Can dumb parts make a smart whole? (Enneads reading, 1)

I started reading the Enneads of Plotinus. I'm using an edition where the essays are arranged in chronological order, which for some reason is entirely different from the classical order. Since there are a lot of ideas here to digest, I thought I would start writing some thoughts and replies here.

I.6 is about Beauty, and Plotinus posits that things that are beautiful are so because they participate in the Platonic form of Beauty. He directly rejects the idea that beauty can be reduced to arrangements or proportions. He adds too that it would be impossible for a beautiful thing to be made of ugly parts. The last major thought is that our perception of beauty means that our soul, which is itself beautiful, resonates with the beauty that it beholds, and which reflects the beauty of our origin within the One.

On the point about it being impossible to make beautiful things out of ugly parts, I am not entirely convinced. But I can't readily think of counterexamples. I can't imagine that Beethoven's Ninth would sound just as sublime if played by a vuvuzela and kazoo orchestra. The Surrealists came to mind, with their bizarre idea of beauty in the chance meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on an operating table. But they were deliberately challenging established aesthetics.

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