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able, is the want of agreement as to the time possess so much unity as to pass univer

presence and existence of beauty in particular
objects, among men whose organization is
perfect, and who are plainly possessed of the
faculty, whatever it may be, by which beauty
is discerned. Now, no such thing happens,
we imagine, or can be conceived to happen,
sensation, simple
in the

of

or

sally by the same name, and be recognised as the peculiar object of a separate sense or faculty. All simple qualities that are perceived in any one object, are immediately recognised to be the same, when they are again perceived in another; and the objects in which they are thus perceived are at once felt so far to reany other case the exercise of any other distinct faculty. semble each other, and to partake of the same Where one man sees light, all men who have nature. Thus snow is seen to be white, and eyes see light also. All men allow grass to chalk is seen to be white; but this is no be green, and sugar to be sweet, and ice to be sooner seen, than the two substances, howcold; and the unavoidable inference from any ever unlike in other respects, are felt at once apparent disagreement in such matters neces- to have this quality in common, and to resarily is, that the party is insane, or entirely semble each other completely in all that redestitute of the sense or organ concerned in lates to the quality of col the perception. With regard to beauty, how- of seeing. But is this felt, or could it even be ever, it is obvious, at first sight, that the intelligibly asserted, with regard

case

we

colour, and the

sense

to the quality

is entirely different. One man sees it per-
petually, where to another it is quite invisible,
or even where its reverse seems to be con-
spicuous. Nor is this owing to the insensi-
bility of either of the parties; for the same
contrariety exists where both are keenly alive
to the influences of the beauty they respect-
ively discern. A Chinese or African lover
would probably see nothing at all attractive
in a belle of London or Paris; and, undoubt-
edly, an elegans formarum spectator from either
of those cities would discover nothing but de-
formity in the Venus of the Hottentots. A
little distance in time often produces the
same effects as distance in place; -the gar-
dens, the furniture, the dress, which appeared
beautiful in the eyes of our grandfathers, are
odious and ridiculous in ours. Nay, the dif-
ference of rank, education, or employments,
gives rise to the same diversity of sensation.
The little shop-keeper sees a beauty in his
roadside box, and in the staring tile roof,
wooden lions, and clipped boxwood, which
strike horror into the soul of the student of
the picturesque; while he is transported in
surveying the fragments of ancient sculpture,
which are nothing but ugly masses of mould- whose proper office it is to intimate to us the
ering stone, in the judgment of the admirer existence of some property which is common
of neatness. It is needless, however, to mul- to a flower and a demonstration,

of beauty? Take even a limited and specific sort
of beauty-for instance, the beauty of form.
The form of a fine tree is beautiful, and the
form of a fine woman, and the form of a column,
and a vase, and a chandelier. Yet how can it
be said that the form of a woman has any
thing in common with that of a tree or a tem-
ple? or to which of the senses by which forms
are distinguished can it be supposed to appear
that they have any resemblance or affinity?
The matter, however, becomes still more
recollect that beauty
inextricable when
does not belong merely to forms or colours,
but to sounds, and perhaps to the objects of
other senses; nay, that in all languages and
in all nations, it is not supposed to reside ex-
clusively in material objects, but to belong
also to sentiments and ideas, and intellectual
and moral existences. Not only is a tree
beautiful, as well as a palace or a waterfall
beautiful, and a theorem in
but
mathematics, and a contrivance in mechanics.
But if things intellectual and totally segre-
gated from matter may thus possess beauty,
how can it possibly be a quality of material
objects? or what sense or faculty can that be,

a

poem

is

no an eloquent discourse?

tiply instances, since the fact admits of contradiction. But how can we believe that beauty is the object of a peculiar sense or faculty, when persons undoubtedly possessed of the faculty, and even in an eminent degr legree, can discover nothing of it in objects where it is distinctly felt and perceived by others with the same use of the faculty?

a

valley and

to develope the

The only answer which occurs to this is plainly enough a bad one; but the statement of it, and of its insufficiency, will serve better, perhaps, than any thing else, actual difficulties of the subject, and the true state of the question with regard to them. It may be said, then, in answer to the questions This one consideration, we confess, appears we have suggested above, that all these obto us conclusive against the supposition of jects, however various and dissimilar, agree beauty being a real property of objects, ad- at least in being agreeable, and that this dressing itself to the power of taste as a sepa- agreeableness, which is the only quality they to them all. Now, rate sense or faculty; and it seems to point possess in common, may probably be the irresistibly to the conclusion, that our sense beauty which is ascribed of it is the result of other more elementary to those who are accustomed to such discus

feelings, into which it may be analysed or
resolved. A second objection, however, if
possible of still greater force, is suggested, by
considering the prodigious and almost infinite
variety of y of things to which this property of
beauty is ascribed; and the impossibility of
imagining any one inherent quality which
can belong to them all, and yet at the same

sions, it would be quite enough to reply, that though the agreeableness of such objecte depend plainly enough upon their beauty, it by no means follows, but quite the contrary, that their beauty depends upon their agreeableness; the latter being the more comprehensivo or generic term, under which beauty must rank as one of the species. Its nature, there

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fore, is no more explained, nor is less ab- give; and find ourselves just where we were

surdity substantially committed, by saying that things are beautiful because they are agreeable, than if we were to give the same explanation of the sweetness of sugar; for no one, we suppose, will dispute, that though it he very true that sugar is agreeable because it is sweet, it would be manifestly preposterous to say that it was sweet because it was greeable. For the benefit, however, of those who wish or require to be more regularly cntiated in these mysteries, we beg leave to add a few observations.

la the first place, then, it seems evident, hat agreeableness, in general, cannot be the sume with beauty, because there are very many things in the highest degree agreeable, that can in no sense be called beautiful. Moderate heat, and savoury food, and rest, and exercise, are agreeable to the body; but 100 of these can be called beautiful; and among objects of a higher class, the love and esteem of others, and fame, and a good conscience, and health, and riches, and wisdom, are all eminently agreeable; but none at all beautiful, according to any intelligible use of the word. It is plainly quite absurd, therefore, to say that beauty consists in agreeableness, without specifying in consequence of what it sagreeable or to hold that any thing whatever is taught as to its nature, by merely tassing it among our pleasurable emotions. In the second place, however, we may remark, that among all the objects that are reeable, whether they are also beautiful or st, scarcely any two are agreeable on account d the same qualities, or even suggest their recableness to the same faculty or organ. Most certainly there is no resemblance or aimity whatever between the qualities which make a peach agreeable to the palate, and a beautiful statue to the eye; which soothe us an easy chair by the fire, or delight us in a philosophical discovery. The truth is, that recableness is not properly a quality of any object whatsoever, but the effect or result of

1 certain

at the beginning of the discussion, and embarrassed with all the difficulties arising from the prodigious diversity of objects which seem to possess these qualities.

We know pretty well what is the faculty of seeing or hearing; or, at least, we know that what is agreeable to cre of those faculties, has no effect whatever on the other. We know that bright colours afford no delight to the ear, nor sweet tones to the eye; and are therefore perfectly assured that the qualities which make the visible objects agreeable, cannot be the same with those which give pleasure to the ear. But it is by the eye and by the ear that all material beauty is perceived; and yet the beauty which discloses itself to these two separate senses, and conse quently must depend upon qualities which have no sort of affinity, is supposed to be one distinct quality, and to be perceived by a pe culiar sense or faculty! The perplexity becomes still greater when we think of the beauty of poems or theorems, and endeavour to imagine what qualities they can possess ir common with the agreeable modifications of light or of sound.

It is in these considerations undoubtedly that the difficulty of the subject consists. The faculty of taste, plainly, is not a faculty like any of the external senses, the range of whose objects is limited and precise, as well as the qualities by which they are gratified or offended; and beauty, accordingly, is discovered in an infinite variety of objects, among which it seems, at first sight, impossible to discover any other bond of connexion. Yet boundless as their diversity may appear, it is plain that they must resemble each other in something, and in something more definite and definable than merely in being agreeable; since they are all classed together, in every tongue and nation, under the common appellation of beautiful, and are felt indeed to produce emotions in the mind that have some sort of kindred or affinity. The words beauty and beautiful, in

qualities, es, the the nature of which, in every short, do and must mean something; and are particular instance, we can generally define universally felt to mean something much pretty exactly, or of which we know at least more definite than agreeableness or gratificawith certainty that they manifest themselves tion in general: and while it is confessedly respectively to some one particular sense or by no means easy to describe or define what

faculty, and to no other; and consequently it would be just as obviously ridiculous to suppose a faculty or organ, whose office it was to perceive agreeableness in general, as to suppose that agreeableness was a distinct quality that could thus be perceived.

that something is, the force and clearness of our perception of it is demonstrated by the readiness with which we determine, in any particular instance, whether the object of a given pleasurable emotion is or is not properly described as beauty.

The class of agreeable objects, thanks to the bounty of Providence, is exceedingly large. Certain things are agreeable to the palate, and others to the smell and to the touch. Some erty of the objects to which it is ascribed, or

appears to us conclusive against the idea of What we have already said, we confess,

again are agreeable to our faculty of imaginaton, or to our understanding, or to our moral feelings; and none of all these we call beautiful. But there are others which we do call beautiful; and those we say are agreeable to our faculty of taste;-but when we come to ask what is the faculty of taste, and what are the qualities which recommend the subjects that facultywe have no such answer to

this beauty being any fixed or inherent prop

itself the object of any separate and independent faculty; and we will no longer conceal from the reader what we take to be the true solution of the difficulty. In our opinion, then, our sense of beauty depends entirely on our previous experience of simpler pleasure or emotions, and consists in the suggestion of agreeable or interesting sensations with whick we had formerly been made familiar by the

:

direct and intelligible agency of our common to imagine, that recollections thus strikingly sensibilities; and that vast variety of objects, suggested by some real and present existence, to which we give the common name of beau- should present themselves under a different

tiful, become entitled to that appellation, merely because they all possess the power of recalling or reflecting those sensations of which they have been the accompaniments, or with which they have been associated in our imagination by any other more casual bond of connection. According to this view of the matter, therefore, beauty is not an inherent property or quality of objects at all, but the result of the accidental relations in which they may stand to our experience of pleasures or emotions; and does not depend upon any particular configuration of parts, proportions, or colours, in external things, nor upon the unity, coherence, or simplicity of intellectual creations-but ut merely upon the associations which, in the case of every individual, may enable these inherent, and otherwise indifferent qualities, to suggest or recall to the mind emotions of a pleasurable or in teresting description. It follows, therefore, that no object is beautiful in itself, or could appear so antecedent to our experience of direct pleasures or emotions; and that, as an infinite variety of objects may thus reflect interesting ideas, so all of them may acquire the title of beautiful, although utterly diverse and disparate in their nature, and possessing nothing in common but this accidental power of reminding us of other emotions.

This theory, which, we believe, is now very generally adopted, though under many needless qualifications, shall be farther developed and illustrated in the sequel. But at present we shall only remark, that it serves, at least,

aspect, and move the mind somewhat differ. ently from those which arise spontaneously in the ordinary course of our reflections, and de not thus grow out of a direct, present, and peculiar impression.

The whole of this doctrine, however, we shall endeavour by and bye to establish upon more direct evidence. But having now explained, in a general way, both the difficulties of the subject, and our suggestion as to their true solution, it is proper that we should take a short review of the more considerable theories that have been proposed for the elucidation of this curious question; which is one of the most delicate as well as the most popular in the science of metaphysics-was one of the earliest which exercised the speculative inge. nuity of philosophers and has at last, we think, been more successfully treated than any other of a similar description.

In most of these speculatious we shall find rather imperfect truth than fundamental error, or, at all events, such errors only as arise naturally from that peculiar difficulty which we have already endeavoured to explain, as consisting in the prodigious multitude and diversity of the objects in which the common quality of beauty was to be accounted for. Those who have not been sufficiently aware of the difficulty have generally dogmatised from a small number of instances, and have rather given examples of the occurrence of beauty in some few classes of objects, than afforded any light as to that upon which it essentially depended in all; while those who

to solve the great problem involved in the felt its full force have very often found no discussion, by rendering it easily conceivable other resource, than to represent beauty as how objects which have no inherent resem- consisting in properties so extremely vague blance, nor, indeed, any one quality in com- and general, (such, for example, as the power mon, should yet be united in one common of exciting ideas of relation,) as almost to relation, and consequently acquire one com- elude our comprehension, and, at the same mon name; just as all the things that belonged time, of so abstract and metaphysical a deto a beloved individual may serve to remind scription, as not to be very intelligibly stated, us of him, and thus to awake a kindred class as the elements of a strong, familiar, and of emotions, though just as unlike each other pleasurable emotion.

as any of the objects that are classed under This last observation leads us to make one the general name of beautiful. His poetry, other remark upon the general character of for instance, or his slippers-his acts of bounty these theories; and this is, that some of them, or his saddle-horse-may lead to the same though not openly professing that doctrine, chain of interesting remembrances, and thus seem necessarily to imply the existence of a

agree in possessing a power of excitement, for the sources of which we should look in vain through all the variety of their physical or metaphysical qualities.

By the help of the same consideration, we get rid of all the mystery of a peculiar sense or faculty, imagined for the express purpose of perceiving beauty; and discover that the power of taste is nothing more than the habit of tracing those associations, by which almost

peculiar sense or faculty for the perception of beauty; as they resolve it into properties that are not in any way interesting or agree. able to any of our known faculties. Such are all those which make it consist in propor tion-or in variety, combined with regularity-or in waving lines-or in unity-or in the perception of relations-without explaining, or attempting to explain, how any of these things should, in any circumstances, affect us all objects may be connected with interesting with delight or emotion. Others, again, do emotions. It is easy to understand, that the not require the supposition of any such sepa recollection of any scene of delight or emotion rate faculty; because in them the sense of must produce a certain agreeable sensation, beauty is considered as arising from other and that the objects which introduce these more simple and familiar emotions, which recollections should not appear altogether in- are in themselves and beyond all dispute different to us: nor is it, perhaps, very difficult agreeable. Such are those which teach that seauty depends on the perception of utility, gests that beauty may be the inere organic or of design, or fitness, or in tracing associa- delight of the eye or the ear; to which, after lions between its objects and the common stating very slightly the objection, that it

joys or emotions of our nature. Which of these two classes of speculation, to one or other of which, we believe, all theories of beauty may be reduced, is the most philosophical in itself, we imagine can admit of

would be impossible to account upon this ground for the beauty of poetry or eloquence, he proceeds to rear up a more refined and elaborate refutation, upon such grounds as these:- If beauty be the proper name of that

no question; and we hope in the sequel to which is naturally agreeable to the sight and leave it as little doubtful, which is to be con- hearing, it is plain, that the objects to which sidered as most consistent with the fact. In it is ascribed must possess some common and the mean time, we must give a short account distinguishable property, besides that of being of some of the theories themselves.

The most ancient of which it seems necessary to take any notice, is that which may be traced in the Dialogues of Plato-though we are very far from pretending that it is possible to give any intelligible or consistent account of its tenor. It should never be forgotten, however, that it is to this subtle and ingemous spirit that we owe the suggestion, that it is mind alone that is beautiful; and that,

agreeable, in consequence of which they are separated and set apart from objects that are agreeable to our other senses and faculties, and, at the same time, classed together under the common appellation of beautiful. Now, we are not only quite unable to discover what this property is, but it is manifest, that objects which make themselves known to the ear, can have no property as such, in common with objects that make themselves known to the eye; it being impossible that an object which is beautiful by its colour, can be beautiful, from the same quality, with another which is beautiful by its sound. From all which it is inferred, that as beauty is admitted

perceiving beauty, it only contemplates the shadow of its own affections; a doctrine which, however mystically unfolded in his writings, or however combined with extravagant or absurd speculations, unquestionably carries in it the the germ of all the truth that to be something real, it cannot be merely what has since been revealed on the subject. By is agreeable to the organs of sight or hearing.

far the largest dissertation, however, that this There is no practical wisdom, we admit, in great philosopher has left upon the nature of those fine-drawn speculations; nor any of that beauty, is to be found in the dialogue entitled spirit of patient observation by which alone The Greater Hippias, which is entirely de- any sound view of such objects can ever voted to that inquiry. We do not learn a be attained. There are also many marks great deal of the author's own opinion, in- of that singular incapacity to distinguish deed, from this performance; for it is one of between what is absolutely puerile and the dialogues which have been termed Ana- foolish, and what is plausible, at least, and treplic, or confuting-in which nothing is ingenious, which may be reckoned among concluded in the affirmative, but a series of the characteristics of "the divine philososophistical suggestions or hypotheses are suc-pher," and in some degree of all the philoso

phers of antiquity: but they show clearly enough the subtle and abstract character of Greek speculation, and prove at how early a period, and to how great an extent, the inherent difficulties of the subject were felt, and produced their appropriate effects.

cessively exposed. The plan of it is to lead on Hippias, a shallow and confident sophist, to make a variety of dogmatical assertions as to the nature of beauty, and then to make him retract and abandon them, upon the statement of some obvious objections. Socrates and he agree at first in the notable proposition, "that beauty is that by which all beautiful things are beautiful;" and then, after a great number of suggestions, by far too childish and absurd to be worthy of any notice such as, that the beautiful may peradventure be gold, or a fine woman, or a handsome mare they at last get to some suppositions, which show that almost all the theones that have since been propounded this interesting subject had occurred thus early to the active and original mind of this keen and curious inquirer. Thus, Socrates first suggests that beauty may consist in the fitness or suitableness of any object to the place it occupies; and afterwards, more generally and directly, that it may consist in utility-a notion which is ultimately rejected, however, upon the subtle consideration that the useful is that which produces good, a theory with which we are so imperfectly and that the producer and the pr product being acquainted: but it may be observed, that, necessarily different, it would follow, upon while the author is so far in the right as to That supposition, that beauty could not be make beauty consist in a relation to mind, good, nor good beautiful. Finally, he sug- and not in any physical quality, he has taken

on

There are some hints on these subjects in the works of Xenophon; and some scattered observations in those of Cicero; who was the first, we believe, to observe, that the sense of beauty is peculiar to man; but nothing else, we believe, in classical antiquity, which requires to be analysed or explained. It appears that St. Augustin composed a large treatise on beauty; and it is to be lamented, that the speculations of that acute and ardent genius on such a subject have been lost. We discover, from incidental notices in other parts of his writings, that he conceived the beauty of all objects to depend on their unity, or on the perception of that principle or design which fixed the relations of their various parts, and presented them to the intellect or imagination as one harmonious whole. It would not be fair to deal very strictly with far too narrow and circumscribed a view of the matter, and one which seems almost exclusively applicable to works of human art; it being plain enough, we think, that a beautiful landscape, or a beautiful horse, has no more unity, and no more traces of design, than one which is not beautiful.

We do not pretend to know what the schoolmen taught upon this subject during the dark ages; but the discussion does not seem to have been resumed for long after the revival of letters. The followers of Leibnitz were pleased to maintain that beauty consisted in perfection; but what constituted perfection (in this respect) they did not attempt to define. M. Crouzas wrote a long essay, to show that beauty depended on these five elements, variety, unity, regularity, order, and proportion; and the Père André, a still longer one to prove, that, admitting these to be the true foundations of beauty, it was still most important to consider, that the beauty which results from them is either essential, or natural, or artificial and that it may be greater or less, according as the characteristics of each of these classes are combined or set in opposition.

ingenious author that these qualities of uns. formity and variety were not of themselves agreeable to any of our known senses or faculties, except when considered as symbols of utility or design, and therefore could not intelligibly account for the very lively emotions which we often experience from the percention of beauty, where the notion of design or utility is not at all suggested. He was constrained, therefore, either to abandon this view of the nature of beauty altogether, or to imagine a new sense or faculty, whose only function it should be to receive delight from the combinations of uniformity and variety, without any consideration of their being significant of things agreeable to our other faculties; and this being accomplished by the mere force of the definition, there was no room for farther dispute or difficulty in the matter.

Some of Hucheson's followers, such as Gerard and others, who were a little startled at the notion of a separate fac faculty, and yet wished to retain the doctrine of beauty depending on variety and uniformity, endeavoured, accordingly, to show that these qualities were naturally agreeable to the mind, and were recommended by considerations arising from its most familiar properties. Uniformity or simplicity, they observed, renders our conception of objects easy, and saves the mind from all fatigue and distraction in the consideration of them; whilst variety, if circum. scribed and limited byan ultimate uniformity, gives it a pleasing exercise and excitement, and keeps its energies in a state of pleasurable activity. Now, this appears to us to be mere trifling. The varied and lively emotions which we receive from the perception of beauty, obviously have no sort of resemblance to the pleasure of moderate intellectual exertion; nor can any thing be conceived more utterly dissimilar than the gratification we

Among ourselves, we are not aware of any considerable publication on the subject till the appearance of Lord Shaftesbury's Characteristics; in which a sort of rapturous Platonic doctrine is delivered as to the existence of a primitive and Supreme Good and Beauty, and of a certain internal sense, by which both beauty and moral merit are distinguished. Addison published several ingenious papers in The Spectator, on the pleasures of the imagination, and was the first, we believe, who referred them to the specific sources of beauty, sublimity, and novelty. He did not enter much, however, into the metaphysical discussion of the nature of beauty itself; and the first philosophical treatise of note that ap- have in gazing on the form of a lovely woman, peared on the subject, may be said to have and the satisfaction we receive from working been the Inquir Inquiry of Dr. Hucheson, first published, we believe, in 1735.

In this work, the notion of a peculiar inCternal sense, by which we are made sensible of the existence of beauty, is very boldly promulgated, and maintained by many ingenious arguments: Yet nothing, we conceive, can be more extravagant than such a proposition; and nothing but the radical faults of the other

an easy problem in arithmetic or geometry. If a triangle is more beautiful than a regular polygon, as those authors maintain, merely because its figure is more easily comprehended, the number four should be more beautiful than the number 327, and the form of a gibbet far more agreeable than that of a branching oak. The radical error, in short, consists in fixing upon properties that are not interesting

parts of his theory could possibly have driven in themselves, and can never be conceived, the learned author to its adoption. Even therefore, to excite any emotion, as the founafter the existence of the sixth sense was as- tain-spring of all our emotions of beauty: and

sumed, he felt that it was still necessary that he should explain what were the qualities by wirich it was gratified; and these, he was pleased to allege, were nothing but the combinations of variety with uniformity; all objects, as he has himself expressed it, which are equally umform, being beautiful in proportion to their variety and all objects equally various being beautiful in proportion to their uniformity. Now, not to insist upon the obvious and radical objection that this is not true in fact, as to flowers, landscapes, indeed of any thing but architecture, if it be true of that it could not fail to strike the

or

it is an absurdity that must infallibly lead to others-whether these take the shape of a violent attempt to disguise the truly different nature of the properties so selected, or of the bolder expedient of creating a peculiar faculty, whose office it is to find them interesting.

The next remarkable theory was that proposed by Edmund Burke, in his Treatise of t the Sublime and Beautiful. But of this, in spite of the great name of the author, we cannot persuade ourselves that it is necessary to say much. His explanation is founded upor a species of materialism-not much to have been expected from the general character ot

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