| Summary: | "Coming as I do in the most beautiful season of the year, into the midst of some of the most beautiful scenery on the continent and from the midst of scenery differently but equally beautiful--coming in mid-summer into the valley of the River from the valley of the Lake--you will not be surprised that my subject has connections with the environment in which I wrote and in which I speak. Surrounded, both while thinking and while giving utterance to my thoughts, by Beauty--composing and speaking in the midst of a material nature saturated and suffused with this element, it will not appear forced or unnatural if I find in it, the theme of our reflections at this hour. It is not my purpose however to surrender myself, or to lead others to surrender themselves, to the full influence and impression of this quality, and to fall into a vague and rhapsodic train of thought or feeling. On the contrary, my aim will be purely and perhaps intensely practical, and I hope with the aid of your own after-thought to make the particular aspect of the general subject of Beauty, that will be exhibited, contribute to scholarship, culture, and character. The specific subject then, to which I would invite your attention, is--The true theory and relative position of the Beautiful with reference more particularly to Culture and to Character"--Book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).
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| Other form: | Print version: Shedd, William Greenough Thayer, 1820-1894. True nature of the beautiful and its influence upon culture : a discourse delivered before the literary societies of Amherst College, August 13, 1851. Northampton, Mass. : Hopkins, Bridgeman, 1851
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