reast, from the
clown to the greatest philosopher, his point of sublimity!

CHAPTER II.

On the ORIGIN of our IDEAS of BEAUTY.

In proportion as the principles of beauty exist in the common form,
undetermined to the common eye, so do they exist in common sense,
undetermined to the common mind. It is cultivation that calls them
into view, gives them a determined form, creates the object, and the
perception, that

'Truth and good are one,
And beauty dwells in them, and they in her.'
AKENSIDE.

But, though all truth resolves into one truth, one beauty, one
good, as all colours resolve into one light; though the scientifical
intellectual colours, classes, or leading principles of science, the
_physical_, the _moral_, the _metaphysical_, &c. &c. resolve into
intellectual light, beauty, or good; it is, I imagine, the moral
truth, that is the characteristic truth of beauty: for, were we to
analyse the pleasing emotions we feel at the sight of beauty, we
should, I imagine, find them composed of our most refined moral
affections; and hence the universal interesting charm of beauty. And,
as those affections refine by culture, hence the different degrees of
the sentiments which beauty creates in the rustic, and in the man of
taste. The former perceives only the physical charm of beauty, the
freshness of colour, the bloom of youth, &c. but, to the man of taste,
the physical pleases only through the medium of the moral: _the body
charms because the soul is seen_; beauty, in his breast, is the source
from whence _endless streams of fair ideas flow_, extending throughout
the whole region of taste, no object of which but is more or less
related to the principles of human beauty. But taste, though a subject
almost inseparable from that of beauty, I must forbear to enlarge upon
in this chapter, as I propose to make it the particular subject of my
next.

It is but at that period, at which we begin to perceive the charms of
moral virtue, that we begin to perceive the real charms of beauty. It
is true, a man may attain, by experience, the knowledge of its just
proportions; without that concomitant sentiment. He may be unconscious
of the characteristic moral charm resulting from the whole. And
an artist, I imagine, by the habitual practice of the rules which
constitute beauty, may produce forms which charm the moral sense of
others, without being conscious of it himself; the utmost limit of
the ru