All higher mental emotions consist of pleasure or pain superadded to more or less definite ideas. Pleasurable 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, and subjection. Hence female beauty, in relation to the male.
The characters of grandeur or sublimity, with relation to ourselves, are greatness, superordination, and 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 lapdog; 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.