But others there are who believe beauty to be merely a relative and arbitrary thing; that, indeed, it was a benevolent provision in nature to annex so delightful a sensation to those objects which are best and most perfect in themselves, that so we might be engaged to the choice of them at once, and without staying to infer their usefulness from their structure and effects; but that it is not impossible, in a physical sense, that two beings, of equal capacities for truth, should perceive, one of them beauty, and the other deformity, in the same proportions. And upon this supposition, by that truth which is always connected with beauty, nothing more can be meant than the conformity of any object to those proportions upon which, after careful examination, the beauty of that species is found to depend. Polycletus, for instance, a famous ancient sculptor, from an accurate mensuration of the several parts of the most perfect human bodies, deduced a canon or system of proportions, which was the rule of all succeeding artists. Suppose a statue modelled according to this: a man of mere natural taste, upon looking at it, without entering into its proportions, confesses and admires its beauty; whereas a professor of the art applies his measures to the head, the neck, or the hand, and, without attending to its beauty, pronounces the workmanship to be just and true.
[Footnote 1: This the Athenians did in a peculiar manner, by the words [Greek: kalokagathus] and [Greek: kalokagathia].]
ENDNOTE G.
'As when Brutus rose,' etc.—P. 18.
Cicero himself describes this fact—'Cassare interfecto—statim cruentum alte extollens M. Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem nominatim exclamavit, atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus.' —Cic. Philipp. ii. 12.
ENDNOTE H.
'Where Virtue rising from the awful depth Of Truth's mysterious bosom,' etc.—P. 20.
According to the opinion of those who assert moral obligation to be founded on an immutable and universal law; and that which is usually called the moral sense, to be determined by the peculiar temper of the imagination and the earliest associations of ideas.
ENDNOTE I.
'Lycéum.'—P. 21.