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NATURE OF BEAUTY.

think of the beauty of poems or theorems, and endeavour to imagine what qualities they can possess in common with the agreeable modifications of light or of sound.

It is in these considerations undoubtedly that the difficulty of the subject consists. The faculty of taste, plainly, is not a faculty like any of the external senses, the range of whose objects is limited and precise, as well as the qualities by which they are gratified or offended; and beauty, accordingly, is discovered in an infinite variety of objects, among which it seems, at first sight, impossible to discover any other bond of connection. Yet boundless as their diversity may appear, it is plain that they must resemble each other in something, and in something more definite and definable than merely in being agreeable; since they are all classed together, in every tongue and nation, under the common appellation of beautiful, and are felt indeed to produce emotions in the mind that have some sort of kindred or affinity. The words beauty and beautiful, in short, do and must mean something; and are universally felt to mean something much more definite than agreeableness or gratification in general: and while it is confessedly by no means easy to describe or define what that something is, the force and clearness of our perception of it is demonstrated by the readiness with which we determine, in any particular instance, whether the object of a given pleasurable emotion is or is not properly described as beauty.

What we have already said, we confess, appears to us conclusive against the idea of this beauty being any fixed or inherent property of the objects to which it is ascribed, or itself the object of any separate and independent faculty; and we will no longer conceal from the reader what we take to be the true solution of the difficulty. In our opinion, then, our sense of beauty depends entirely on our previous experience of simpler pleasures or emotions, and consists in the suggestion of agreeable or interesting sensations with which we had formerly been made familiar by the direct and intelligible agency of our common sensibilities; and that vast

MAY CONSIST IN ASSOCIATION.

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variety of objects, 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 bond of connection. According to this view of the matter, therefore, beauty is not an inherent property or quality of objects at all, but the result of the accidental relations in which they may stand to our experience of pleasures or emotions; and does not depend upon any particular configuration of parts, proportions, or colours, in external things, nor upon the unity, coherence, or simplicity of intellectual creations, but merely upon the associations which, in the case of every individual, may enable these inherent, and otherwise indifferent qualities, to suggest or recall to the mind emotions of a pleasurable or interesting 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,

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NATURE OF BEAUTY.

- 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 to imagine, that recollections thus strikingly suggested by some real and present existence, should present themselves under a different aspect, and move the mind somewhat differently from those which arise spontaneously in the ordinary course of our reflections, and do not thus grow out of a direct, present, and peculiar impression.

The whole of this doctrine, however, we shall endeavour by and by to establish upon more direct evidence. But having now explained, in a general way, both the difficulties of the subject, and our suggestion as to their true solution, it is proper that we should take a short review of the more considerable theories that have been proposed for the elucidation of this curious question; which is one of the most delicate as well as the most popular in the science of metaphysics, was one of the earliest which exercised the speculative ingenuity of philosophers, and has at last, we think, been more successfully treated than any other of a similar description.

In most of these speculations we shall find rather imperfect truth than fundamental error; or, at all events, such errors only as arise naturally from that peculiar difficulty which we have already endeavoured to explain, as consisting in the prodigious multitude and diversity

THEORIES ON THE SUBJECT.

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of the objects in which the common quality of beauty was to be accounted for. Those who have not been sufficiently aware of the difficulty, have generally dogmatised from a small number of instances, and have rather given examples of the occurrence of beauty in some few classes of objects, than afforded any light as to that upon which it essentially depended in all; while those who felt its full force have very often found no other resource, than to represent beauty as consisting in properties so extremely vague and general, (such, for example, as the power of exciting ideas of relation,) as almost to elude our comprehension, and, at the same time, of so abstract and metaphysical a description, as not to be very intelligibly stated, as the elements of a strong, familiar, and pleasurable emotion.

This last observation leads us to make one other remark upon the general character of these theories; and this is, that some of them, though not openly professing that doctrine, seem necessarily to imply the existence of a peculiar sense or faculty for the perception of beauty; as they resolve it into properties that are not in any way interesting or agreeable to any of our known faculties. Such are all those which make it consist in proportion, or in variety, combined with regularity, or in waving lines, or in unity, - -or in the perception of relations, without explaining, or attempting to explain, how any of these things should, in any circumstances, affect us with delight or emotion. Others, again, do not require the supposition of any such separate faculty; because in them the sense of beauty is considered as arising from other more simple and familiar emotions, which are in themselves and beyond all dispute agreeable. Such are those which teach that beauty depends on the perception of utility, or of design, or fitness, or in tracing associations between its objects and the common joys or emotions of our nature. Which of

these two classes of speculation, to one or other of which, we believe, all theories of beauty may be reduced, is the most philosophical in itself, we imagine can admit of no question; and we hope in the sequel to leave it as little

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ANCIENT THEORIES.

doubtful, which is to be considered as most consistent with the fact. In the mean time, we must give a short account of some of the theories themselves.

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 germ of all the truth that has since been revealed on the subject. By far the largest dissertation, however, that this great philosopher has left upon the nature of beauty, is to be found in the dialogue entitled The Greater Hippias, which is entirely devoted to that inquiry. We do not learn a great deal of the author's own opinion, indeed, from this performance; for it is one of the dialogues which have been termed Anatreptic, or confuting, -in which nothing is concluded in the affirmative, but a series of sophistical suggestions or hypotheses are successively 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,