MR. ALISON'S THEORY.

25

the same subjects-and Mr. Dugald's 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, depends on the associations that may have connected them with the ordinary affections or emotions of our nature; and in this, which is the fundamental point of his theory, we conceive him to be no less clearly right, than he is convincing and judicious in the copious and beautiful illustrations by which he has sought to establish its truth. When he proceeds, however, to assert, that our sense of beauty consists not merely in the suggestion of ideas of emotion, but in the contemplation of a connected series or train of such ideas, and indicates a state of mind in which the faculties, half active and half passive, are given up to a sort of reverie or musing, in which they may wander, though among kindred impressions, far enough from the immediate object of perception, we will confess that he not only seems to us to advance a very questionable proposition, but very essentially to endanger the evidence, as well as the consistency, of his general doctrine. We are far from denying, that, in minds of sensibility and of reflecting habits, the contemplation of beautiful objects will be apt, especially in moments of leisure, and when the mind is vacant, to give rise to such trains of thought, and to such protracted meditations; but we cannot possibly admit that their existence is necessary to the perception of beauty, or that it is in this state of mind exclusively that the sense of beauty exists. The perception of beauty, on the contrary, we hold to be, in most cases, quite instantaneous, and altogether as immediate as the perception of the external qualities of the object to which it is ascribed. Indeed, it seems only necessary to recollect,

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MR. ALISON'S THEORY.

that it is to a present material object that we actually ascribe and refer this beauty, and that the only thing to be explained is, how this object comes to appear beautiful. In the long train of interesting meditations, however, to which Mr. Alison 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.

It likewise occurs to us to observe, that if every thing was beautiful, which was the occasion of a train of ideas of emotion, it is not easy to see why objects that are called ugly should not be entitled to that appellation. If they are sufficiently ugly not to be viewed with indifference, they too will give rise to ideas of emotion, and those ideas are just as likely to run into trains and series, as those of a more agreeable description. Nay, as contrast itself is one of the principles of association, it is not at all unlikely, that, in the train of impressive ideas which the sight of ugly objects may excite, a transition may be ultimately made to such as are connected with pleasure; and, therefore, if the perception of the beauty of the object which first suggested them depended on its having produced a series of ideas of emotion, or even of agreeable emotions, there seems to be no good reason for doubting, that ugly objects may thus be as beautiful as any other, and that beauty and ugliness may be one and the same thing. Such is the danger, as it appears to us, of deserting the object itself, or going beyond its immediate effect and impression, in order to discover the sources of its beauty. Our view of the matter is safer, we think, and far more simple. We conceive the object to be associated either in our past experience, or by some universal analogy, with pleasures, or emotions that upon the whole are pleasant; and that these associated pleasures are instantaneously

MR. PAYNE KNIGHT'S THEORY.

27

suggested, as soon as the object is presented, and by the first glimpse of its physical properties, with which, indeed, they are consubstantiated and confounded in our

sensations.

The work of Mr. Knight is more lively, various, and discursive, than Mr. Alison's-but not so systematic or conclusive. It is the cleverer book of the two,-but not the most philosophical discussion of the subject. He agrees with Mr Alison in holding the most important, and, indeed, the only considerable part of beauty, to depend upon association; and has illustrated this opinion with a great variety of just and original observations. But he maintains, and maintains stoutly, that there is a beauty independent of association-prior to it, and more original and fundamental-the primitive and natural beauty of colours and sounds. Now, this we look upon to be a heresy; and a heresy inconsistent with the very first principles of Catholic philosophy. We shall not stop at present to give our reasons for this opinion, which we shall illustrate at large before we bring this article to a close ;-but we beg leave merely to suggest at present, 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 physical sensation with the suggestion of a social or sympathetic moral feeling. We would observe also, that while Mr. Knight stickles so violently for this alloy of the senses in the constitution of beauty, he admits, unequivocally, that sublimity is, in every instance, and in all cases, the effect of association alone. Yet sublimity and beauty, in any just or large sense, and with a view to the philosophy of either, are manifestly one and the same; nor is it conceivable to us, that, if sublimity be always the result of an association with ideas of power or danger, beauty can pos

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MR. DUGALD STEWART'S THEORY.

sibly be, in any case, the result of a mere pleasurable impulse on the nerves of the 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 object, 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 rea

MR. DUGALD STEWART'S THEORY.

29

soning of far higher authority. To give the name of beauty, for example, to everything 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. 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 mo

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