LECTURE LV. I. IMMEDIATE EMOTIONS, NOT INVOLVING NECESSARILY ANY MORAL FEELING.-III. BEAUTY AND ITS REVERSE CONTINUED.-DIFFERENT SORTS OF BEAUTY. GENTLEMEN, my last Lecture was employed in considering and illustrating, by various analogous phenomena of the mind, the process by which I conceive our feeling of delight, that arises from the object which we term beautiful, to be reflected, as it were, from our mind to the objects which excite it,—very much in the same way as we spread over external things, in the common phenomena of vision, the colour, which is a feeling or state, not of matter, but of mind. A beautiful object, when considered by us philosophically, like the unknown causes of our sensations of colour in bodies, considered separately from our visual sensations, is merely the cause of a certain delightful emotion which we feel; a beautiful object, as felt by us, when we do not attempt to make any philosophic distinction, is, like those coloured objects which we see around us, an object in which we have diffused the delightful feeling of our own mind. Though no eye were to behold what is beautiful, we cannot but imagine that a certain delight would for ever be flowing around it, as we cannot but imagine, in like manner, that the loveliest flower of the wilderness, which buds and withers unmarked, is blooming with the same delightful hues, which our vision would give to it, and surrounded with that sweetness of fragrance, which, in itself, is but a number of exhaled particles, that are sweetness only in the sentient mind. An object, then, as felt by us to be beautiful, seems to contain, in its own nature, the very delight which it occasions. But a certain delight must in this case be excited, before it can be diffused by reflection on that object 'which is its cause; and it is only by certain objects that the delightful emotion is excited. Why, then, it will be said, is the effect so limited? and what circumstances distinguish the objects that produce the emotion, from those which produce no emotion whatever, or, perhaps, even an emotion that may be said to be absolutely opposite ? If the same effect were uniformly produced by the same objects, it might seem as absurd to inquire, how certain objects are beautiful and others not so, as to inquire, how it happens that sugar is not bitter, nor wormwood sweet, -the blossom of the rose not green, nor the common herbage of our meadows red. The question, however, assumes a very different appearance, when we consider the diversity of the emotions excited by the same object, and when we consider the very powerful influence of accidental association on our emotions of this kind. In such circumstances we may be fairly allowed to doubt at least, whether objects, primarily and absolutely, have a power of producing this emotion, or whether it may not wholly depend on those contingent circumstances, which we find, and must allow, to be capable of modifying it to so very great an extent. That certain circumstances do truly modify our emotions of beauty, there can be no doubt;-and even that they produce the feeling, when there is every reason to believe, that but for such circumstances, no emotion of the kind would have been excited. The influence of what is called fashion, in giving a temporary beauty to various forms, is a most striking proof of this flexibility of our emotion; and it is a fact too obvious to require illustration by example. "If an European," says Sir J. Reynolds, in one of his discourses delivered at the Royal Academy, "if an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and after having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity,-if, when thus attired, he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and red ochre, on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his country, which ever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.”* It is not necessary, however, to have recourse to savage life, to feel how completely the ornamental and the ridiculous in all the adventitious embellishments of fashion, differ only as the eyes which behold them are different. The most civilized European may soon become, in this respect, a Cherokee, and in his nice absurdities of decoration, be himself the very thing at which he would have laughed before. Weary as we soon become of whatever we have admired, our weariness is not more rapid than our admiration of something new, which follows it, or rather precedes it. It seems, as if, in order to produce this delightful emotion, nothing more were necessary for us than to say, Let this be beautiful. The power of enchantment is almost verified in the singular transformations which are thus produced; and in many of these, fashion is employed in the very way in which magic has been commonly fabled to be employed,—in making monsters, who are as little conscious of their degradation, while the voluntary metamorphose lasts, as the hideous but unknown victims of the enchanter's art. A few months, or perhaps a few weeks, may, indeed, show them what monsters they have been; but what is monstrous in the past, is seen only by the unconscious monsters of the present hour, who are again, in a few months, to laugh at their own deformity. What we are, in fashion, is ever beautiful; but nothing is in fashion so ridiculous, as the beauty which has been; as in journeying with sunshine before us, what is immediately under our eye is splendour; but if we look back, we see a long shadow behind us, though all, which is shadow now, was once brilliant, as the very track of brightness along which we move. The influence of fashion, on the mere trappings of dress, or furniture, or equipage, is the more valuable as an illustration, from the rapidity of its changes, and the universality of the emotion which it excites, that render it absolutely impossible for the most sceptical to doubt its power. The influence of particular associations on individual minds, is, indeed, as powerful as the more general influence which, in each individual on whom it operates, is only one of the forms of that very particular influence. But, in these cases, it might have been doubted whether the peculiarity, ascribed to association, might not rather have arisen from constitutional diversity. In the changes of universal fashion, however, there can be no doubt as to the nature * Discourse VII. of the sway that has been exercised; since every one will readily allow, in another, that change, of which he is conscious in himself. Yet, even though what is commonly termed fashion, the modifier or creator of general feeling, had not been, it is scarcely possible that we should not have discovered the influence of circumstances on our individual emotions. Even in the mere scenery of nature, which, in its most majestic features,its mountains, its rivers,-its cataracts, seems by its permanence to mock the power of man, how differently do the same objects affect us, in consequence of the mere antecedents of former feelings, and former events! The hill and the waterfall may be pleasing to every eye; but how doubly beautiful do they seem to the very heart of the expatriated Swiss, who almost looks as he gazes on them, for the cottage of his home, half gleaming through the spray, as if they were the very hill and the waterfall which had been the haunt of his youth. To the exile, in every situation, what landscape is so beautiful as that which recalls to him, perhaps, the bleakest and dreariest spot of the country, which he has not seen for many dismal years? The softest borders of the lake, the gentle eminences, that seem to rise only to slope into the delightful valleys between,-the fields,-the groves,-the vineyards, in all their luxuriance, these have no beauty to his eye. But let his glance fall on some rock, that extends itself, without one tuft of vegetation; or on some heath or morass, of still more gloomy barrenness; and what was indifference till then, is indifference no more. There is an instant emotion at his heart, which, though others might scarcely conceive it to be that of beauty, is beauty to him; and it is to this part of the scene, that his waking eye most frequently turns; as it is it alone which he mingles in his dreams with the well-remembered scenery of other years. That our emotion of beauty, which arises from works of art, is susceptible of modification, by accidental circumstances, is equally evident. There are tastes in composition, of which we are able to fix the period, almost with the same accuracy as we fix the dates of any of those great events, which fill our tables of chronology. What is green or scarlet to the eyes of the infant, is green or scarlet to the same eyes in boyhood, in youth, in mature manhood, in old age; but the work of art, which gives delight to the boy, may excite no emotion, but that of contempt or disgust, in the man. It must be a miserable ballad indeed, which is not read or heard with interest, in our first years of curiosity; and every dauber of a village sign-post, who knows enough of his art, to give four legs, and not two merely, to his red lion, or blue bear, is sure of the admiration of the little critic, who stops his hoop or his top to gaze on the wonders of his skill. Even in the judgments of our maturer years, when our discernment of beauty has been quickened by frequent exercise; and the study of the works of excellence of every age, has given us a corresponding quickness, in discerning the opposite imperfections, which otherwise we might not have perceived-how many circumstances are there, of which we are, perhaps, wholly unconscious, that modify our general susceptibility of the emotions of this class! Our youth, our age, our prevailing or temporary passions, the peculiar admiration which we may feel for some favourite author, who has become a favourite, perhaps, from circumstances that had little relation to his general merit, may all concur, with other circumstances as contingent, in giving diversity to sentiments, which otherwise might have been the same. It is finely observed by La Bruyere, in his Discours de Reception, in 1693, when CorVOL. II. 5 neille was no more, and Racine still alive :-"Some," says he, "cannot endure, that Corneille should be preferred, or even thought equal to him. They appeal to the age that is about to succeed. They wait, till they shall no longer have to count the voices of some old men, who, touched indifferently with whatever recalls to them the first years of their life, love certainly, in his Edipus, only the remembrance of their youth." The same idea is happily applied, by another Academician, to account for the constant presence of love in French tragedy, by the universal sympathy, which it may be expected to excite. "This passion," says he, "which is almost the only one that can interest women, has nearly an equal influence on the other sex. How many are there, who have never felt any very violent emotions of ambition or vengeance! Scarcely is there one, who has been exempt from love. The young are perhaps under its influence at present. With what pleasure do they recognise themselves in all which they see and hear! The old have loved. How delightful to them, to be recalled to their fairest and happiest years, by the picture of what was then the liveliest occupation of their thought! The mere remembrance is, to them, a second youth." If the emotion of beauty, which we receive from external things, and works of intellectual art, be thus under the control of our passions and remembrances, the pleasure of moral beauty is also in some measure under the same control. The great principles of moral distinction are, indeed, too deeply fixed in our breast, by our Divine Author, to allow approbation and pleasure to be attached to the contemplation of pure malignity, or withheld from pure benevolence. When evil is admired, therefore, it is in consequence of some disproportionate admiration attached to some real or supposed accompanying good; but still it is in the power of circumstances, to produce this disproportionate admiration, and consequently to modify, in a great degree, the resulting emotion of moral beauty. In one age, or in one country, the self-denying virtues are held in highest estimation,-in another age, or another country, the gentler social affections. There are periods of society, in which valour,--that gave virtue its name in the early ethics of one mighty people,-constitutes almost the whole of that national virtue, which commands general reverence, at the expense of the calmer and far nobler virtues of peace. There are other systems of polity, in which these civil virtues rise to their just pre-eminence, and in which valour is admired, less for its absolute unthinking intrepidity, than for its relation to the sacred rights, of which it is the guardian, or the avenger; nor does the estimation perish completely with the circumstances that gave rise to it. At Rome, even when Roman liberty had bowed the neck to that gracious despot, who prepared, by the habit of submission to usurped power, the servility that was afterwards,while executioner succeeded executioner on the throne of the world,--to smile, and to shudder, and obey, because others had smiled, and shuddered, and kissed the dust before :-in the very triumph of usurpation, when a single hour at Pharsalia had decided the destiny of ages, and Utica had heard the last voice of freedom, like the fading echo of some divine step retiring from the earth, still slavery itself could not overcome the silent reverence of the heart for him who had scorned to be a slave, "Even when proud Cæsar, 'midst triumphal cars, Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state, As her dead father's reverend image pass'd, And honour'd Caesar's less than Cato's sword."* Such were the emotions with which the actions of Cato were regarded at Rome, and continued to be regarded during the whole reign of the stoical philosophy, producing those extravagant comparisons of a mortal and the gods, which were not more impious than absurd, and which were little accordant with the general spirit of a system of philosophy, of which piety to the gods was one of the most honourable characteristics. The character of perfect moral beauty, however, which the life of Cato seemed to exhibit to a Roman,-who, if not free, was at least a descendant of the free,-is very different from that which it would exhibit to the slaves, the descendant of slaves, that minister, as their ancestors have ministered, to the insignificant grandeur of some eastern court. I need not say, how very different feelings, also, it excites in the mind of those whom Christianity has taught a system of morals, that surpasses the morality of stoicism as much as the purest doctrines of the Porch surpassed, in moral excellence, the idle and voluptuous profligacy of other systems. With these striking facts before us, it seems impossible, then, to contend for any beauty that is absolutely fixed and invariable. That general susceptibility of the emotion, sensitive, intellectual, and moral, which forms a part of our mental constitution, is, it appears, so modified by the circumstances in which individuals are placed, that objects, which, but for these circumstances, would not have appeared beautiful to us, do seem beautiful; and that other objects, from the same cause, cease to give that delight which they otherwise. would have produced. It is obviously, therefore, impossible to determine, with perfect certainty, the great point in question as to original beauty; since, whatever our primary original feelings may have been, they must, by the influence of such modifying circumstances, that are operating from the very moment of our birth, be altogether diversified, before we are able to speculate concerning them, and, perhaps even in the infant, before any visible signs of his emotions can be distinctly discovered. Since we cannot, then, decide with confidence, either affirmatively or negatively, in such circumstances, all which remains in sound philosophy, is a comparison of mere probabilities. Do these, however, lead us to suppose, that originally, all objects are equally capable of receiving the primary influences of arbitrary or contingent circumstances, which alone, determine them to be beautiful? or do they not rather indicate original tendencies in the mind, in consequence of which it more readily receives impressions of beauty from certain objects than from others, however susceptible of modification these original tendencies may be, so as afterwards to be varied or overcome by the more powerful influence of occasional causes? It must not be supposed, in an inquiry of this kind, that we are to look to those high delights which beauty, in its most attractive forms, affords; for, though it may be false, that all the pleasure of beauty is derived from adventitious circumstances, it is certainly true at least, that our most valuable plea Prologue to Cato, by Mr. Pope, v. 27—36. 1 |