ion; it follows that the human creature has greatly more
accurate and distinct sense of vision than that of any other animal. Whence
as he advances to maturity he gradually acquires a sense of female beauty,
which at this time directs him to the object of his new passion.

Sentimental love, as distinguished from the animal passion of that name,
with which it is frequently accompanied, consists in the desire or
sensation of beholding, embracing, and saluting a beautiful object.

The characteristic of beauty therefore is that it is the object of love;
and though many other objects are in common language called beautiful, yet
they are only called so metaphorically, and ought to be termed agreeable. A
Grecian temple may give us the pleasurable idea of sublimity, a Gothic
temple may give us the pleasurable idea of variety, and a modern house the
pleasurable idea of utility; music and poetry may inspire our love by
association of ideas; but none of these, except metaphorically, can be
termed beautiful; as we have no wish to embrace or salute them.

Our perception of beauty consists in our recognition by the sense of vision
of those objects, first, which have before inspired our love by the
pleasure, which they have afforded to many of our senses: as to our sense
of warmth, of touch, of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and, secondly,
which bear any analogy of form to such objects.

When the babe, soon after it is born into this cold world, is applied to
its mother's bosom; its sense of perceiving warmth is first agreeably
affected; next its sense of smell is delighted with the odour of her milk;
then its taste is gratified by the flavour of it: afterwards the appetites
of hunger and of thirst afford pleasure by the possession of their objects,
and by the subsequent digestion of the aliment; and, lastly, the sense of
touch is delighted by the softness and smoothness of the milky fountain,
the source of such variety of happiness.

All these various kinds of pleasure at length become associated with the
form of the mother's breast; which the infant embraces with its hands,
presses with its lips, and watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more
accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom, than of the odour and
flavour or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses. And hence at our
maturer years, when any object of vision is presented to us, which by its
waving or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the