fuch only of the leading points as fhew the confor mity of the fense of hearing, with all the other fenfes in the article of their pleasures.

THIS general agreement of the fenfes is yet more evident on minutely confidering thofe of tafte and smell. We metaphorically apply the idea of fweetness to fights and founds; but as the qualities of bodies by which they are fitted to excite either pleasure or pain in these senses, are not so obvious as they are in the others, we shall refer an explanation of their analogy, which is a very clofe one, to that part, wherein we come to confider the common efficient cause of beauty, as it regards all the fenfes. I do not think any thing better fitted to establish a clear and fettled idea of visual beauty, than this way of examining the fimilar pleasures of other fenfes; for one part is fometimes clear in one of the fenfes, that is more obfcure in another; and where there is a clear concurrence of all, we may with more certainty speak of any one of them. By this means, they bear witnefs to each other; nature is, as it were, fcrutinized; and we report nothing of her but what we receive from her own information.

SECT.

SECT. XXVII.

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED.

ON closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs, that we should compare it with the fublime; and in this comparison there appears a remarkable contraft. For fublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively fmall beauty fhould be fmooth and polished the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should fhun the right line, yet deviate from it infenfibly; the great in many cafes loves the right line; and when it deviates, it often makes a ftrong deviation beauty fhould not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty fhould be light and delicate; the great ought to be folid, and even maffive. They are indeed ideas of a very different nature, one being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and however they may vary afterwards from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal distinction between them, a diftinction never to be forgotten by any whofe business it is to affect the paffions. In the infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in the fame object. We must expect also to find combinations of the fame kind in the works of

art.

art. But when we confider the power of an ob ject upon our paffions, we must know that when any thing is intended to affect the mind by the force of fome predominant property, the affection produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other properties or qualities of the object be of the fame nature, and tending to the fame defign as the principal.

If black and white blend, foften, and unite,
A thoufand ways, are there no black and white?

If the qualities of the fublime and beautiful are fometimes found united, does this prove that they are the fame; does it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not oppofite and contradictory? Black and white may foften, may blend; but they are not therefore the fame. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colours, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, fo ftrong as when each ftands uniform and diftinguished.

THE END OF THE THIRD PART.

A PHILO.

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

OF THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART IV.

SECTION I.

OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND

WHE

BEAUTIFUL.

HEN I fay, I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of fublimity and beauty, I would not be understood to say, that I can come to the ultimate caufe. I do not pretend that I fhall ever be able to explain, why certain affections of the body produce fuch a diftinct emotion of mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected by the mind, or the mind by the body. A little thought will fhew this to be impoffible. But I conceive, if we can discover what affections of the mind produce certain emotions of the body;

and

1

and what diftinct feelings and qualities of body fhall produce certain determinate paffions in the mind, and no others, I fancy a great deal will be done; fomething not unufeful towards a diftinct knowledge of our paffions, fo far at leaft as we have them at prefent under our confideration. This is all, I believe, we can do. If we could-advance a ftep farther, difficulties would ftill remain, as we should be ftill equally distant from the first caufe. When Newton firft difcovered the property of attraction, and fettled its laws, he found it ferved very well to explain several of the most remarkable phænomena in nature; but yet with reference to the general fyftem of things, he could confider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to account for it by a fubtile elastic æther, this great man (if in so great a man it be not impious to discover any thing like a blemish) feemed to have quitted his ufual cautious manner of philofophifing; fince, perhaps, allowing all that has been advanced on this subject to be fufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties as it found us. That great chain of causes, which links one to another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled by any industry of ours. When we go but one step fenfible qualities of things,

beyond the immediate

we go out of our depth. All we do after is but a