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PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

PART SECOND.

ESSAY FIRST.

ON THE BEAUTIFUL.

INTRODUCTION.

IN the volume which I have already published on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, when I have had occasion to speak of the Pleasures of Imagination, I have employed that phrase to denote the pleasures which arise from ideal creations or combinations, in contradistinction to those derived from the realities which human life presents to our senses. Mr. Addison, in his well-known and justly admired papers on this subject, uses the same words in a more extensive acceptation; to express the pleasures which beauty, greatness, or novelty, excite in the mind, when presented to it, either by the powers of perception,

by the faculty of imagination; distinguishing these two classes of agreeable effects, by calling the one primary, and the other secondary pleasures. As I propose to confine myself, in this Essay, to Beauty, the first of the three qualities mentioned by Addison, it is unnecessary for me to inquire, how far his enumeration is complete; or how far his classification is logical. But, as I shall have fre

quently occasion, in the sequel, to speak of the Pleasures of Imagination, I must take the liberty of remarking, in vindication of my own phraseology, that philosophical precision indispensably requires an exclusive limitation of that title to what Mr. Addison calls secondary pleasures; because, although ultimately founded on pleasures derived from our perceptive powers, they are yet (as will afterwards appear) characterized by some very remarkable circumstances, peculiar to themselves. It is true, that when we enjoy the beauties of a certain class of external objects, (for example, those of a landscape,) imagination is often, perhaps always, more or less busy; but the case is the same with various other intellectual principles, which must operate, in a greater or less degree, wherever men are to be found; such principles, for instance, as the association of ideas;-sympathy with the enjoyments of animated beings;—or a speculative curiosity concerning the uses and fitnesses, and systematical relations which are everywhere conspicuous in nature;* and, therefore, to refer to imagination alone, our perception of these beauties, together with all the various enjoyments, both intellectual and moral, which accompany it, is to sanction, by our very definitions, a partial and erroneous theory. I shall, accordingly, in this and in the following essays, continue to use the same language as formerly; separating, wherever the phenomena in question will admit of such a separation, the pleasures we receive immediately by

* To these principles must be added, in such a state of society as ours, the numberless acquired habits of observation and of thought, which diversify the effects of the very same perceptions in the minds of the painter; of the poet; of the landscape-gardener; of the farmer; of the civil or the military engineer; of the geological theorist, &c. &c. &c.

our senses, from those which depend on ideal combinations formed by the intellect.*

Agreeably to this distinction, I propose, in treating of Beauty, to begin with considering the more simple and general principles on which depend the pleasures that we experience in the case of actual perception; after which, I shall proceed to investigate the sources of those specific and characteristical charms which imagination lends to her own productions.

What Mr. Addison has called the Pleasures of Imagination, might be denominated, more correctly, the pleasures we receive from the objects of Taste; a power of the mind which is equally conversant with the pleasures arising from sensible things, and with such as result from the creations of human genius.

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ON THE BEAUTIFUL.

PART FIRST.

ON THE BEAUTIFUL, WHEN PRESENTED IMMEDIATELY TO OUR SENSES.

CHAPTER FIRST.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF INQUIRY, AND ON THE PLAN UPON WHICH IT IS PROPOSED TO EXAMINE IT.

THE word Beauty, and, I believe, the corresponding term in all languages whatever, is employed in a great variety of acceptations, which seem, on a superficial view, to have very little connection with each other; and among which it is not easy to trace the slightest shade of common or coincident meaning. It always, indeed, denotes something which gives not merely pleasure to the mind, buta certain refined species of pleasure, remote from those grosser indulgences which are common to us with the brutes; but it is not applicable universally in every case where such refined pleasures are received; being confined to those exclusively which form the proper objects of intellectual Taste. We speak of beautiful colours, beautiful forms, beautiful pieces of music:* We speak also of the

There is nothing singular in applying the word beauty to "sounds. The ancients observe the peculiar dignity of the senses

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