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should present themselves under a diffe aspect, and move the mind somewhat di ently from those which arise spontaneous the ordinary course of our reflections, and not thus grow out of a direct, present, peculiar impression.

direct and intelligible agency of our common to imagine, that recollections thus strikin sensibilities; and that vast variety of objects, suggested by some real and present exister to which we give the common name of beautiful, 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 The whole of this doctrine, however, bond of connection. According to this view shall endeavour by and bye to establish of the matter, therefore, beauty is not an in-more direct evidence. But having now herent property or quality of objects at all, plained, in a general way, both the difficu but the result of the accidental relations in of the subject, and our suggestion as to t which they may stand to our experience of true solution, it is proper that we should ta pleasures or emotions; and does not depend short review of the more considerable the upon any particular configuration of parts, that have been proposed for the elucida proportions, or colours, in external things, nor of this curious question; which is one of upon the unity, coherence, or simplicity of most delicate as well as the most popul intellectual creations-but merely upon the the science of metaphysics-was one of associations which, in the case of every indi- earliest which exercised the speculative i vidual, may enable these inherent, and other- nuity of philosophers-and has at last. wise indifferent qualities, to suggest or recall think, been more successfully treated to the mind emotions of a pleasurable or in- any other of a similar description. 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, to solve the great problem involved in the discussion, by rendering it easily conceivable how objects which have no inherent resemblance, nor, indeed, any one quality in common, should yet be united in one common relation, and consequently acquire one common name; just as all the things that belonged to a beloved individual may serve to remind us of him, and thus to awake a kindred class of emotions, though just as unlike each other as any of the objects that are classed under the general name of beautiful. His poetry, for instance, or his slippers-his acts of bounty or his saddle-horse-may lead to the same chain of interesting remembrances, and thus 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 all objects may be connected with interesting emotions. It is easy to understand, that the recollection of any scene of delight or emotion must produce a certain agreeable sensation, and that the objects which introduce these recollections should not appear altogether indifferent to us: nor is it, perhaps, very difficult

In most of these speculatious we shall rather imperfect truth than fundamental e or, at all events, such errors only as arise rally from that peculiar difficulty which have already endeavoured to explain, as sisting in the prodigious multitude and versity of the objects in which the com quality of beauty was to be accounted Those who have not been sufficiently a of the difficulty have generally dogma from a small number of instances, and rather given examples of the occurrend beauty in some few classes of objects, afforded any light as to that upon whi essentially depended in all; while those felt its full force have very often four other resource, than to represent beau consisting in properties so extremely v and general, (such, for example, as the p of exciting ideas of relation,) as almo elude our comprehension, and, at the time, of so abstract and metaphysical scription, as not to be very intelligibly st as the elements of a strong, familiar, pleasurable emotion.

This last observation leads us to mak other remark upon the general charact these theories; and this is, that some of though not openly professing that doc seem necessarily to imply the existence peculiar sense or faculty for the perce of beauty; as they resolve it into prop that are not in any way interesting or a able to any of our known faculties. are all those which make it consist in p tion-or in variety, combined with re ity-or in waving lines-or in unitythe perception of relations-without ex ing, or attempting to explain, how any of things should, in any circumstances, aff with delight or emotion. Others, aga not require the supposition of any such rate faculty; because in them the ser beauty is considered as arising from more simple and familiar emotions, are in themselves and beyond all d agreeable. Such are those which teac

beauty depends on the perception of utility, gests that beauty may be the mere organic or of design, or fitness, or in tracing associa- delight of the eye or the ear; to which, after tions between its objects and the common stating very slightly the objection, that it joys or emotions of our nature. Which of would be impossible to account upon this these two classes of speculation, to one or ground for the beauty of poetry or eloquence, other of which, we believe, all theories of he proceeds to rear up a more refined and beauty may be reduced, is the most philo- elaborate refutation, upon such grounds as sophical in itself, we imagine can admit of 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. 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 to be something real, it cannot be merely what is agreeable to the organs of sight or hearing.

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 ingenious spirit that we owe the suggestion, that it is mind alone that is beautiful; and that, in 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 has since been revealed on the subject. By 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 treptic, 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 philosocessively 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 theories that have since been propounded on 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, and that the producer and the product being necessarily different, it would follow, upon that supposition, that beauty could not be good, nor good beautiful. Finally, he sug

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.

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 a theory with which we are so imperfectly acquainted: but it may be observed, that, while the author is so far in the right as to make beauty consist in a relation to mind, and not in any physical quality, he has taken

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.

ingenious author that these qualities of uniformity 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 percep tion 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.

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 Pere André, a still longer one to prove, that, admitting these to Some of Hucheson's followers, such as Gebe 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.

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 appeared on the subject, may be said to have been the Inquiry of Dr. Hucheson, first published, we believe, in 1735.

In this work, the notion of a peculiar internal 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 parts of his theory could possibly have driven the learned author to its adoption. Even after the existence of the sixth sense was assumed, he felt that it was still necessary that he should explain what were the qualities by which 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 uniform, 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, or indeed of any thing but architecture, if it be true of that it could not fail to strike the

rard and others, who were a little startled at the notion of a separate 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 circumscribed and limited by an ultimate uniformity, gives it a pleasing exercise and excitement, and keeps its energies in a state of pleasur able 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 have in gazing on the form of a lovely woman, and the satisfaction we receive from working 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 in themselves, and can never be conceived, therefore, to excite any emotion, as the fountain-spring of all our emotions of beauty: and 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 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 upon a species of materialism—not much to have been expected from the general character of

his genius, or the strain of his other specula- therefore, to be just as beautiful, if the sense tions for it all resolves into this-that all of beauty consisted in the perception of relaobjects appear beautiful, which have the tions. In the next place, it seems to be suflipower of producing a peculiar relaxation of ciently certain, from the experience and comour nerves and fibres, and thus inducing a mon feelings of all men, that the perception of certain degree of bodily languor and sinking. relations among objects is not in itself accomOf all the suppositions that have been at any panied by any pleasure whatever; and in partime hazarded to explain the phenomena of ticular has no conceivable resemblance to the beauty, this, we think, is the most unfortu- emotion we receive from the perception of nately imagined, and the most weakly sup- beauty. When we perceive one ugly old ported. There is no philosophy in the doctrine woman sitting exactly opposite to two other and the fundamental assumption is in every ugly old women, and observe, at the same way contradicted by the most familiar expe- moment, that the first is as big as the other two rience. There is no relaxation of the fibres taken together, we humbly conceive, that this in the perception of beauty-and there is no clear perception of the relations in which these pleasure in the relaxation of the fibres. If three Graces stand to each other, cannot well there were, it would follow, that a warm bath be mistaken for a sense of beauty, and that it would be by far the most beautiful thing in does not in the least abate or interfere with our the world-and that the brilliant lights, and sense of their ugliness. Finally, we may obbracing airs of a fine autumn morning, would serve, that the sense of beauty results instantabe the very reverse of beautiful. Accordingly, neously from the perception of the object; though the treatise alluded to will always be whereas the discovery of its relations to other valuable on account of the many fine and just objects must necessarily be a work of time and remarks it contains, we are not aware that reflection, in the course of which the beauty of there is any accurate inquirer into the subject the object, so far from being created or brought (with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Price, in into notice, must, in fact, be lost sight of and whose hands, however, the doctrine assumes forgotten. a new character) by whom the fundamental principle of the theory has not been explicitly abandoned.

A yet more extravagant doctrine was soon afterwards inculcated, and in a tone of great authority, in a long article from the brilliant pen of Diderot, in the French Encyclopédie; and one which exemplifies, in a very striking manner, the nature of the difficulties with which the discussion is embarrassed. This ingenious person, perceiving at once, that the beauty which we ascribe to a particular class of objects, could not be referred to any peculiar and inherent quality in the objects themselves, but depended upon their power of exciting certain sentiments in our minds; and being, at the same time, at a loss to discover what common power could belong to so vast a variety of objects as pass under the general appellation of beautiful, or by what tie all the various emotions which are excited by the perception of beauty could be united, was at last driven, by the necessity of keeping his definition sufficiently wide and comprehensive, to hazard the strange assertion, that all objects were beautiful which excite in us the idea of relation; that our sense of beauty consisted in tracing out the relations which the object possessing it might have to other objects; and that its actual beauty was in proportion to the number and clearness of the relations thus suggested and perceived. It is scarcely necessary, we presume, to expose by any arguments the manifest fallacy, or rather the palpable absurdity, of such a theory as this. In the first place, we conceive it to be obvious, that all objects whatever have an infinite, and consequently, an equal number of relations, and are equally likely to suggest them to those to whom they are presented;or at all events, it is certain, that ugly and disagreeable objects have just as many relations as those that are agreeable, and ought,

Another more plausible and ingenious theory was suggested by the Pere Buffier, and afterwards adopted and illustrated with great talent in the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. According to this doctrine, beauty consists, as Aristotle held virtue to do, in mediocrity, or conformity to that which is most usual. Thus a beautiful nose, to make use of Dr. Smith's very apt, though homely, illustration of this doctrine, is one that is neither very long nor very short-very straight nor very much bent-but of an ordinary form and proportion, compared with all the extremes. It is the form, in short, which nature seems to have aimed at in all cases, though she has more frequently deviated from it than hit it; but deviating from it in all directions, all her deviations come nearer to it than they ever do to each other. Thus the most beautiful in every species of creatures bears the greatest resemblance to the whole species, while monsters are so denominated because they bear the least; and thus the beautiful, though in one sense the rarest, as the exact medium is but seldom hit, is invariably the most common, because it is the central point from which all the deviations are the least remote. This view of the matter is adopted by Sir Joshua in its full extent, and is even carried so far by this great artist, that he does not scruple to conclude, "That if we were more used to deformity than beauty, deformity would then lose the idea that is now annexed to it, and take that of beauty;-just as we approve and admire fashions in dress, for no other reason than that we are used to them."

Now, not to dwell upon the very startling conclusion to which these principles must lead, viz. that things are beautiful in proportion as they are ordinary, and that it is merely their familiarity which constitutes their beauty, we would observe, in the first place, that the whole theory seems to have

been suggested by a consideration of animal forms, or perhaps of the human figure exclusively. In these forms, it is quite true that great and monstrous deviations from the usual proportions are extremely disagreeable. But this, we have no doubt, arises entirely from some idea of pain or disaster attached to their existence; or from their obvious unfitness for the functions they have to perform. In vegetable forms, accordingly, these irregularities excite no such disgust; it being, in fact, the great object of culture, in almost all the more beautiful kinds, to produce what may be called monstrosities. And, in mineral substances, where the idea of suffering is still more completely excluded, it is notorious that, so far from the more ordinary configurations being thought the most beautiful, this epithet is scarcely ever employed but to denote some rare and unusual combination of veins, colours, or dimensions. As to landscapes, again, and almost all the works of art, without exception, the theory is plainly altogether incapable of application. In what sense, for example, can it be said that the beauty of natural scenery consists in mediocrity; or that those landscapes are the most beautiful that are the most common? or what meaning can we attach to the proposition, that the most beautiful building, or picture, or poem, is that which bears the nearest resemblance to all the individuals of its class, and is, upon the whole, the most ordinary and common?

To a doctrine which is liable to these obvious and radical objections, it is not perhaps necessary to make any other; but we must remark farther, first, that it necessarily supposes that our sense of beauty is, in all cases, preceded by such a large comparison between various individuals of the same species, as may enable us to ascertain that average or mean form in which beauty is supposed to consist; and, consequently, that we could never discover any object to be beautiful antecedent to such a comparison; and, secondly, that, even if we were to allow that this theory afforded some explanation of the superior beauty of any one object, compared with others of the same class, it plainly furnishes no explanation whatever of the superior beauty of one class of objects compared with another. We may believe, if we please, that one peacock is handsomer than another, because it approaches more nearly to the average or mean form of peacocks in general; but this reason will avail us nothing whatever in explaining why any peacock is handsomer than any pelican or penguin. We may say, without manifest absurdity, that the most beautiful pig is that which has least of the extreme qualities that sometimes occur in the tribe; but it would be palpably absurd to give this reason, or any thing like it, for the superior beauty of the tribe of antelopes or spaniels.

The notion, in short, seems to have been hastily adopted by the ingenious persons who have maintained it, partly upon the narrow ground of the disgust produced by monsters in the animal creation, which has been already sufficiently explained-and partly in conse

quence of the fallacy which lurks in the vague
and general proposition of those things being
beautiful which are neither too big nor too lit-
tle, too massive nor too slender, &c.; from
which it was concluded, that beauty must con-
sist in mediocrity:-not considering that the
particle too merely denotes those degrees
which are exclusive of beauty, without in any
way fixing what those degrees are.
For the
plain meaning of these phrases is, that the re-
jected objects are too massive or too slender
to be beautiful; and, therefore, to say that an
object is beautiful which is neither too big nor
too little, &c. is really saying nothing more
than that beautiful objects are such as are not
in any degree ugly or disagreeable. The il-
lustration as to the effects of use or custom in
the article of dress is singularly inaccurate
and delusive; the fact being, that we never
admire the dress which we are most accus-
tomed to see which is that of the common
people-but the dress of the few who are dis-
tinguished by rank or opulence; and that we
require no more custom or habit to make us
admire this dress, whatever it may be, than is
necessary to associate it in our thoughts with
the wealth, and dignity, and graceful manners
of those who wear it.

We need say nothing in this place of the opinions expressed on the subject of beauty by Dr. Gerard, Dr. Blair, and a whole herd of rhetoricians; because none of them pretend to have any new or original notions with regard to it, and, in general, have been at no pains to reconcile or render consistent the various accounts of the matter, which they have contented themselves with assembling and laying before their readers all together, as affording among them the best explanation that could be offered of the question. Thus they do not scruple to say, that the sense of beauty is sometimes produced by the mere organic affection of the senses of sight or hearing; at other times, by a perception of a kind of regular variety; and in other instances by the association of interesting conceptions;-thus abandoning altogether any attempt to answer the radical question-how the feeling of beauty should be excited by such opposite causes--and confounding together, without any attempt at discrimination, those theories which imply the existence of a separate sense-or faculty, and those which resolve our sense of beauty into other more simple or familiar emotions.

Of late years, however, we have had three publications on the subject of a far higher character-we mean, Mr. Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste-Mr. Payne Knight's Analytical Inquiry into the same subjects-and Mr. Dugal Stewart's Dissertations on the Beautiful and on Taste, in his volume of Philosophical Essays. All these works possess an infinite deal of merit, and have among them disclosed almost all the truth that is to be known on the subject; though, as it seems to us, with some little admixture of error, from which it will not, however, be difficult to separate it.

Mr. Alison maintains, that all beauty, or at

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