n its capacity of
suffering. In one word, Man is a whole, _an Individual_.

If the preceding argument be admitted, it will be found to have
relieved the student of two delusive dogmas,--and the more delusive,
as carrying with them a plausible show of science.

As to the flowery declamations about Beauty, they would not here be
noticed, were they not occasionally met with in works of high merit,
and not unfrequently mixed up with philosophic truth. If they have
any definite meaning, it amounts to this,--that the Beautiful is the
summit of every possible excellence! The extravagance, not to say
absurdity, of such a proposition, confounding, as it does, all
received distinctions, both in the moral and the natural world, needs
no comment. It is hardly to be believed, however, that the writers in
question could have deliberately intended this. It is more probable,
that, in so expressing themselves, they were only giving vent to an
enthusiastic feeling, which we all know is generally most vague when
associated with admiration; it is not therefore strange that the
ardent expression of it should partake of its vagueness. Among the
few critical works of authority in which the word is so used, we may
mention the (in many respects admirable) Discourses of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, where we find the following sentence:--"The _beauty_ of
the Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another;
which, of course, would present three different Ideas of Beauty." If
this had been said of various animals, differing in _kind_, the
term so applied might, perhaps, have been appropriate. But the same
term is here applied to objects of the same kind, differing not
essentially even in age; we say _age_, inasmuch as in the three
great divisions, or periods, of human life, namely, childhood,
youth, and maturity, the characteristic conditions of each are so
_essentially_ distinct, as virtually to separate them into
positive kinds.

But it is no less idle than invidious to employ our time in
overturning the errors of others; if we establish Truth, they will
fall of themselves. There cannot be two right sides to any question;
and, if we are right, what is opposed to us must of necessity he
wrong. Whether we are so or not must be determined by those who admit
or reject what has already been advanced on the subject of Beauty, in
the first Discourse. It will be remembered, that, in the course of our
argument there, we were brought to the co