M. P. Hall on Aesthetics

"In its truest sense, therefore, aesthetics may be considered a philosophic discipline by which the consciousness of man is equipped to estimate the degree of beauty, the degree of virtue, and the degree of utility inherent in the nature of an object; also the power to discern how these qualities may be increased to ultimate perfection. The first work is, therefore, to establish the nature of beauty in its most comprehensible sense; likewise, the natures of virtue and utility. Before beauty is cognizable, however, in other than its transitory and inconsequential sense, the consciousness of him who would constitute himself its criterion must be elevated to that level of rationality on which the principle of beauty exists dissociated from the clumsy efforts of men to express its qualities. Upon the basis that only the beautiful was capable of recognizing the beautiful, the assumption of the philosophic life was regarded as indispensable to the recognition of the aesthetics of Divinity."

"Beauty, existing independent of form and as a divine principle, is likened to a fountainhead of existence, from which streams of beauty flow forth to permeate and beautify the whole inferior creation. Furthermore, the beauty of the inner nature greatly transcends to the beauty of the outer, for the spiritual essences constituting the supersubstantial man, being more proximate to Cause, partake more fully of the nature of Cause, which is true Beauty. Hence, as Plotinus observes, there are those who "on perceiving the forms of gods or daemons, no longer esteem the fairest of corporeal forms."

"The quest of the truly beautiful is therefore identical with the quest of self, for Self in its perfect and universalized sense -- the all-pervading Consciousness postulated by the sage -- is the perfect source of all beauty and therefore paretakes in perfect measure of all that which is manifested from itself. That this supreme truth was taught by the sacred institutions of antiquity is further evidenced by Plotinus, who continues: "Just as those who penetrate into the holy retreates of sacred mysteries, are first purified, and then divest themselves of their garments, until some one, by such a process, having dismissed every thing foreign from the God, by himself alone, beholds the solitary principel of the universe, sincere, simple, and pure, from which all things depend, and to whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all intelligent natures are directed, as the proper cause of being, life, and intelligence.""

Lectures on Ancient Philosophy (italics mine)