we should think of that by which the emotion is most vividly excited, and should be led accordingly to seek it there,—

"Where Beauty's living image, like the morn
That wakes in zephyr's arms the blushing May,
Moves onward; or as Venus, when she stood
Effulgent on the pearly car, and smil'd,
Fresh from the deep, and conscious of her form,
To see the Tritons tune their vocal shells,
And each cerulean sister of the flood,

With loud acclaim, attend her o'er the waves,
To seek th' Idalian bower."

That we are susceptible of a similar delightful emotion from works of intellect, is sufficiently shown by the fine arts, which are founded on this happy susceptibility; nor is the delight felt only on the contemplation of works of fancy,-at least of fancy in the sense in which that term is commonly employed; it is felt in the result of faculties, that seem, while exercised in the operations that produce the beautiful result, to be very foreign from every emotion, but that tranquil satisfaction which may be supposed to constitute a part of our assent to any interesting truth. How many theorems are there, to which a mathematician applies the term beautiful, as readily as it is applied by others to the design or the colouring of a picture, or to the words or air of a song; and though the delightful emotion which he expresses by that word is at once far inferior in degree, and only analogous in kind to the emotion excited by those objects, it still is so analogous as to deserve the denomination. In general physics, in like manner, how instantly do we speak of the beauty of an experiment, which is so contrived as to decide a point that has been long in controversy, by very simple means, and with the exclusion of every foreign circumstance that might affect the accuracy of the result,-or of the beauty of a theory, which brings together many facts that were before dispersed, without any obvious bond of union, and exhibits them in luminous connexion to our view. The delightful emotion, in these intellectual forms of beauty, is, it will be admitted, far less lively, than when it results from external things. But when we thus apply the term beautiful to the works of faculties, that are not immediately conversant with beauty, or in which, at least, beauty is scarcely even a secondary consideration, we are far from using a metaphor, any more than we use a metaphor, when we employ the same word in speaking of the beauty of a landscape, and of the beauty of human form, which are both objects of sight, but of

• Pleasures of Imagination, B. I. v. 327-335.

which the resulting emotions, though analogous, are far from being the same. We employ the term, because, from the analogy of the delight in the different cases, it is the only term which can express our meaning; we do truly feel, on the contemplation of such intellectual works, a delightful emotion, -as we feel a delightful emotion very similar, however superior it may be in intensity of pleasure, when we look on the charms of nature, or the imitative creations of art; and, as we conceive the very charm which we feel, to be diffused and stored in those beautiful forms on which we gaze, so does the charm which we feel, seem, for the moment, to flow over the severest works of intellect, in the conceptions which are embodied to us. Every reason itself, austere as it may seem, is thus only a part of Beauty's universal empire, that extends over mind, and over matter, with equal sway.

But though by some minds, which have not been conversant with the beautiful results of scientific inquiry, these severe and less obvious charms may not be readily admitted, of moral beauty, it is surely impossible for any one to doubt that charm, which is felt by us, even before we have learned to distinguish virtue by its name; and which, even to the guilty, who have abandoned it, still retains a sort of dreadful loveliness, which they would gladly forget, but which no effort can wholly banish from their remembrance, that is forced still to shudder and admire. It is the analogy of this moral beauty, indeed, which gives its most attractive charm to the beauty of the inanimate universe, and which adorns poetry with its most delightful images. To give our mere approbation to virtue, as we give our assent to any truth of reasoning, seems to be as little possible, as for those, who are not blind, to open their eyes, in the very sunshine of noon, on some delightful scene, and to view it as a mere collection of forms without any colouring. The softer moral perfections, so essential to the happiness, and almost to the very existence of society, are like those mild lights, and gentle graces, in the system of external things, without which the repose of nature would not be tranquillity, but death, and its motions, in the waving bough, and the foamy waterfall, and the stream that glides from it, would be only the agitation of contiguous particles of matter. Well, indeed, may the poet of imagination exclaim,—

Or the mild majesty of private life,

When peace with ever-blooming olive, crowns
The gate, where honour's liberal hands effuse
Unenvied treasures, and the snowy wings

Of innocence and love protect the scene?”*

In all these cases moral beauty, as in that to which our senses more immediately give rise, we conceive the delight which we feel, to be centered in the moral object; and the very diffusion of the delight seems to connect us more closely with that which we admire, producing what is not a mere sympathy, but something more intimate,-that union of mind with mind, in reflected and mingled feeling,-which, notwithstanding all the absurd mysticism that has been written concerning it, has, in the manner which I have now described, in part at least, a foundation in nature.

But, though, in all these great provinces of beauty, the material, the intellectual, and the moral, an object which we feel to be beautiful, be merely an object, with which, in our conception, or continued perception, if it be an object of sense, or, in our mere conception, if it be an object of another kind, we have combined, by a sort of mental diffusion, the delight which it has excited in us; why, it will be said, do certain objects produce this effect?

The examination of this point, however, I must defer till my next Lecture.

* Pleasures of Imagination, B. I. v. 500-511.

297

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. Though no eye were to behold what is beautiful, we cannot but imagine that a certain delight would forever 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, VOL. II.-P p

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 coveled 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

* Discourse VII.