either creates essence of Beauty. that which may be repulsive is felt in its full force, while no hold is as yet laid on the affections, there is a very strong preference induced in most minds for that to which they are accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in those which are least open to sensations of § 5. But never positive beauty. But however far this operation may be carried, its or destroys the utmost effect is but the deadening and approximating the sensations of beauty and ugliness. It never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the slightest connection with, nor power over, their nature. By tasting two wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavour; nay, we may even do more than can ever be done in the case of sight, we may confound the two flavours together. But it will hardly be argued therefore that custom is the cause of either flavour. And so, though by habit we may deaden the effect of ugliness or beauty, it is not for that reason to be affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensation. We may keep a skull beside us as long as we please, we may overcome its repulsiveness, we may render ourselves capable of perceiving many qualities of beauty about its lines, we may contemplate it for years together if we will, it and nothing else, but we shall not get ourselves to think as well of it as of a child's fair face. § 6. Instances. It would be easy to pursue the subject farther, but I believe that every thoughtful reader will be perfectly well able to supply farther illustrations, and sweep away the sandy foundations of the opposite theory, unassisted. Let it, however, be observed, that in spite of all custom, an Englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the superiority of the turban to the hat, or of the plaid to the coat; that whatever the dictates of immediate fashion may compel, the superior gracefulness of the Greek or middle age costumes is invariably felt; and that, respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty whatsoever (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain degree of cultivation), and whose disgust arises naturally from what they may suppose 1 Some confusion may arise in the mind of the reader on comparing this passage with others in the course of the volume; such as the second paragraph of the next chapter, in which the instinctive sense of beauty is asserted as existing in the child. But it is necessary always to observe the distinction made in the second chapter, between the instinctive, or æsthetic, and the real or theoretic perception of Beauty; and farther, it is to be remembered, that every elevated human instinct is in a measure put under voluntary power, to be a sign of weakness or ill health. It would be futile to proceed into farther detail. I pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas. association of Frequent has been the support and wide the acceptance of this sup- § 7. false opinion position, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive sentences were ever that Beauty dewritten in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction or a pends on the confusion of terms. Thus Alison, "There are scenes undoubtedly more ideas. beautiful than Runnymede, yet to those who recollect the great event that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on the imagination." Where we are wonder struck at the bold obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by its overcoming that very other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer denies; for the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above sentence is, that imagination is not the source of beauty, for although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are scenes "more beautiful than Runnymede." And though instances of self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are rare, yet if the arguments on the subject be fairly sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always encumbered, they will be found invariably to fall into one of these two forms; either, Association gives pleasure, and Beauty gives pleasure, therefore Association is beauty; or, the power of Association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the power of Association is the power of beauty. tion. Is first Nevertheless it is necessary for us to observe the real value and autho- § 8. Associarity of association in the moral system, and how ideas of actual beauty Rational. It is of no efficiency may be affected by it; otherwise we shall be liable to embarrassment as a cause of throughout the whole of the succeeding argument. Beauty. Association may be considered as of two kinds : Rational and Accidental. By Rational Association I understand the interest which any object may bear historically as having been in some way connected with the acts or affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware of such connection; which to call beauty is mere and gross confusion of terms: it is no theory to be confuted, but a misuse of language to and when highly cultivated, appears in increasing purity and intensity in each succeeding generation, or, on the other hand, diminishes until the race sinks into degradation nearly total, out of which no general laws may safely be deduced. § 9. Association Accidental. its influence. be set aside; a misuse implying that in uninhabited countries, the vegetation has no grace, the rock no dignity, the cloud no colour, and that the snowy summits of the Alps receive no loveliness from the sunset light, because they have not been polluted by the wrath, ravage, and misery of men. By Accidental Association, I understand the accidental connection The extent of of ideas and memories with material things, owing to which those material things are regarded as agreeable or otherwise, according to the nature of the feelings or recollections they summon; the association being commonly involuntary, and oftentimes so vague as that no distinct image is suggested by the object, but we feel a painfulness in it or pleasure from it, without knowing wherefore. Of this operation of the mind (which is that of which I spoke as causing inextricable embarrassments on the subject of beauty) the experience is constant, so that its more energetic manifestations require no illustration. But I do not think that the minor degrees and shades of this great influence have been sufficiently appreciated. Not only all vivid emotions and all circumstances of exciting interest leave their light and shadow on the senseless things and instruments among which, or through whose agency, they have been felt or learned; but I believe that the eye cannot rest on a material form in a moment of depression or exultation, without communicating to that form a spirit and a life, a life which will make it afterwards in some degree loved or feared, a charm or a painfulness for which we shall be unable to account even to ourselves. Let the eye but rest on some rude or uncouth form during a conversation with a friend; rest, however, unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten, though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole life after, take a certain pleasure in such forms which it had not before: a pleasure so slight, a trace of feeling so delicate, as to leave us utterly unconscious of its peculiar power; but undestroyable by any reasoning, a part, thenceforward, of our constitution, destroyable only by some arbitrary process of association by which it was created. Reason has no effect upon it whatsoever. And there is probably no one opinion which is formed by any of us, in matters of taste, which is not in some degree influenced by unconscious association of this kind. In many who have no definite rules of judgment, preference is decided by little else, and thus, unfortunately, its operations are mistaken for, or rather substituted for, those of inherent beauty, and its real position and value in a moral system are in a great measure overlooked. For I believe that mere pleasure and pain have less associative power § 10. The Dignity of its functhan duty performed or omitted, and that the great use of the associative tion. faculty is not to add beauty to material things, but to add force to the Conscience. But for this external and all-powerful witness, the voice of the inward guide might be lost in each particular instance, almost as soon as disobeyed; the echo of it in after time, whereby, though perhaps feeble as warning, it becomes powerful as punishment, might be silenced, and the strength of the protection pass away in the lightness of the lash. Therefore it has received the power of enlisting external and unmeaning things in its aid, and transmitting to all that is indifferent its own authority to reprove or reward: so that, as we travel the way of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be beautiful in our eyes, by its kind message; or of withering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful, withdrawn, silence of condemnation; or into a crying out of her stones, and a shaking of her dust against us. Nor is it any marvel that the theoretic faculty should be overpowered by this momentous operation, and the indifferent appeals and inherent glories of external things in the end overlooked, when the perfection of God's works is felt only as the sweetness of his promises, or their admirableness only as the threatenings of his power. But it is evident that the full exercise of this noble function of the § 11. How it is connected with Associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible con- impressions of clusions on subjects of theoretic preference. For it is quite impossible beauty. for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually, from those great laws of choice under which he is comprehended with all his race. And it is well for us that it is so; the harmony of God's good work is not in us interrupted by this mingling of universal and peculiar principles; for by these such difference is secured in the feelings as shall make fellowship itself more delightful, by its inter-communicate character, and such variety of feeling also in each of us separately as shall § 12. And what caution it renders necessary tion of them. make us capable of enjoying scenes of different kinds and orders, instead of morbidly seeking for some perfect epitome of the Beautiful in one: And also that deadening by custom of theoretic impressions to which I have above alluded, is counter-balanced by the pleasantness of acquired association; and the loss of the intense feeling of the youth, which "had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest, unborrowed from the eye" is replaced by the gladness of conscience, and the vigour of the reflecting and imaginative faculties, as they take their wide and aged grasp of the great relations between the Earth and its dead People. In proportion therefore to the value, constancy, and efficiency of this influence, we must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of positive in the examina- opinions on the subject of beauty. For every one of us has peculiar sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him in certain scenes and things, sources which are sealed to others; and we must be wary, on the one hand, of confounding these in ourselves with ultimate conclusions of taste, and so forcing them upon all as authoritative, and, on the other, of supposing that the enjoyments of others which we cannot share are shallow or unwarrantable, because incommunicable. I fear, for instance, that, in the former portion of this work, I may have attributed too much community and authority to certain reflections of my own for scenery inducing emotions of wild, impetuous, and enthusiastic characters, and too little to those which I perceive in others for things peaceful, humble, meditative, and solemn. So also between youth and age there will be found differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false choice in either, but of different temperament; the youth sympathising more with the gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the grey hairs with their completion, sufficiency, and repose. And so, neither condemning the delights of others, nor altogether distrustful of our own, we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to what is our crown; only observing in all things how that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dislike, and not affection. For by the very nature of these Beautiful qualities, which I have defined to be the signature of God upon his works, it is evident that in whatever we altogether dislike, we see not all; that the keenness of our vision is to |