When we see a thing clearly, we don’t take it to be another thing; that is, we see it as one thing, that thing. We also, when we see a thing clearly, see it as all of that thing, as having everything it has.

Suppose we noticed our brother-in-law coming down the street towards us. If we did not see him as our brother-in-law, but took him to be a stranger, we would not see him clearly. If we thought he was our brother-in-law, but he might not be, might be a friend or someone we did not know, we would not be seeing him clearly. Further, if we knew him to be our brother-in-law, but yet saw very little of him, we would not be seeing him clearly; at this time we would be seeing clearly that he was our brother-in-law, but we wouldn’t be seeing our brother-in-law clearly. For clear seeing implies a sense of the whole of the thing seen, of much in it; when seeing is clearest, of everything in it. This means that to see French clearly we would be able to distinguish it from other languages, and also we would know many words, many grammatical forms, many writings in it—and if we saw French entirely clearly, we’d have a sense of everything in it.

It follows that we don’t see things with full clearness. That a thing is, we can see clearly. Everything a thing is, is so hard to see we should spend the rest of our lives going after it (there is no better way of spending it).

Clearness implies a sense of simplicity and complexity, of everything which a thing is and nothing which it isn’t, of a full rhythm of inclusion and exclusion. As a consequence, to see a thing clearly means to see it as beautiful.