But though there is no complete standard of beauty about which all people, at all times, in all countries, are agreed, there are two elements of beauty which may be said to have been standardized, at least for the civilized world, by the early Greeks and Romans.  These elements are simplicity and harmony, simplicity being the forms of things most directly and pleasingly appealing to the eye and most easily reaching the common understanding, while harmony is the combination of parts most nearly identical with the lines, contours, and proportions of nature.  These are two essentials of good sculpture, and the Emperor was talking to sculptors and perhaps thinking only of sculpture.

Yet simplicity and harmony alone do not constitute beauty, while on the other hand beauty may take very complicated forms.  A third element one may suggest is essential, and its indescribable nature causes all the difficulty there is in defining beauty.  This third element is—­charm.  A work of art, to be beautiful, must charm, and to different people different things are charming.  Plato’s theory is that the sense of beauty is a dim recollection of a standard we have seen in a heavenly pre-existence.  Accepting it as as good an explanation of charm as we can get, we may conclude by defining beauty as, in its highest form, a combination of simplicity and harmony, resulting in charm.

The Emperor says:  “To us Germans great ideals have become permanent possessions, whereas to other peoples they have been more or less lost.”  The remark is not one of those best calculated to promote friendly feelings on the part of other peoples towards Germany or its Emperor.  It is like his declaration that Germans are the “salt of the earth,” and of a piece with the aggressive attitude of intellectual superiority adopted by many Germans towards other nations—­one reason, by the way, for German unpopularity in the world.  But is it true?  Germany has great ideals in permanent possession, but are they more or less lost to other peoples?  It is at least doubtful.  Great ideals are the permanent possession of every great people; it is these ideals that have made them great; and they are no less great if they differ according to the nature and conditions of each great people.  One might go further, indeed, and say that great ideals are the common property and permanent possession of all great peoples.  It is a hard saying that any one people has a monopoly of them.  The contribution of every great nation to the common stock of great ideals is incalculable, and it would be interesting to investigate which nation is most successfully working out its great ideals in practice.