(3.) The significant power of sounds, in consequence of conventional speech. In this way, they every moment present pictures to the imagination; and we apply to the description, as to the thing described, (with hardly any consciousness of speaking figuratively,) such words as lively, glowing, luminous, splendid, picturesque. Hence an obvious account (as will be afterwards stated more fully) of the application of the epithet beautiful to Poetry; and hence also (if the circumstances already suggested should not be thought sufficient for the purpose) an additional reason for its application to Music; the natural expression of which is so often united with the conventional expression of her sister art. These different circumstances, when combined with the general causes, which, in other instances, produce transitive uses of words, account, in my opinion, sufficiently for the exclusive restriction (among our different external senses) of the term beauty to the objects of Sight and of Hearing. To the foregoing considerations, however, I must not omit to add, as a cause conspiring very powerfully to the same end, the intimate association, which, in our apprehensions, is formed between the Eye and the Ear, as the great inlets of our acquired knowledge; as the only media by which different Minds can communicate together; and as the organs by which we receive from the material world the two classes of pleasures, which, while they surpass all the rest in variety and in duration,-are the most completely removed from the grossness of animal indulgence, and the most nearly allied to the enjoyments of the intellect. The unconsciousness we have, in both these senses, of any local impression on our bodily frame, may perhaps help to explain the peculiar facility with which their perceptions blend themselves with other pleasures of a rank still nobler and more refined. It is these two classes, accordingly, of organical pleasures, which fall exclusively under the cognizance of that power of intellectual Taste, which I propose afterwards to examine; and for the analysis of which, this disquisition, concerning some of the most important of its appropriate objects, seemed to me to form a necessary prepara tion. If the view of the subject now given be just, we are at once relieved from all the mystery into which philosophers have been insensibly led, in their theories of Beauty, by too servile an acquiescence in the exploded conclusions of the ancient schools concerning general ideas. Instead of searching for the common idea or essence which the word beauty denotes, when applied to colors, to forms, to sounds, to compositions in verse and prose, to mathematical theorems, and to moral qualities, our attention is directed to the natural history of the human mind, and to its natural progress in the employment of speech. The particular exemplifications which I have offered of my general principle, may probably be exceptionable in various instances; but I cannot help flattering myself with the belief, that the principle itself will bear examination.-Some objections to it, which I can easily anticipate, may perhaps be obviated in part by the following remarks. Although I have endeavoured to show that our first notions of Beauty are derived from colors, it neither follows, that, in those complex ideas of the Beautiful which we are afterwards led to form in the progress of our experience, this quality must necessarily enter as a component part; nor, where it does so enter, that its effects must necessarily predominate over that of all the others. On the contrary, it may be easily conceived, in what manner its effect comes to be gradually supplanted by those pleasures of a higher cast, with which it is combined; while, at the same time, we continue to apply to the joint result, the language which this now subordinate, and seemingly unessential ingredient, originally suggested. It is by a process somewhat similar, that the mental attractions of a beautiful woman supplant those of her person in the heart of her lover; and that, when the former have the good fortune to survive the latter, they appropriate to themselves, by an imperceptible metaphor, that language, which, in its literal sense, has ceased to have a meaning. In this case, a very pleasing arrangement of nature is exhibited; the qualities of Mind which insensibly stole, in the first instance, those flattering epithets which are descriptive of a fair exterior, now restoring their borrowed embellishments, and keeping alive, in the eye of conjugal affection, that Beauty which has long perished to every other. The progress just remarked, in the instance of colors, admits of an easy and complete illustration, in the gradual transference of the painter's admiration, (in proportion as his taste is exercised and improved,) from the merely organical charms of his art, to its sublimer beauties. It is not that he is less delighted with beautiful coloring than before; but because his Imagination can easily supply its absence, when excellencies of a superior order engage his attention.* It is for the same reason that a masterly sketch with chalk, or with a pencil, gives, to a practised eye, a pleasure to which nothing could be added by the hand of a common artist; and that the relics of ancient statuary, which are beheld with comparative indifference by the vulgar of all countries, are surveyed by men of cultivated taste with still greater rapture, than the forms which live on the glowing canvas of the painter. Hence too it happens, that, in the progress of Taste, the word beautiful comes to be more peculiarly appropriated (at least by critics and philosophers) to Beauty in its most complicated and impressive form. In this sense we plainly understand it, when we speak of analysing beauty. To Color, and to the other simple elements which enter into its composition, although we may still, with the most unexceptionable propriety, apply this epithet, we more commonly (as far as I am able to judge) apply the epithet pleasing, or some equivalent expression. I shall only remark farther, on this head, that, in the imitative arts, the most beautiful colors, when they are out of place, or when they do not harmonize with each other, produce an effect which is peculiarly offensive; and that in articles of dress or of furniture, a passion for gaudy decoration is justly regarded as the symptom of a taste for the Beautiful, which is destined never to pass the first stage of infancy. * See Note (X.) CHAPTER SEVENTH. CONTINUATION OF THE SUBJECT.-OBJECTIONS TO A THEORY OF BEAUTY PROPOSED BY FATHER BUFFIER AND SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. BEFORE I Conclude these disquisitions concerning the influence of Association on our ideas of the Beautiful, I think it proper to take some notice of a theory upon the subject, adopted by two very eminent men, Father Buffier and Sir Joshua Reynolds, according to which we are taught, that "the effect of Beauty depends on Habit alone; the most customary form in each species of things being invariably the most beautiful." "A beautiful nose," for example, (to borrow Mr. Smith's short, but masterly illustration of Buffier's principle,) "is one that is neither very long nor very short; neither very straight nor very crooked; but a sort of middle among all these extremes, and less different from any one of them, than all of them are from one another. It is the form which nature seems to have aimed at in them all; which, however, she deviates from in a great variety of ways, and very rarely hits exactly, but to which all these deviations still bear a very strong resemblance.- -In each species of creatures, what is most beautiful bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the greater part of the individuals with which it is classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly deformed, are always most singular and odd, and have the least resemblance to the generality of that species to which they belong. And thus, the beauty of each species, though, in one sense, the rarest of all things, because few individuals hit the middle form exactly, yet in another, is the most common, because all the deviations from it resemble it more than they resemble one another."* The same opinion has been since stated, in much * Theory of Moral Sentiments. stronger and more explicit terms, by a still higher authority than Buffier,-Sir Joshua Reynolds. 66 Every species," he observes, "of the animal as well as the vegetable creation, may be said to have a fixed or determinate form, towards which Nature is continually inclining, like various lines terminating in the centre; and, as these lines all cross the centre, though only one passes through any other point, so it will be found, that perfect beauty is oftener produced by nature than deformity: I do not mean than deformity in general, but than any one kind of deformity. To instance, in a particular part of a feature, the line that forms the ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is straight. This, then, is the central form, which is oftener found than either concave, convex, or any other irregular form that shall be proposed. As we are then more accustomed to beauty than to deformity, we may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and admire it, as we approve and admire customs and fashions of dress for no other reason than that we are used to them; so that, though habit and custom cannot be said to be the cause of beauty, it is certainly the cause of our liking it: And I have no doubt, but that, if we were more used to deformity than beauty, deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take that of beauty; as if the whole world should agree, that yes and no should change their meaning; yes would then deny, and no affirm."* As this theory has plainly taken its rise from a misconception of the manner in which the principle of Association operates, the objections to it which I have to offer, form a natural sequel to the discussions contained in the preceding chapter. -- Among these objections, what strikes myself with the greatest force, is, that, granting the theory to be just, so far as it goes, it does not at all touch the main difficulty it professes to resolve. Admitting it to be a fact, (as I very readily do, in the sense in which the proposition is explained by Reynolds,) "That in each spe * Idler, No. 82. See also Reynolds's Works by Malone, 2d Edit. p. 237. |