Is beauty a reliable indicator of inner worth, or a deceptive mask concealing corruption?

Whether Beauty is a Trap depends on who is looking — and what they hope to find. The Sepulchre may shine, but the rot within is what instructs. I lost a World the other day — or thought I did. Its beauty was a row of Stars around the Forehead, but it was gone. What mattered was not the shining, but the Loss. A rich man might not notice, but to my frugal eye, it was more than Ducats. Beauty deceives when it is all there is. I died for Beauty, but was scarce adjusted in the Tomb, when one who died for Truth was lain in an adjoining Room. We talked between the Rooms, until the Moss had reached our Lips, and covered up our Names. Truth and Beauty are Kinsmen, but Beauty alone is Orphan.

To pose the question as whether beauty is either a reliable indicator or a deceptive mask is, I suspect, to miss the more interesting truth: that it is both, and neither, depending on what one seeks. The whited sepulchres and the divinely fair are extremes, and extremes are rarely the ground on which sound judgement is built. I think of Wordsworth, who found in the humblest objects – a leech gatherer, a field of daffodils – a beauty that revealed a deeper truth about the human condition. Beauty, in this sense, is not a superficial gleam but an invitation to understanding. But I also think of the sophistries I have encountered in Parliament, cloaked in elegant rhetoric, designed to obscure self-interest and prejudice. Therefore, let us examine closely, let us analyze rigorously, lest we be deceived by appearances.