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FRAGMF.XT?! 0\ TflR BK AtlTIlTr,. 



Of the etlorLs and power of thai wliicli men call (lie Boaiilifnl, I shall 

 say little. Bnt we shall have to do with eflects only as they throw light 

 upon causes. It has ever appeared to us that in the investigation of rea- 

 sons, in natnre, in art, and in morals, the chief ground of failure in at- 

 taining delinite and satisfactory results, has been, that men have looked 

 too much for the proximate and too little for the final cause. They have 

 referred facts confessedly of the same general class to different agencies, 

 forgetting that it is the community o|" tlieir origin, which has thus thrown 

 them together. Instead of investigating in the world of taste the great 

 principles of emotion, they have amused themselves with making cata- 

 logues of the secondary agents. Nor is the reason dithcult to attain ; 

 for far less of observation and acuteness is required to show that a con- 

 sciousness of the beautiful is excited by a rose, a landscape, or a charm- 

 ing face, than to tell, why and how they produce it, and in what sense 

 they are its cause. 



On this subject the most important inquiry is that, which seeks the 

 one general principle to which all this class of emotions is to be refer- 

 red. The theory which we shall present on this vexed subject, is purely 

 the result of a personal examination of evidence and consciousness. 

 Otiiers may have come to the same conclusion with ourselves, indeed 

 with our full conviction of its simplicity and truth, we can scarce con- 

 ceive how it could be otherwise. But to them, should we be so happy 

 as to prove our point, we have no debt to acknowledge — neither shall 

 we shelter ourselves beneath their names if our view shall be censured 

 as untenable, nor charge on them the offence of our perversion. 



The beautiful is not in the object contemplated, but in the soul that 

 contemplates it. The eye and the ear only guide the hand of the 

 spirit as it draws forth by the aid of nature seen, or the invisible 

 world of thought, the beautiful already existing within itself, and 

 which by their help may be best developed. The idea has been main- 

 tained, that there is an intuitive perception of what is beautiful, that the 

 soul has in itself a kind of model by comparing objects with which it 

 pronounces them beautiful or the contrary. For thus they reason : when 

 we see an object which we at once pronounce to be beautiful — we must 

 do so by comparing it with some standard already existing in the mind. 

 Now, this standard cannot be the recollection of any other beautiful ob- 

 ject previ(jusly seen, for to suppose so only shifts the didiculty. For 

 what made me tiiink that former oliject beautiful ? How came I for the 

 first time to regard an object as beautiful? P'roni lliis tiicy infer, thai there 



