The perception of the charms of the agreeable seem to be wrought up to excellence by the operation of our own powers. We ourselves have blended its beauties and defects into the sentiment of beauty, pleasure; and hence, probably, the strength and durability of the passion which it creates. Beauty, on the contrary, is composed to our hands, full, perfect, and intire; its idea is also a compound of the common and the uncommon, being at once like and unlike the general form; but inherently it has no contrast, and therefore affords no recreation, no pleasing exercise, to the mental faculties; there is nothing to re-create, nothing to wish; and hence the instability of the passion which it inspires. Perfect beauty is, like perfect happiness, lost as soon as it is attained.
It is, I imagine, to the principles of the masculine and the feminine character, that we owe the perception of beauty or taste, in any object whatever, throughout all nature and all art that imitates nature; and, in objects which differ from the human form, the principles must be in the extreme, because the object is then merely symbolical. Thus, the meekness of the lamb, and the high-spirited prancing steed; the gentle dove, and the impetuous eagle; the placid lake, and the swelling ocean; the lowly valley, and the aspiring mountain. It is the feminine character that is the sweetest, the most interesting, image of beauty; the masculine partakes of the sublime. Thus it will be found, that, in every object that is universally pleasing, there exist principles which are analogous to those that constitute beauty in the human species; and that its appearance does always, in some degree, move the affections, though the mind may be unconscious of its similitude to any idea in which the affections are concerned. But the test of the object's possessing the principles of beauty is when we are able to assimilate its appearance with some amiable interesting affection; and, according as that affection prevails in the breast of the spectator, it will appear with an additional power of pleasing.
From association of ideas, any object may be pleasing, though absolutely devoid of beauty, and displeasing with it. The form is then out of the question; it is some real good or evil, with which the object, but not its form, is associated.
It is observable, that those animals I have mentioned (and I imagine all animals that are symbolical of our affections have the same) have a double character of beauty, or reference to the affection that is moved: i.e. their form and their disposition, exactly corresponding with each other. Probably on that union depends their power of pleasing; their form alone, so different from human beauty, could not sufficiently engage the attention, or afford the interesting perception, which the consistency of truth does, in the intire of an object.
Every object of taste has at least a double reference to mental pleasure, whether the object, in the philosophical scale of our perceptions, belongs to those of sense or intellect. Thus, the beauty of the rose would not certainly be so perceptible to us, wanting its fragrance, and, with a nauseous smell, would not probably be admitted, as I may say, into the rank of agreeableness, though it is in reality a beautiful and pleasing object; nor, supposing the thistle, or any other ugly flower, possessed of the fragrance of the rose, should we therefore think it an object of taste, any more than we can think the form of an elephant beautiful, though endued with almost intellectual beauty.
In the form and colour of flowers, there appears to me a striking analogy to the character of human beauty. They afford an ocular demonstration, in the pleasure with which we contemplate their particular forms, that the pleasure, we receive from the beauty of the human form, originates from mental character: witness the charm of the infant, innocence of the snow-drop, of the soft elegance of the hyacinth, &c. and, on the contrary, our dis-relish of the gaudy tulip, the robust, unmeaning, masculine, piony, hollyhock, &c. &c.
It is, I imagine, from a resemblance to some pre-conceived idea of beauty in the human species, that we are particularly pleased with the sight of one flower more than with another, though the mind is unconscious of the cause. And thus the pleasure, caused by the apparent beauty of every object throughout the system of human perception, is, according to my sentiment of that pleasure, the same intellectual principle, moral good, however diversified, modified, and diminished, even to an unconsciousness or almost imperceptible degree of relation to it. In fine, the true principles of beauty, in every object, may be all resolved into the same principle. But to conclude.
I have no more doubt that the principles of beauty are moral, than that the principles of happiness are moral. It is the perception of true beauty, in its various modifications, that makes up the sum of human happiness; and hence the diversity of opinions concerning beauty, but which, however diverse, are never contradictory, but as mens opinions in morals are so; for every view of beauty assimilates with some good, and of course must be in unison.
If, in the human system, there exists a principle which constitutes true pleasure, that principle must be that which constitutes human excellence; and, if the visible object which excites true pleasure must necessarily possess the principles of true pleasure, then must every object, which universally and invariably pleases, be relative to the principle that constitutes human excellence, morality.
Whatever appears, to each individual, the most excellent in the human system, at once constitutes his idea of happiness, of morality, and of beauty; and all mankind, I imagine, would agree in the same idea, had all the same opportunities of seeing and knowing what was excellent.