A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

OF THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART III.

SECTION I.

OF BEAUTY.

T is my defign to confider beauty as diftin

I

guished from the fublime; and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is confiftent with it. But previous to this, we muft take a fhort review of the opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are ufed to talk of beauty in a figurative manner, that is to fay, in a manner extremely uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty I mean that quality, or thofe qualities in bodies, by which they cause

love, or fome paffion fimilar to it. I confine this definition to the merely fenfible qualities of things, for the fake of preferving the utmost fimplicity in a fubject which muft always diftract us, whenever we take in those various caufes of fympathy which attach us to any perfons or things from fecondary confiderations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on being viewed. I likewife diftinguish love, by which I mean that fatisfaction which arifes to the mind upon contemplating any thing beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be, from defire or luft; which is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the poffeffion of certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means altogether different. We fhall have a ftrong defire for a woman of no remarkable beauty; whilft the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals, though it caufes love, yet excites nothing at all of defire. Which fhews that beauty, and the paflion caufed by beauty, which I call love, is different from defire, though defire may fome times opérate along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute thofe violent and tempeftuous paffions, and the confequent emotions of the body which attend what is called love in fome of its ordinary acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is fuch.

SECT.

SECT. II.

PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN

VEGETABLES.

BEAUTY hath ufually been faid to confift in certain proportions of parts. On confidering the matter, I have great reafon to doubt, whether beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates almoft wholly to convenience, as every idea of order feems to do; and it must therefore be confidered as a creature of the understanding, rather than a primary cause acting on the senses and imagination. It is not by the force of long attention and inquiry that we find any object to be beautiful; beauty demands no affiftance from our reasoning; even the will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually caufes fome degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the ideas of heat or cold. To gain fomething like a fatisfactory conclufion in this point, it were well to examine, what proportion is; fince feveral who make ufe of that word, do not always feem to understand very clearly the force of the term, nor to have very dif tinct ideas concerning the thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all quantity is divifible, it is evident that every dif tinct part into which any quantity is divided, must

bear

bear fome relation to the other parts, or to the whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion. They are discovered by menfuration, and they are the objects of mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity be a fourth, or a fifth, or a fixth, or a moiety of the whole; or whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length, or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it ftands neuter in the question: and it is from this abfolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive fome of their most confiderable advantages; because there is nothing to intereft the imagination; because the judgment fits free and unbiaffed to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity is alike to the understanding, because the fame truths refult to it from all ; from greater, from leffer, from equality and inequality. But furely beauty is no idea belonging to menfuration; nor has it any thing to do with calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out fome certain measures which we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as fimply confidered, or as related to others; and we could call in those natural objects, for whofe beauty we have no voucher but the fenfe, to this happy ftandard, and confirm the voice of our paffions by the determination of our reafon. But fince we have

not