them out; possible to divest every object of
that which makes it accidentally or temporarily pleasant, and to strip
it bare of distinctive qualities, until we arrive at those which it has
in common with all other beautiful things, which we may then safely
affirm to be the cause of its ultimate and true delightfulness.

Sec. 16. With what liabilities to error.

Now this process of reasoning will be that which I shall endeavor to
employ in the succeeding investigations, a process perfectly safe, so
long as we are quite sure that we are reasoning concerning objects which
produce in us one and the same sensation, but not safe if the sensation
produced be of a different nature, though it may be equally agreeable;
for what produces a different sensation must be a different cause. And
the difficulty of reasoning respecting beauty arises chiefly from the
ambiguity of the word, which stands in different people's minds for
totally different sensations, for which there can be no common cause.

When, for instance, Mr. Alison endeavors to support his position that
"no man is sensible to beauty in those objects with regard to which he
has not previous ideas," by the remark that "the beauty of a theory, or
of a relic of antiquity, is unintelligible to a peasant," we see at once
that it is hopeless to argue with a man who, under his general term
beauty, may, for anything we know, be sometimes speaking of mathematical
demonstrability and sometimes of historical interest; while even if we
could succeed in limiting the term to the sense of external
attractiveness, there would be still room for many phases of error; for
though the beauty of a snowy mountain and of a human cheek or forehead,
so far as both are considered as mere matter, is the same, and traceable
to certain qualities of color and line, common to both, and by reason
extricable, yet the flush of the cheek and moulding of the brow, as they
express modesty, affection, or intellect, possess sources of
agreeableness which are not common to the snowy mountain, and the
interference of whose influence we must be cautious to prevent in our
examination of those which are material and universal.[12]

Sec. 17. The term "beauty" how limitable in the outset. Divided into
typical and vital.

The first thing, then, that we have to do, is accurately to discriminate
and define those appearances from which we are about to reason as
belonging to beauty, properly so called, and