“When the particular associations we have with such colours, are destroyed, their beauty is destroyed at the same time.
“The different machines, instruments, &c., which minister to the convenience of Life, have, in general, from the materials of which they are composed, or from the uses to which they are applied, a fixed and determinate colour. This colour becomes accordingly in some degree beautiful, from its being the sign of such qualities; change the accustomed colour of such objects, and every man feels a kind of disappointment. This is so strong, that, even if a colour more generally beautiful is substituted, yet still our dissatisfaction is the same; and the new colour, instead of being beautiful, becomes the reverse. Rose-colour, for instance, is a more beautiful colour than that of Mahogany: yet, if any man were to paint his doors and windows with Rose-colour, he would certainly not add to their beauty. The colour of a polished steel grate is agreeable, but is not in itself very beautiful. Suppose it painted green, or violet, or crimson, all of them colours much more beautiful, and the beauty of it is altogether destroyed. Instances of this kind are innumerable.”[47]
[47] The elements contributed by association are certainly more predominant in the pleasure of colours than in that of musical sounds; yet I am convinced that there is a direct element of physical pleasure in colours, anterior to association. My own memory recals to me the intense and mysterious delight which in early childhood I had in the colours of certain flowers; a delight far exceeding any I am now capable of receiving from colour of any description, with all its acquired associations. And this was the case at far too early an age, and with habits of observation far too little developed, to make any of the subtler combinations of form and proportion a source of much pleasure to me. This last pleasure was acquired very gradually, and did not, until after the commencement of manhood, attain any considerable height. The examples quoted from Alison do not prove that there is no original beauty in colours, but only that the feeling of it is capable, as no one doubts that it is capable, of being overpowered by extraneous associations.
Whether there is any similar organic basis of the pleasure derived from form, so far at least as this depends on proportion, I would not undertake to decide.
The susceptibility to the physical pleasures produced by colours and musical sounds, (and by forms if any part of the pleasure they afford is physical), is probably extremely different in different organisations. In natures in which any one of these susceptibilities is originally faint, more will depend on association. The extreme sensibility of this part of our constitution to small and unobvious influences, makes it certain that the sources of the feelings of beauty and deformity must be, to a material extent, different in different individuals.—Ed.
247 Mr. Alison produces a very long line of illustrations to show that the Beauty of FORMS is not the mere sensation of Form, but consists, as in the case of sounds and colours, in the train of pleasurable ideas associated with the sensation. Mr. Alison is less happy, and more tedious, in the illustration of this than the preceding parts of his subject. We shall make little use of his proofs; because we can arrive, by a short process, at a very satisfactory conclusion.
Mr. Alison seems not to have been aware of the 248 origin of our ideas of Form; and thence in expounding them has found many difficulties which do not in reality belong to the subject. He supposes that Form is altogether a sensation of sight. In a [former part] of this Inquiry, we ascertained the sensations: we saw that Form, in all its cases, is merely a modification of extension; that it is made known to us, by those feelings, which accompany the motion of certain of our members, as that of a finger, or a hand. Those feelings are in no danger of being confounded with the emotion of Beauty. They are feelings so completely indifferent, that in most of the associations into which the ideas of them enter as essential ingredients they are overlooked, and the very existence of them is commonly unknown.
If the sensation is no cause of the Pleasure derived from Forms, it will not be questioned that association is the cause.
Forms are either Animate or Inanimate. The associations with the Animate only differ from those with the Inanimate, in holding some additional ingredients. Some Forms affect us, by their magnitude, naturally associated with the idea of Power; some, by the uses to which they are applied, as the more powerful instruments of war; some, by the extent of their duration, with which we have obvious associations; some, by the splendour or magnificence, with the ideas of which they are associated,—the Throne, the Diadem, the Triumphal Car.
The natural movements of the arm, from its turning in its socket as round a centre, are all waving; circles, or portions of circles, running into one another. All other movements are forced upon it, 249 and the effect of constraint. Hence the beauty of waving lines, because associated with the agreeable ideas of Ease, and absence of Restraint.