rimary cause acting on the senses and imagination. It is not by
the force of long attention and inquiry that we find any object to be
beautiful; beauty demands no assistance from our reasoning; even the
will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually causes some
degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the
ideas of heat or cold. To gain something like a satisfactory conclusion
in this point, it were well to examine what proportion is; since several
who make use of that word do not always seem to understand very clearly
the force of the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the
thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all
quantity is divisible, it is evident that every distinct part into which
any quantity is divided must bear some relation to the other parts, or
to the whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion.
They are discovered by mensuration, and they are the objects of
mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity
be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole; or
whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length,
or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it stands
neuter in the question: and it is from this absolute indifference and
tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of
their most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest
the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiassed to examine
the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to
the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from
greater, from lesser, from equality and inequality. But surely beauty is
no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to do with
calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out some
certain measures which we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as
simply considered, or as related to others; and we could call in those
natural objects, for whose beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to
this happy standard, and confirm the voice of our passions by the
determination of our reason. But since we have not this help, let us see
whether proportion can in any sense be considered as the cause of
beauty, as hath been so generally, and, by some, so confidently
affirmed. If proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must
derive that po