The phrase "ontological secret" is from 1927 —
" Beauty is thus 'a flashing of intelligence…
on a matter intelligibly arranged' or, as Maritain
adds in the 1927 edition of Art and Scholasticism ,
it is 'the ontological secret that [things] bear within
them[selves], their spiritual being, their operating
mystery.' "
— John G. Trapani, Jr., "'Radiance': The Metaphysical Foundations
of Maritain's Aesthetics," pp. 11-19 in Beauty, Art, and the Polis ,
ed. by Alice Ramos, publ. by American Maritain Association, 2000.
This 1927 phrase may be the source of McLuhan's 1944
"ontological secret" —
From a search in this journal for "Object of Beauty" —
“She never looked up while her mind rotated the facts,
trying to see them from all sides, trying to piece them
together into theory. All she could think was that she
was flunking an IQ test.”
— Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty
