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most affecting we have; that its strongest emotion is an emotion of diftrefs; and that no pleasure from a pofitive cause belongs to it. Numberlefs examples, befides those mentioned, might be brought in fupport of these truths, and many perhaps ufeful confequences drawn from them

Sed fugit interea, fugit irrevocabile tempus,
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.

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A

PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY

ΙΝΤΟ THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

O F THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART III.

SECT. I.

OF BEAUTY.

T is my design to confider beauty as diftinguished from

Ithe fublime, and, in the courfe of the enquiry, to examine

how far it is confiftent with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty I mean that quality, or those qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or fome paffion fimilar to it. I confine this definition to the merely fenfible qualities of things, for the fake of preferving the utmost fimplicity in a subject which must always distract us, whenever we take in those various causes of sympathy which

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which attach us to any perfons or things from secondary confiderations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on being viewed. I likewife diftinguish love, by which I mean that fatisfaction which arifes to the mind upon contemplating any thing beautiful, of whatfoever nature it may be, from defire or luft; which is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the poffeffion of certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by means altogether different. We shall have a strong defire for a woman of no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of defire. Which fhews that beauty, and the paffion caused by beauty, which I call love, is different from defire, though defire may fometimes operate along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those violent and tempeftuous paffions, and the confequent emotions of the body which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is fuch.

SE C T. II.

PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.

BEAUTY hath usually been faid to confift in certain proportions of parts. On confidering the matter, I have great reafon to doubt, whether beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates almoft wholly to convenience, as every idea of order feems to do; and it must therefore be confidered as a creature of the understanding, rather than a primary caufe acting on

the

the fenfes and imagination. It is not by the force of long attention and enquiry that we find any object to be beautiful; beauty demands no affistance from our reasoning; even the will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually caufes fome degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the ideas of heat or cold. To gain fomething like a fatisfactory conclufion in this point, it were well to examine, what proportion is; fince feveral who make use of that word, do not always feem to understand very clearly the force of the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all quantity is divifible, it is evident that every diftin&t part into which any quantity is divided, must bear fome relation to the other parts, or to the whole. Thefe relations give an origin to the idea of proportion. They are difcovered by menfuration, and they are the objects of mathematical enquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity be a fourth, or a fifth, or a fixth, or a moiety of the whole; or whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length, or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it ftands neuter in the question: and it is from this abfolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical fpeculations derive fome of their moft confiderable advantages; because there is nothing to intereft the imagination; because the judgment fits free and unbiaffed to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity is alike to the understanding, becaufe the fame truths refult to it from all; from greater, from leffer, from equality and inequality. But furely beauty is no idea belonging to menfuration; nor has it any thing to do with calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out fome certain measures which we could demonftrate to be beautiful, either as fimply confi

dered,

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