CHAPTER IV.

NATURE OF BEAUTY.

In this chapter, my wish is to show that there are more than one kind of beauty, and that much confusion has arisen among writers, from not clearly distinguishing the characteristics of these kinds.

An essential condition, then, of all excitement and action in animal bodies, is a greater or less degree of novelty in the objects impressing them, -even if this novelty should arise only from a previous cessation of excitement.

Now, objects of greater or less novelty, are the causes of excitement, pleasureable or painful, by means of their various relations.

The lowest degree of bodily pleasure, (though, owing to its constancy, immense in its total amount,) is that which arises, during health, from those relations of bodies and that excitement which cause the mere local exercise of the organs a source of pleasure which is seldom the object of our voluntary attention, but which seems to me to

be the chief cause of attachment to life amidst its

more definite and conspicuous evils.

All higher mental emotions consist of pleasure or pain superadded to more or less definite ideas. Pleasureable emotions arise from the agreeable relations of things; painful emotions, from the disagreeable ones.

The term by which we express the influence which objects, by means of their relations, possess of exciting emotions of pleasure in the mind, is BEAUTY.

Beauty, when founded on the relations of objects, or of the parts of objects, to each other, forms a first class, and may be termed intrinsic beauty.

When beauty is farther considered in relation to ourselves, it forms a second class, and may be termed extrinsic beauty.

We are next led (hitherto this has apparently been done without analyzing or defining the operation) to a division of the latter into two genera; namely, the minor beauty, of which prettiness, delicacy, &c. are modifications, and that which is called grandeur or sublimity.

The characters of the minor beauty or prettiness, with relation to ourselves, are smallness, subordination or subjection. Hence female beauty, in relation to the male.

The characters of grandeur or sublimity, with relation to ourselves, are greatness, super-ordination, or power. Hence male beauty, in relation to the female.

By the preceding brief train of analysis and definition, is, I believe, answered the question "Whether the emotion of grandeur make a branch of the emotion of beauty, or be entirely distinct from it?"

Having, by this concise statement of my own views on these subjects, made the reader acquainted with some of the materials of future consideration here employed, I may now examine the opinions of some philosophers, in order to see how far they accord with these first principles, and what answer can be given to them where they differ.

That beauty generally considered has nothing to do with particular size, is very well shown by Payne Knight, who, though he argues incorrectly about it in many other respects, here truly says, "All degrees of magnitude contribute to beauty in proportion as they show objects to be perfect in their kind. The dimensions of a beautiful horse are very different from those of a beautiful lap-dog; and those of a beautiful oak, from those of a beautiful myrtle; because nature has formed these different kinds of animals and vegetables upon different scales.

"The notion of objects being rendered beautiful by being gradually diminished, or tapered, is equally unfounded; for the same object, which is small by degrees, and beautifully less, when seen in one direction, is large by degrees, and beautifully bigger, when seen in another. The stems of trees are tapered upwards; and the columns of Grecian architecture, having been taken from them, and therefore retaining a degree of analogy with them, were tapered upwards too: but the legs of animals are tapered downwards, and the inverted obelisks, upon which busts were placed, having a similar analogy to them, were tapered downwards also; whilst pilasters, which had no analogy with either, but were mere square posts terminating a wall, never tapered at all."

Speaking of beauty generally, and without seeing the distinctions I have made above, Burke, on the contrary, states the first quality of beauty to be comparative smallness, and says, "In ordinary conversation, it is usual to add the endearing name of little to every thing we love ;" and, "in most languages, the objects of love are spoken of under diminutive epithets."

This is evidently true only of the objects of minor or subordinate beauty, which Burke confusedly thought the only kind of it, though

he elsewhere grants, that beauty may be connected with sublimity! It shows, however, that relative littleness is essential to that first kind of beauty.

With greater knowledge of facts than Burke possessed, and with as feeble reasoning powers, but with less taste, and with a perverse whimsicality which was all his own, Payne Knight similarly, making no distinction in beauty, considered smallness as an accidental association, failed to see that it characterized a kind of beauty, and argued, that "if we join the diminutive to a term, which precludes all such affection, or does not even, in some degree, express it, it immediately converts it into a term of contempt and reproach: thus a bantling, a fondling, a darling, &c. are terms of endearment; but a witling, a changeling, a lordling, &c. are invariably terms of scorn: so in French, mon petit enfant' is an expression of endearment; but 'mon petit monsieur' is an expression of the most pointed reproach and contempt."

Now, this chatter of grammatical termination and French phrase, though meant to look vastly clever, is merely a blunder. There is no analogy in the cases compared: a "darling" or little dear unites dear, an expression of love, with little, implying that dependence which enhances love,;