As nothing is more agreeable to us than to trace the operation of design, of successful contrivance, some Forms affect us strongly by the idea of their Fitness, of their adaptation to an End.
Others affect us not only by the idea of their adaptation to an end, but by the value which we attach to the end. In this case it is by their utility that they are said to please us.
We associate with the idea of certain states of the Human Body, or at least of the Bodies of Animals in general, certain inward Dispositions; with great strength we associate great Wilfulness, and little regard of others; with frailness, we associate Delicacy, the ideas of gentleness, compliance, and regard for others. The forms of inanimate objects sometimes bear such an analogy to the Delicate and Frail in human Forms, that the ideas associated with the animate, are called up by the inanimate, and produce the emotion of Beauty.
This emotion, however, is altogether prevented, when the more potent idea of Fitness intervenes. Any thing analogous to the slender form, which is so exquisitely beautiful in the more elegant grasses, would be a real deformity in the oak.
More than one of those sources of agreeable association are often united in the same subject, and increase the emotion produced by it.
Mr. Alison goes on to the exposition of the associations which constitute the Beauty of Motion, and the Beauty of the Human Form and Countenance. 250 But after what has been said, these associations are not difficult to trace; and I have already carried the illustration of this subject farther than I should have done, if I had not regarded this case of Association as affording most important aid toward the developement of all the more mysterious phenomena of the Human Mind.
We have here a class of Pleasures; the Feeling of Beauty, the Feeling of Sublimity; exercising a great influence over all cultivated minds. These Feelings, when taken as objects of general contemplation, appear perfectly simple. To such a degree have they assumed the appearance of simple and original feelings of our nature, even to Philosophers of eminence, that a particular sense has been supposed necessary to account for their existence. Yet all this apparent simplicity is only an exemplification of that association, by which a multitude of ideas are so intimately, and instantaneously blended together, that they appear to be not many ideas, but one idea.
Of this highly important fact, we have had occasion to take notice of various leading cases, before. In the present case, however, there is a peculiarity; which it has in common with the various cases called Affection, which we have recently been engaged in considering. In the cases which occurred for examination, in the earlier part of this Inquiry, where we found long trains of Ideas so blended together, by association, as to appear not many ideas, but one; that of Motion, that of Space, that of Time, that of Personal Identity; the ideas associated were those of indifferent sensations. The ideas, on the other hand, which are associated under the terms 251 Beauty and Sublimity, are ideas of pleasurable sensations. The difference is that which is testified by every man’s consciousness.
That there should be a remarkable difference between a train composed of ideas of the indifferent class, and a train composed of ideas of the pleasurable class, can be easily supposed. It is necessary further to observe, that between two trains, both of the pleasurable class, there are such important differences, as to have suggested the use of marking them by different names. Thus, even in the class which we have been now considering, one train is composed of pleasurable ideas, of such a kind, that we call it sublime; another, of pleasurable ideas of such a kind, that we call it Beautiful. From the train of ideas associated with the form of the statue called the Venus de Medicis, we call it beautiful. We have a train of ideas, also pleasurable, associated with the bust of Socrates. But this is a train not reckoned to belong to the class either of the beautiful or the sublime; it is a train including all the grand associations connected with the ideas of intellectual, and moral, worth.
A particular description of the sort of ideas which constitute each of the more remarkable cases of our pleasurable trains (that they are of one kind in one train, of another kind in another train,—of one kind, for example, in the trains called Sublimity, another in the trains called Beauty, another in the trains for which we have no better name than moral approbation, no one can doubt) would be highly necessary in a detailed account of Human Nature. It is not necessary for the Analysis which is the object of this 252 Work; and would engage us in too tedious an exposition.[48]