together; and I may truly fay, that fo far from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a fort of wearinefs and difguft; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any means I paffed by the ufual time of my going thither, I was remarkably uneafy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use fnuff, take it almost without being fenfible that they take it, and the acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly any thing from fo fharp a ftimulus; yet deprive the fnuff-taker of his box, and he is the moft uneafy mortal in the world. Indeed fo far are use and habit from being caufes of pleafure, merely as fuch, that the effect of conftant use is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting. For as use at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the pleasurable effect in others in the fame manner, and brings both to a fort of mediocrity and indifference. Very juftly is ufe called a fecond nature; and our natural and common state is one of abfolute indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure. But when we are thrown out of this ftate, or deprived of any thing requifite to maintain us in it; when this chance does not hap pen by pleasure from fome mechanical caufe, we are always hurt. It is fo with the fecond nature, custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of the usual proportions in men and other animals is fure to difguft, though their prefence is

by

by no means any caufe of real pleasure. It is true, that the proportions laid down as caufes of beauty in the human body, are frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in all mankind; but if it can be fhewn too, that they are found without beauty, and that beauty, frequently exifts without them, and that this beauty, where it exifts, always can be affigned to other lefs equivocal caufes, it will naturally lead us to conclude, that proportion and beauty are not ideas of the fame nature. The true oppofite to beauty is not difproportion or deformity, but ugliness; and as it proceeds from caufes oppofite to thofe of po fitive beauty, we cannot confider it until we come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a fort of mediocrity, in which the affigned proportions are moft commonly found; but this has no effect upon the paffions.

SECT. VI.

FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.

IT is faid that the idea of utility, or of a part being well adapted to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself. If it were not for this opinion, it had been impoffible for the doctrine of proportion to have held its ground very long; the world would be foon weary of hearing of measures which related to nothing,

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either of a natural principle, or of a fitnefs to an fwer fome end; the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the fuitable nefs of means to certain ends, and, where this is not the queftion, very feldom trouble themfelves about the effect of different meafures of things. Therefore it was neceffary for this theory to infift that not only artificial, but natural objects took their beauty from the fitnefs of the parts for their feveral purposes. But in framing this theory, I am apprehensive that experience was not fufficiently confulted. For, on that principle, the wedge-like fnout of a fwine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little funk eyes, and the whole make of the head, fo well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful. The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would be like wife as beautiful in our eyes. The hedgehog, fo well fecured against all affaults by his prickly hide, and the porcupine with his miffile quills, would be then confidered as creatures of no fmall elegance. There are few animals whose parts are better cóntrived than those of a monkey; he has the hands of a man, joined to the fpringy limbs of a beast; he is admirably calculated for running, leaping,

"

grappling, and climbing; and yet there are few animals which feem to have lefs beauty in the eyes of all mankind. Lneed fay little to the trunk of

the

the elephant, of fuch various usefulness, and which is fo far from contributing to his beauty. How well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping! how admirably is the lion armed for battle! but will any one therefore call the elephant, the wolf, and the lion, beautiful animals? I believe nobody will think the form of a man's leg fo well adapted to running, as those of an horfe, a dog, a deer, and several other creatures; at least they have not that appearance: yet, I believe, a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed far to exceed all these in beauty. If the fitness of parts was what conftituted the lovelinefs of their form, the actual employment of them would undoubtedly much augment it; but this, though it is fometimes fo upon another principle, is far from being always the cafe. A bird on the wing is not fo beautiful as when it is perched; nay, there are feveral of the domestick fowls which are seldom feen to fly, and which are nothing the lefs beautiful on that account; yet birds are fo extremely different in their form from the beast and human kinds, that you cannot, on the principle of fitness, allow them any thing agreeable, but in confideration of their parts being defigned for quite other purposes. I never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly; and yet before, very long before I confidered any aptitude in his form for the aerial life, I was ftruck with the extreme beauty which raises that bird VOL. I..

above

above many of the best flying fowls in the world; though, for any thing I faw, his way of living was much like that of the fwine, which fed in the farm-yard along with him. The fame may be faid of cocks, hens, and the like; they are of the fly. ing kind in figure; in their manner of moving not very different from men and beafts. To leave thefe foreign examples; if beauty in our own species was annexed to use, men would be much more lovely than women; and ftrength and agility would be considered as the only beauties. But to call ftrength by the name of beauty, to have but one denomination for the qualities of a Venus and Hercules, fo totally different in almost all respects, is furely a ftrange confufion of ideas, or abufe of words. The cause of this confufion, I imagine, proceeds from our frequently perceiving the parts of the human and other animal bodies to be at once very beautiful, and very well adapted to their purposes; and we are deceived by a fophifm, which makes us take that for a caufe which is only a concomitant this is the fophifm of the fly; who imagined he raised a great duft, because he stood upon the chariot that really raifed it. The ftomach, the lungs, the liver, as well as other parts, are incomparably well adapted to their purposes; yet they are far from having any beauty. Again, many things are very beautiful, in which it is impoffible to difcern any idea of ufe. And I appeal to the