not imagine to be the real cause.

[21] Part IV. sect. 4, 5, 6.

[22] Sect. 3.

[23] Vide Part I. sect. 6.

PART III.

SECTION I.

OF BEAUTY.

It is my design to consider beauty as distinguished from the sublime;
and, in the course of the inquiry, to examine how far it is consistent
with it. But previous to this, we must take a short review of the
opinions already entertained of this quality; which I think are hardly
to be reduced to any fixed principles; because men are used to talk of
beauty in a figurative manner, that is to say, in a manner extremely
uncertain, and indeterminate. By beauty, I mean that quality, or those
qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar
to it. I confine this definition to the merely sensible qualities of
things, for the sake of preserving the utmost simplicity in a subject,
which must always distract us whenever we take in those various causes
of sympathy which attach us to any persons or things from secondary
considerations, and not from the direct force which they have merely on
being viewed. I likewise distinguish love, (by which I mean that
satisfaction which arises to the mind upon contemplating anything
beautiful, of whatsoever nature it may be,) from desire or lust; which
is an energy of the mind, that hurries us on to the possession of
certain objects, that do not affect us as they are beautiful, but by
means altogether different. We shall have a strong desire for a woman of
no remarkable beauty; whilst the greatest beauty in men, or in other
animals, though it causes love, yet excites nothing at all of desire.
Which shows that beauty, and the passion caused by beauty, which I call
love, is different from desire, though desire may sometimes operate
along with it; but it is to this latter that we must attribute those
violent and tempestuous passions, and the consequent emotions of the
body which attend what is called love in some of its ordinary
acceptations, and not to the effects of beauty merely as it is such.

SECTION II.

PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.

Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain proportions of
parts. On considering the matter, I have great reason to doubt, whether
beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates
almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order seems to do; and it
must therefore be considered as a creature of the understanding, rather
than a p