Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

“What, for instance, is the impression we feel from the scenery of spring? The soft and gentle green with which the earth is spread, the feeble texture of the plants and flowers, the young of animals just entering into life, and the remains of winter yet lingering among the woods and hills—all conspire to infuse into our minds somewhat of that fearful tenderness with which infancy is usually beheld. With such a sentiment, how innumerable are the ideas which present themselves to our imagination! ideas, it is apparent, by no means confined to the scene before our eyes, or to the possible desolation which may yet await its infant beauty, but which almost involuntarily extend themselves to analogies with the life of man, and bring before us all those images of hope or fear, which, according to our peculiar situations, have the dominion of our heart!—The beauty of autumn is accompanied with a similar exercise of thought.

“Whatever increases this exercise or employment of imagination, increases also the emotion of beauty or sublimity.

“This is very obviously the effect of all associations. There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connexions. The view of the house where one was born, of the school where one was educated, and where the gay years of infancy were passed, is indifferent to no man.

“In the case of those trains of thought, which are suggested by objects either of sublimity or beauty, it will be found, that they are in all cases composed of ideas capable of exciting some affection or emotion; and that not only the whole succession is accompanied with that peculiar emotion which we call the emotion of beauty or sublimity, but that every individual idea of such a succession is in itself productive of some simple emotion or other.

“Thus the ideas suggested by the scenery of spring, are ideas productive of emotions of cheer fulness, of gladness, and of tenderness. The images suggested by the prospect of ruins, are images belonging to pity, to melancholy, and to admiration. The ideas, in the same manner, awakened by the view of the ocean in a storm, are ideas of power, of majesty, and of terror.”

To prevent circumlocution, such ideas may be termed ideas of emotion; and the effect which is produced upon the mind, by objects of taste, may be considered as consisting in the production of a regular or consistent train of ideas of emotion.

“In those trains which are suggested by objects of sublimity or beauty, however slight the connexion between individual thoughts may be, it will be found, that there is always some general principle of connexion which pervades the whole, and gives them some certain definite character. They are either gay, or pathetic, or melancholy, or solemn, or awful, or elevating, &c., according to the nature of the emotion which is first excited. Thus the prospect of a serene evening in summer, produces first an emotion of peacefulness and tranquillity, and then suggests a variety of images corresponding to this primary impression. The sight of a torrent, or of a storm, in the same manner, impresses us first with sentiments of awe or solemnity, or terror, and then awakens in our minds a series of conceptions allied to this peculiar emotion.”

The intellectual, or fine arts are those whose objects are thus addressed to the imagination; and the pleasures they afford are described, by way of distinction, as the pleasures of the imagination.

SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER

Thus, by analysis, generalization, and systematization, of the materials which the best writers present, I have, in this chapter, endeavored to take new and larger views; and, by an examination of the elements of beauty, I have endeavored to fix its doctrines upon an immoveable basis.

I have shown that there exist elements of beauty equally invariable in themselves, and in the kind of effect they produce upon the mind; that these elements are modified, varied, and complicated, as we advance from the most simple to the most complex class of natural beings, or of the arts which relate to these respectively; that the elements of beauty in inanimate beings, consist in the simplicity, regularity, uniformity, proportion, order, &c., of those geometrical forms which are so intimately connected with mere existence; that the elements of beauty in living beings, consist in adding to the preceding the delicacy, bending, variety, contrast, &c., which are connected with growth, and reproduction; that the elements of beauty in thinking beings, consist in adding to the preceding the symmetry, proportion,[15 - Proportion is here employed, not as expressing an intrinsic relation, as in the beauty of inanimate beings, but as expressing an extrinsic relation to fitness for ends.] &c., which are connected with fitness for sense, thought, and motion; that the elements of beauty in the objects of useful art, consist in the same simplicity, regularity, uniformity, proportion, order, of geometrical forms which belong to inanimate beings; that the elements of beauty in the objects of ornamental art consist in the same delicacy, bending, variety, contrast, which belong to living beings; and that the elements of beauty in the objects of intellectual art consist in thinking forms, in gesture, sculpture, and painting, or in functions of mind actually exercised, in oratory, poetry, and music.

The elements of beauty have hitherto been confounded by many writers, as more or less applicable to objects of all kinds; and as this general and confused application was easily disproved as to many objects, uncertainty and doubt have been thrown over the whole. The remaining writers have consequently been led to adopt, as characters of beauty, only one or two of these elements, which were consequently capable of application only to one or two classes of its objects. Hence, no subject of human inquiry has hitherto been left in a more disgraceful condition than this, the very foundation of taste.

I do not hesitate to state that, owing to the near approximations to truth, and the insensible transitions into error, which I have found in every writer, and the immense mass of confused materials which they present, this subject has cost me more trouble than any one I have ever investigated, except that of my work on the mind;[16 - “The Nervous System, Anatomical and Physiological: in which the Functions of the various Parts of the Brain are, for the first time, assigned.”] nor without some physiological knowledge, do I think tasks of this kind at all practicable. Generally speaking, each branch of knowledge is most surely advanced by acquaintance with its related branches; and philosophers cannot too much bear in mind the words of Cicero: “Etenim omnes artes quæ ad humanitatem pertinent, habent quoddam commune vinculum, et quasi cognatione quadam inter se continentur.”

APPENDIX TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTERS

SECTION I.

NATURE OF THE PICTURESQUE.[17 - Communicated by the writer to the “Magazine of the Fine Arts,” No. 11, for June, 1833.]

In landscape, the nature of the beautiful and the sublime seems to be better understood than that of the picturesque. There are few disputes as to the former; many as to the latter. These disputes, moreover, are not as to what is picturesque, but as to what picturesque is.

Payne Knight asserts, that the picturesque has no distinctive character, and merely designates what a painter would imitate. Price, on the contrary, has given so many admirable illustrations of it, that its characteristics are before every reader. Strange to tell, its nature or essence has not been penetrated, because these characteristics have not been rigidly analyzed.

Price has, indeed, generalized considerably on this subject, by showing that irregularity, roughness, &c., enter into all scenes of a picturesque description; and the examination of any one of them will certainly verify the truth of his observation.

Thus, on a remote country-road, we often observe the deep ruts on its surface which in winter would render it impassable—the huge and loose moss-grown stone, ready to encumber it by falling from the bank—the stunted pollard by its side, whose roots are exposed by the earth falling away from it, and which must itself be swept away by the first wind that may blow against it in an unfavorable direction—the almost ruined cottage, above and beyond these, whose gable is propped up by an old and broken wheel, and whose thatched roof, stained with every hue of moss or lichen, has, at one part, long fallen in—the shaggy and ragged horse that browses among the rank weeds around it—and the old man, bent with age, who leans over the broken gate in front of it.

Here, in every circumstance, is verified the irregularity and roughness which Price ascribes to the picturesque. But he has failed to observe, that the irregularity and roughness are but the signs of that which interests the mind far more deeply, namely, the universal decay which causes them. This is the essence of the picturesque—the charm in it which begets our sympathy.

Confining his remark merely to ruins, the author of “Observations on Gardening,” says: “At the sight of a ruin, reflections on the change, the decay, and the desolation, before us naturally occur; and they introduce a long succession of others, all tinctured with that melancholy which these have inspired; or if the monument revive the memory of former times, we do not stop at the simple fact which it records, but recollect many more coeval circumstances which we see, nor perhaps as they were, but as they are come down to us, venerable with age, and magnified by fame.”—What is here said of ruins, and is indeed as to them sufficiently striking, is true of the picturesque universally, and it is only surprising that, amid such disputes, this simple and obvious truth should not have been observed.

In landscape, therefore, the picturesque stands in the same relation to the beautiful and sublime, that the pathetic does to them in poetry. Hence, speaking also of ruins only, Alison says: “The images suggested by the prospect of ruins, are images belonging to pity, to melancholy, and to admiration.”

A thousand illustrations might be given in support of this truth and the principle which it affords; but I think it better to leave these to the suggestion or the choice of every reader.

SECTION II.

CAUSE OF LAUGHTER

This has been partly explained by Beattie, partly by Hobbes; and it is chiefly to vindicate the latter, who knew much more of the human mind than the people who have attacked him, that I write the pages immediately following.

Speaking of the quality in things, which makes them provoke the pleasing emotion or sentiment of which laughter is the external sign, Beattie says: “It is an uncommon mixture of relation and contrariety, exhibited, or supposed to be united, in the same assemblage.” And elsewhere he says: “Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them.”

“The latter may arise from contiguity, from the relation of cause and effect, from unexpected likeness, from dignity and meanness, from absurdity, &c.

“Thus, at first view, the dawn of the morning and a boiled lobster seem utterly incongruous, but when a change of color from black to red is suggested, we recognise a likeness, and consequently a relation, or ground of comparison.

“And here let it be observed, that the greater the number of incongruities that are blended in the same assemblage, the more ludicrous it will probably be. If, as in the last example, there be an opposition of dignity and meanness, as well as of likeness and dissimilitude, the effect of the contrast will be more powerful, than if only one of these oppositions had appeared in the ludicrous idea.”

The first part of the subject seems, indeed, so clear as to admit of no objection.

Hobbes, viewing more particularly the act of the mind, defines laughter to be a “sudden glory, arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.” And elsewhere he says: “Men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds, some absurdity of another.”[18 - “Human Nature,” chap, ix., sec. 13.]

Dr. Campbell objects that “contempt may be raised in a very high degree, both suddenly and unexpectedly, without producing the least tendency to laugh.” But if there exist that incongruity in the same assemblage described as the fundamental cause of this sudden conception of our own superiority, laughter, as Beattie has shown, “will always, or for the most part, excite the risible emotion, unless when the perception of it is attended with some other emotion of greater authority,” dependant on custom, politeness, &c.

Dr. Campbell also observes, that “laughter may be, and is daily, produced by the perception of incongruous associations, when there is no contempt.

“We often smile at a witty performance or passage, such as Butler’s allusion to a boiled lobster, in his picture of the morning, when we are so far from conceiving any inferiority or turpitude in the author, that we greatly admire his genius, and wish ourselves possessed of that very turn of fancy which produced the drollery in question.

“Many have laughed at the queerness of the comparison in these lines,

‘For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which like ships they steer their courses,’

who never dreamed that there was any person or party, practice or opinion, derided in them.

“If any admirer of the Hobbesian philosophy should pretend to discover some class of men whom the poet here meant to ridicule, he ought to consider, that if any one hath been tickled with the passage to whom the same thought never occurred, that single instance would be sufficient to subvert the doctrine, as it would show that there may be laughter where there is no triumph or glorying over anybody, and, consequently, no conceit of one’s own superiority.

Now, the class of men laughed at in both cases is the same, namely, poets, whose lofty allusions are ridiculed by the former, and silly rhymes by the latter; nor can any one duly appreciate or be pleased with either, to whom this intention of the writer is not obvious. Who ever dreamed of “turpitude in the author,” as Dr. Campbell supposes!

“As to the wag,” says Beattie, “who amuses himself on the first of April with telling lies, he must be shallow, indeed, if he hope, by so doing, to acquire any superiority over another man whom he knows to be wiser and better than himself; for, on these occasions, the greatness of the joke, and the loudness of the laugh, are, if I rightly remember, in exact proportion to the sagacity of the person imposed on.”—No doubt; but it is because he is thrown into an apparent and whimsical, though momentary inferiority; and the greater his sagacity, the more amusing does this appear.

“Do we not,” says he, “sometimes laugh at fortuitous combinations, in which, as no mental energy is concerned in producing them, there cannot be either fault or turpitude? Could not one imagine a set of people jumbled together by accident, so as to present a laughable group to those who know their characters?”—Undoubtedly; but then the slouch of one, and the rigidity of the other, &c., make both contemptible, as to physical characteristics at least, and there is no need of turpitude in either.

The strongest apparent objection, however, is that of Dr. Campbell, who says: “Indeed, men’s telling their own blunders, even blunders recently committed, and laughing at them, a thing not uncommon in very risible dispositions, is utterly inexplicable upon Hobbes’s system. For, to consider the thing only with regard to the laugher himself, there is to him no subject of glorying, that is not counterbalanced by an equal subject of humiliation (he being both the person laughing, and the person laughed at), and these two subjects must destroy one another.”

But he overlooks the precise terms employed by Hobbes, who says: “The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory, arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly. For men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come suddenly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonor.”

It is not therefore true, as Dr. Campbell says, that “with regard to others, he appears solely under the notion of inferiority, as the person triumphed over.” He, on the contrary, appears as achieving a very glorious triumph, that, namely, over his own errors.

This shows also the error of Addison’s remarks, that “according to this account, when we hear a man laugh excessively, instead of saying that he is very merry, we ought to tell him that he is very proud.”—A man may contemn the errors both of himself and others, without pride: and, indeed, in contemning the former, he proves himself to be far above that sentiment, and verifies Dr. Campbell’s remark that no two characters more rarely meet in the same person, than that of a very risible man, and a very self-conceited supercilious man.

It is curious to see a great man, like Hobbes, thus attacked by less ones, who do not even understand him.

SECTION III.

CAUSE OF THE PLEASURE RECEIVED FROM REPRESENTATIONS EXCITING PITY