Educated and balanced human beings desire to improve their world<br >and to live in surroundings that become more comfortable and beauti-<br >ful as time passes. Thus we can see that the person with the re-<br >sponsibility for making the home inherits an instinct to improve its<br >appearance as well as its degree of functional comfort.<br > In his attempt to live well， man creates much ugliness as a result of<br >economic greed (polluted streams and air; cluttered， smoke-stained<br >cities; bill-boarded and junk-lined highways) and much ugliness<br >from poor taste (lines of ticky-tacky housing， incongruous archi-<br >tecture， gaudy economic symbols). No one means to be an agent of<br >ugliness， but people inadvertently contribute to it through laziness，<br >tolerance of filth， or ignorance of what is good taste. Laziness has<br >to do with character， tolerance of filth grows from the environment，<br >but good taste is basically an intellectual discipline that can be ac-<br >quired through study， illustration and association. Good taste， then，<br >is synonymous with a search for beauty and opposes what is ugly.<br > But here s the rub: recognizing beauty is one thing， creating beauty<br > is another. Fortunately， most people have the basic values to ap-<br > preciate balance， harmony， proportion， color， imagination， and spirit.<br > Even though a person may not know how to achieve such a presen-<br > tation in any of the arts， a room combining these elements is in-<br > stinctively beautiful to him. Yet when we speak of beauty w.e are~<br > in the shifting sands of communication because "beauty is in the eye<br > of the beholder."<br >