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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.

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ingenious author that these qualities of un'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 percep We do not pretend to know what the tion of beauty, where the notion of design or schoolmen taught upon this subject during the utility is not at all suggested. He was condark ages; but the discussion does not seem strained, therefore, either to abandon this view to have been resumed for long after the re- of the nature of beauty altogether, or to imavival of letters. The followers of Leibnitz gine a new sense or faculty, whose only funcwere pleased to maintain that beauty con- tion it should be to receive delight from the sisted in perfection; but what constituted combinations of uniformity and variety, withperfection (in this respect) they did not at-out any consideration of their being significant tempt to define. M. Crouzas wrote a long of things agreeable to our other faculties; and essay, to show that beauty depended on these this being accomplished by the mere force five elements, variety, unity, regularity, order, of the definition, there was no room for farther and proportion; and the Pere André, a still dispute or difficulty in the matter. 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.

Some of Hucheson's followers, such as Gerard 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 Among ourselves, we are not aware of any from its most familiar properties. Uniformity considerable publication on the subject till or simplicity, they observed, renders our conthe appearance of Lord Shaftesbury's Charac- ception of objects easy, and saves the mind teristics; in which a sort of rapturous Platonic from all fatigue and distraction in the condoctrine is delivered as to the existence of a sideration of them; whilst variety, if circumprimitive and Supreme Good and Beauty, and scribed and limited by an ultimate uniformity, of a certain internal sense, by which both gives it a pleasing exercise and excitement, beauty and moral merit are distinguished. and keeps its energies in a state of pleasurAddison published several ingenious papers able activity. Now, this appears to us to be in The Spectator, on the pleasures of the mere trifling. The varied and lively emotions imagination, and was the first, we believe, which we receive from the perception of who referred them to the specific sources of beauty, obviously have no sort of resemblance beauty, sublimity, and novelty. He did not to the pleasure of moderate intellectual exerenter much, however, into the metaphysical tion: nor can any thing be conceived more discussion of the nature of beauty itself; and utterly dissimilar than the gratification we 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 Inquiry of Dr. Hucheson, first published, we believe, in 1735.

an easy problem in arithmetic or geometry. If a triangle is more beautiful than a regular In this work, the notion of a peculiar in- polygon, as those authors maintain, merely beternal sense, by which we are made sensible cause its figure is more easily comprehended, of the existence of beauty, is very boldly pro- the number four should be more beautiful mulgated, and maintained by many ingenious than the number 327, and the form of a gibbet arguments: Yet nothing, we conceive, can be far more agreeable than that of a branching more extravagant than such a proposition; oak. The radical error, in short, consists in and nothing but the radical faults of the other 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 it is an absurdity that must infallibly lead to he should explain what were the qualities by others-whether these take the shape of a which it was gratified; and these, he was violent attempt to disguise the truly different pleased to allege, were nothing but the com- nature of the properties so selected, or of the binations of variety with uniformity; all ob- bolder expedient of creating a peculiar faculty, jects, as he has himself expressed it, which, whose office it is to find them interesting. 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

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 rela objects appear beautiful, which have the tions. In the next place, it seems to be suffipower 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 Père 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-1

quence of the fallacy which lurks ii. the vague and general proposition of those things being beautiful which are neither too big nor too little, too massive nor too slender, &c.; from which it was concluded, that beauty must consist 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 rejected 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 illustration 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 accustomed to see —which is that of the common people-but the dress of the few who are distinguished 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 thetoricians; 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 ac counts 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

least that all the beauty of material objects, the beauty of the object which first saggest depends on the associations that may have ed them depended on its having produced a connected them with the ordinary affections series of ideas of emotion, or even of agreea or emotions of our nature; and in this, which ble emotions, there seems to be no good reais the fundamental point of his theory, we son for doubting, that ugly objects may thus conceive him to be no less clearly right, than be as beautiful as any other, and that beauty he is convincing and judicious in the copious and ugliness may be one and the same thing. and beautiful illustrations by which he has Such is the danger, as it appears to us, of desought to establish its truth. When he pro-serting the object itself, or going beyond its ceeds, however, to assert, that our sense of immediate effect and impression, in order to beauty consists not merely in the suggestion discover the sources of its beauty. Our view of ideas of emotion, but in the contemplation of the matter is safer, we think, and far more of a connected series or train of such ideas, and simple. We conceive the object to be assoindicates a state of mind in which the facul- ciated either in our past experience, or by ties, half active and half passive, are given up some universal analogy, with pleasures, or to a sort of reverie or musing, in which they emotions that upon the whole are pleasant; may wander, though among kindred impres- and that these associated pleasures are instansions, far enough from the immediate object taneously suggested, as soon as the object is of perception, we will confess that he not only presented, and by the first glimpse of its physeems to us to advance a very questionable sical properties, with which, indeed, they are proposition, but very essentially to endanger consubstantiated and confounded in our senthe evidence, as well as the consistency, of sations. his general doctrine. We are far from deny- The work of Mr. Knight is more lively, vaing, that, in minds of sensibility and of reflect- rious, and discursive, than Mr. Alison's-but ing habits, the contemplation of beautiful ob- not so systematic or conclusive. It is the jects will be apt, especially in moments of cleverer book of the two-but not the most leisure, and when the mind is vacant, to give philosophical discussion of the subject. He rise to such trains of thought, and to such pro- agrees with Mr. Alison in holding the most tracted meditations; but we cannot possibly important, and, indeed, the only considerable admit that their existence is necessary to the part of beauty, to depend upon association; perception of beauty, or that it is in this state and has illustrated this opinion with a great of mind exclusively that the sense of beauty variety of just and original observations. But exists. The perception of beauty, on the con- he maintains, and maintains stoutly, that there trary, we hold to be, in most cases, quite in- is a beauty independent of association-prior stantaneous, and altogether as immediate as to it, and more original and fundamental-the the perception of the external qualities of the primitive and natural beauty of colours and object to which it is ascribed. Indeed, it seems sounds. Now, this we look upon to be a only necessary to recollect, that it is to a pre- heresy; and a heresy inconsistent with the sent material object that we actually ascribe very first principles of Catholic philosophy. and refer this beauty, and that the only thing We shall not stop at present to give our rea to be explained is, how this object comes to sons for this opinion, which we shall illustrate appear beautiful. In the long train of inter- at large before we bring this article to a close; esting meditations, however, to which Mr.-but we beg leave merely to suggest at preAlison refers-in the delightful reveries in which he would make the sense of beauty consist-it is obvious that we must soon lose sight of the external object which gave the first impulse to our thoughts; and though we may afterwards reflect upon it, with increased interest and gratitude, as the parent of so many charming images, it is impossible, we conceive, that the perception of its beauty can ever depend upon a long series of various and shifting emotions.

sent, that if our sense of beauty be confessedly, in most cases, the mere image or reflection of pleasures or emotions that have been associated with objects in themselves indifferent, it cannot fail to appear strange that it should also on some few occasions be a mere organic or sensual gratification of these particular organs. Language, it is believed, affords no other example of so whimsical a combination of different objects under one appellation; or of the confounding of a direct It likewise occurs to us to observe, that if physical sensation with the suggestion of a every thing was beautiful, which was the oc- social or sympathetic moral feeling. We casion of a train of ideas of emotion, it is not would observe also, that while Mr. Knight easy to see why objects that are called ugly stickles so violently for this alloy of the senses should not be entitled to that appellation. If in the constitution of beauty, he admits, unthey are sufficiently ugly not to be viewed equivocally, that sublimity is, in every inwith indifference, they too will give rise to stance, and in all cases, the effect of associa ideas of emotion, and those ideas are just as tion alone. Yet sublimity and beauty, in any likely to run into trains and series, as those of just or large sense, and with a view to the a more agreeable description. Nay, as con- philosophy of either, are manifestly one and trast itself is one of the principles of associa- the same; nor is it conceivable to us, that, if tion, it is not at all unlikely, that, in the train sublimity be always the result of an associaof impressive ideas which the sight of ugly tion with ideas of power or danger, beauty objects may excite, a transition may be ulti-can possibly be, in any case, the result of a mately made to such as are connected with mere pleasurable impulse on the nerves of the pleasure; and, therefore, if the perception of eye or the ear. We shall return, however, to

this discussion hereafter. Of Mr. Knight we have only further to observe, that we think he is not less heretical in maintaining, that we have no pleasure in sympathising with distress or suffering, but only with mental energy; and that, in contemplating the sublime, we are moved only with a sense of power and grandeur, and never with any feeling of terror or awe.-These errors, however, are less intimately connected with the subject of our present discussion.

With Mr. Stewart we have less occasion for quarrel: chiefly, perhaps, because he has made fewer positive assertions, and entered less into the matter of controversy. His Essay on the Beautiful is rather philological than metaphysical. The object of it is to show by what gradual and successive extensions of meaning the word, though at first appropriated to denote the pleasing effect of colours alone, might naturally come to signify all the other pleasing things to which it is now applied. In this investigation he makes many admirable remarks, and touches, with the hand of a master, upon many of the disputable parts of the question; but he evades the particular point at issue between us and Mr. Knight, by stating, that it is quite immaterial to his purpose, whether the beauty of colours be supposed to depend on their organic effect on the eye, or on some association between them and other agreeable emotions-it being enough for his purpose that this was probably the first sort of beauty that was observed, and that to which the name was at first exclusively applied. It is evident to us, however, that he leans to the opinion of Mr. Knight, as to this beauty being truly sensual or organic. In observing, too, that beauty is not now the name of any one thing or quality, but of very many different qualities and that it is applied to them all, merely because they are often united in the same objects, or perceived at the same time and by the same organs-it appears to us that he carries his philology a little too far, and disregards other principles of reasoning of far higher authority. To give the name of beauty, for example, to every thing that interests or pleases us through the channel of sight, including in this category the mere impulse of light that is pleasant to the organ, and the presentment of objects whose whole charm consists in awakening the memory of social emotions, seems to us to be confounding things together that must always be separate in our feelings, and giving a far greater importance to the mere identity of the organ by which they are perceived, than is warranted either by the ordinary language or ordinary experience of men. Upon the same principle we should give this name of beautiful, and no other, to all acts of kindness or magnanimity, and, indeed, to every interesting occurrence which took place in our sight, or came to our knowledge by means of the eye:-nay, as the ear is also allowed to be a channel for impressions of beauty, the same name should be given to any interesting or pleasant thing that we hear-and good news read to us from the gazette should be denominated beautiful,

just as much as a fine composition of music. These things, however, are never called beautiful, and are felt, indeed, to afford a gratification of quite a different nature. It is no doubt true, as Mr. Stewart has observed, that beauty is not one thing, but many-and does not produce one uniform emotion, but an infinite variety of emotions. But this, we conceive, is not merely because many pleasant things may be intimated to us by the same sense, but because the things that are called beautiful may be associated with an infinite variety of agreeable emotions of the specific character of which their beauty will consequently partake. Nor does it follow, from the fact of this great variety, that there can be no other principle of union among these agreeable emotions, but that of a name, extended to them all upon the very slight ground of their coming through the same organ; since, upon our theory, and indeed upon Mr. Stewart's, in a vast majority of instances, there is the remarkable circumstance of their being all suggested by association with some present sensation, and all modified and confounded, to our feelings, by an actual and direct perception.

It is unnecessary, however, to pursue these criticisms, or, indeed, this hasty review of the speculation of other writers, any farther. The few observations we have already made, will enable the intelligent reader, both to understand in a general way what has been already done on the subject, and in some degree prepare him to appreciate the merits of that theory, substantially the same with Mr. Alison's, which we shall now proceed to illustrate somewhat more in detail.

The basis of it is, that the beauty which we impute to outward objects, is nothing more than the reflection of our own inward emotions, and is made up entirely of certain little portions of love, pity, or other affections, which have been connected with these objects, and still adhere as it were to them, and move us anew whenever they are presented to our observation. Before proceeding to bring any proof of the truth of this proposition, there are two things that it may be proper to explain a little more distinctly. First, What are the primary affections, by the suggestion of which we think the sense of beauty is produced? And, secondly, What is the nature of the connection by which we suppose that the objects we call beautiful are enabled to suggest these affections?

With regard to the first of these points, it fortunately is not necessary either to enter into any tedious details, or to have recourse to any nice distinctions. All sensations that are not absolutely indifferent, and are, at the same time, either agreeable, when experienced by ourselves, or attractive when contemplated in others, may form the foundation of the emotions of sublimity or beauty. The love of sensation seems to be the ruling appetite of human nature; and many sensations, in which the painful may be thought to predominate, are consequently sought for with avidity, and recollected with interest, even in our own persons. In the persons of others emotions

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