You cannot therefore say that Power, taken absolutely, is beautiful. You must add the qualification — Power used for the production of some good, is beautiful. This, then, would be the profitable — the cause or generator of good.[24] But the cause is different from its effect: the generator or father is different from the generated or son. The beautiful would, upon this view, be the cause of the good. But then the beautiful would be different from the good, and the good different from the beautiful? Who can admit this? It is obviously wrong: it is the most ridiculous theory which we have yet hit upon.[25]
[24] Plat. Hipp. Maj. 297 B.
[25] Plat. Hipp. Maj. 297 D-E. εἰ οἷόν τ’ ἐστίν, ἑκείνων εἶναι (κινδυνεύει) γελοιότερος τῶν πρώτων.
3. The Beautiful is a variety of the Pleasurable — that which is received through the eye and the ear.
3. The Beautiful is a particular variety of the agreeable or pleasurable: that which characterises those things which cause pleasure to us through sight and hearing. Thus the men, the ornaments, the works of painting or sculpture, upon which we look with admiration,[26] are called beautiful: also songs, music, poetry, fable, discourse, in like manner; nay even laws, customs, pursuits, which we consider beautiful, might be brought under the same head.[27]
[26] Plat. Hipp. Maj. 298 A-B.
[27] Plat. Hipp. Maj. 298 D.
Professor Bain observes: — “The eye and the ear are the great avenues to the mind for the æsthetic class of influences; the other senses are more or less in the monopolist interest. The blue sky, the green woods, and all the beauties of the landscape, can fill the vision of a countless throng of admirers. So with the pleasing sounds, &c.” ‘The Emotions and the Will.’ ch. xiv. (The Æsthetic Emotions), sect. 2, p. 226, 3rd ed.
Objections to this last — What property is there common to both sight and hearing, which confers upon the pleasures of these two senses the exclusive privilege of being beautiful?
The objector, however, must now be dealt with. He will ask us — Upon what ground do you make so marked a distinction between the pleasures of sight and hearing, and other pleasures? Do you deny that these others (those of taste, smell, eating, drinking, sex) are really pleasures? No, surely (we shall reply); we admit them to be pleasures, — but no one will tolerate us in calling them beautiful: especially the pleasures of sex, which as pleasures are the greatest of all, but which are ugly and disgraceful to behold. He will answer — I understand you: you are ashamed to call these pleasures beautiful, because they do not seem so to the multitude: but I did not ask you, what seems beautiful to the multitude — I asked you, what is beautiful.[28] You mean to affirm, that all pleasures which do not belong to sight and hearing, are not beautiful: Do you mean, all which do not belong to both? or all which do not belong to one or the other? We shall reply — To either one of the two — or to both the two. Well! but, why (he will ask) do you single out these pleasures of sight and hearing, as beautiful exclusively? What is there peculiar in them, which gives them a title to such distinction? All pleasures are alike, so far forth as pleasures, differing only in the more or less. Next, the pleasures of sight cannot be considered as beautiful by reason of their coming through sight — for that reason would not apply to the pleasures of hearing: nor again can the pleasures of hearing be considered as beautiful by reason of their coming through hearing.[29] We must find something possessed as well by sight as by hearing, common to both, and peculiar to them, — which confers beauty upon the pleasures of both and of each. Any attribute of one, which does not also belong to the other, will not be sufficient for our purpose.[30] Beauty must depend upon some essential characteristic which both have in common.[31] We must therefore look out for some such characteristic, which belongs to both as well as to each separately.