearances, in which the pure natural sense lays down its discoveries or, in other words, he must content himself with explaining feelings through their image transcriptions.

Should one strip this presentation of the Greeks of its allegorical veil; hence, this presentation seems not otherwise than including subsequent meanings. Grace is an itinerant Beauty, a Beauty namely, which can come into being to its subject fortuitously and which can cease in the same manner. In this, it differs from the permanent Beauty which is necessarily given to the subject itself. Venus can remove her belt and leave it immediately to Juno; however, her Beauty would she only obliterate with her own person.

Without her belt, she is not any more the enchanting Venus, without Beauty she is not any more Venus. This belt, as the symbol of the itinerant Beauty, has, however, the real particularity of conferring the person who adorns it, the objective specificity of grace and this belt differentiates itself, through that particularity, from any other adornment, however, it really does not change the person himself, but rather, changes subjectively his impression in the way he presents himself to another person.

It is the expressive meaning of the Greek myth which transforms grace into a specificity of the person himself and which makes the carrier of the belt really worth to be loved and not just only appearing to be so.

A belt which is not any more than a fortuitous, external attire, seems, however, not to be a really appropriate image to indicate the unique particularity of grace; however, a unique specificity which, at the same time, will be thought of as something separable from the subject, could not be well materialized otherwise than through a fortuitous decoration which independently from its holder, can be separated from him or her.

The belt of attractiveness acts, hence, not naturally because it, in this case, could not be changing anything in the person himself but rather it acts magically, that is, its force will spread beyond any natural condition.


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