How do we Experience and Know the Beautiful?

Everyone has beauty but not everyone sees it. Confucius

Is the awareness of the beautiful a biological response built within our nature? Has God so made us that like the swallows long for Capistrano, we long for the beautiful? Or is this awareness learned? Or, is it both? Are we born with an innate sense of the beautiful and yet the nurturing and enhancement of that awareness is grown and expanded through proper care of the imagination?

So many of the most memorable experiences we have in life are filled with awe and wonder. There appears to be an initial experience we humans have with our world where wonderment and surprise our normative responses. These responses enhance the awe-filled moment and our sense of a presence, ours and the sentient experience of the very earth upon which we abide. 

Is the imagination the human capacity to experience this wonder and awe? Is creation, therefore, a starting point for the growth and care of the imagination? Are we created to feel some sort of connection with nature and if so how do we differ from the animal kingdom? Do dogs experience a sunset as something of grandeur? Do mountain goats look down over the hills of the Alps and acknowledge their beauty? Most likely that is not the case but observing animals in their natural habitat does seem to reveal some observable behavior akin to a relaxed state.

Yet we know that animals do respond to the beauty of each other as they perceive it. Much of beauty is acknowledged in how the genders respond to one another. If beauty were unreal then why do certain animal species literally compete for a spouse through plumage expressiveness?