There are many qualities of the mind which are always considered as amiable, and excite affection in those who contemplate them; such are innocence, condescension, humanity, natural affection, and the whole train of the soft and gentle virtues. It is to such qualities that the epithet of the beautiful in hu man character properly belongs ; and the analogy between them and the properties in material objects which are justly termed beautiful, is sufficiently ap parent, as both are expressive of delicacy or tender ness. There are, on the other hand, certain virtues of the mind that raise admiration rather than affec tion ; and are therefore sublime rather than beauti ful; such as magnanimity, fortitude, self-command, superiority to pain and labour, superiority to plea.
sure, and to the smiles of fortune, as well as her frowns. These awful virtues constitute what is most grind in the human character ; the gentle virtues; what is most beautiful and lovely. Thus the qualities Of mind are a copious iottice both of beauty and sub limity : " Mind, minds, alonel hear wi1rie14:, earth and heaven, The living fountains in itself contains Of beauteous and saldime. Ilere, hand in hand, it paramount the Graets. Ilere, enthroned, Celestial Venus with divinN: airs, Ini trek tile soh' to tic‘er-faditigk'..' ARer:sum.
" Those virtues,'' says Mr admiration, and are of the sublimer kind, prod'u7: terror rather than lose; such as fortitude, justice, ivisdom, and the like. Never was any than amiable by force of these qualities. Those which engage our hearts, Which impress us ivith a sense of lovell oeit, are the softer virtues ; easiness of temper, coin passion, kindness, and liberality; though certainly those latter are of less immediate and inomentous concerti to tdciety, and of legs dignity. But It is fell that reason that they are sd amiable. The great kir tues turn principally on dahgers, punishinents, and troubles, and are exercised rather hi preventing the worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favours ; and are Therefore not lovely, though highly Venerable. The 'subordinate, turn on reliefs, gratifications, And indill ences ; and are therefore more lovely, though in ferior in dignity. Those persons who creep into the hearts of people, who are choSen as the com panions of their softer hours, and their reliefs froni care and arikiety, are never persons of shining qualities, tib• Strong virtues. It is rather the soft green Of the Soil on which we rest our eyes when they are Fatigued 'ith beholding more glaring objects. It. is worth bbservirig how we feel OiirseK'es affected iii reading the characters of Csar and Cato, as they are to finely draWn and contrasted in Sallust. In one, the in the other, nil la'rgiendo. In 'one, the 0:iseris ie'rAdinni; in the other, malts pbridaerii. In the latter we hate niuch td admire, rlllch to re'ererke, and perhaps sbfileihing to fear we respect hitt), lint 'We 'respect hini at a 'distance. The former makes us familiar with hirti ; we lore and he leads us whether he 'pleases. To draw things closer to ou'• first and mo'st natural feelingh, I will add a remark made upon reading this section by an ingenious friend. The authority of a father, 'to useful to our kvell-bning, and so justly venerable upon all accounts, bidders us from having that entire love for him that We have fob Otti moth'ers, where the parental is almost melted down Into 1U mother's fondne'ss and indulgence. But we e tierally have a great love for our grandfathers, in %vhom this authority is 'removed a degree from us, and where the weakness of age mellows it into tome thing of a feminine palliality." Enquiry info the ftb?iiiie and 13eautifid, Part iii. Sect. 10.
So powerful is the influence of the beauty of mind upon our and 'so intimate the chinked& between that kind of beauty, and the expression which belong's to every beautiful object Of the mate rial world, that various writers, both ancient and modern, have been disposed to affirm, that (natter dedies all Sits beauty froth the eiptessidn of certain qualities of Wind. Such is the doctrine that appears to have been taught in the Platonic school ; anti which has been maintained by Several writers of emi nence in this country, particularly by Lord Shafts bury, Dr Hutcheson, Dr Akensidc, Dr Spence ; and by Dr Reid, in his Essays on the Intellectual Powe:s of Man. Mr Alison, although the inves
tigations which he has sd successfully conducted concerning the real sources of the beautiful, all tend to establish the general principle, that beauty it re solVable into expression, is not disposal to give an unqualified assent to this theory. " If," says he, this doctrine it is only meant that matter is not beautiful in fish:4 without refetence to mind; and that its beauty the expressions which an intelligent mind connectsv-:ith and perceives in it, I readily agree to it ; and perhaP'..t.h.e preceding illus. trations may afford it some farther C` infirmation, by pointing out, more than has Iherto been done, some of the principal classes of •siont. But if it is further meant, that beautiful only by being expressive of the qualities of rnihd; and that all the beauty of the terfd, as well as of the intellectual world, is to bg found in Mind, and its qualities alone, there seems goine reason for hesitation before We adroit this con cluSion. That the only subjects of our knowledge dre [natters and mind, cannot be denied; but it does init follow; that all the qualities with which we are acquainted, trust be the proper qualities either of body or of mind. There are a number of qualities which arise from i-elation; frdrh the relation of dif ferent bodies or parts of bodies to each other ; froin the relation of body to mind ; and from the relation of different qualities of mind to each other, that are as mfich the objects of our knowledge, and as fre the objects of our attention, ab any of the proper qualities, either of body or mind. Many qua lities also of this kind arc productive of emotion. In htead, therefore, of concluding that the beauty of Mailer arises from the expression of the qualities of Mind, we shall rest in a more humble, but, as I ap prehend, a more definite chhclusion. That the beau ty of the qualities of matter arises from their being the 'signs on expressions of such qualities as are fitted by the constitution of our nature to produce cm°. don." Before bringing this article to a close, it may proper to remark, that the leading principle to which we have been conducted by the preceding ample ana Ifsis, very nearly with the conclusions of Professor Stewart, respecting the source of our ap probation of the beautiful, as given to the world in his late volume of Philosophical Essays. It is the opinion of that philosopher, that the term 'beauty is first of all applied to whatever is naturally pleasing or delightful in colours, in some of which, there is an e'saciftial and inherent source of gratification, in con Sequence of their agreeable action on our sense of 'tight, as We have had occasion to observe above. Froth this early and limited application, the epithet beaidi ful is, he thinks, gradually and tnetaprhOrically extended to indicate whatever is pleasing in external nature, either, by its inherent qualities, or by the 0 powerful influ_ice of casual association ; and in the end it is applied even to the relations fitness, pro portion, or utility, the perception of which always implies some operation of the rational faculty.
It is evidently to the expression of objects, rather than to any precise and regularly recurring peculiari ties in their constitution, that Mr Stewart ascribes their beauty ; as, in the greatest variety of cases, it is by the influence of association alone that he ex plains our approbation, and accounts for the delight with which we contemplate whatever we consider as entitled to the name of beautiful. See Burke's Phi losophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Hogarth's Analysis of Beauty. Hutcheson's Inquiry concerning Beauty, &c. Price's Review of the principal Questions in Morals. Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Sayer's Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary. Alison's Essays on Taste. Stewart's Philosophical Essays. (at)