122 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IL 



Nor Is Virtue without its Enthufiarm ; for a Man truly Vir- 

 tuous has the higheft Admiration of the Fair Forin^ which, as Cicero 

 fays, if it could be feen with the eyes, incredibiles Amoves excitarec 

 Jul : But 1 fay it is feen, and by an eye much purer than the bo- 

 dily eye, and its Beauty preferred to that of any corporeal Form. 



The Fine Arts, too, fuch as Sculpture and Painting, are admired 

 with a certain degree of Enthufiafm, but not fo great as that with 

 which we admire the Beauty of Charader and Sentiments : For the 

 fineft Statue or Pidurc is feen with dry eyes ; but a generous, noble. 

 Sentiment, exprcffed either in verfc or profe, will' make the tear 

 Hart to the eye, and afled the voice fo much, in perfons of great 

 Senlibility, that tlicy can hardly read the paflage ; for it is by tears, 

 and the alteration of the voice, that Nature expreffes, not only 

 Grief and Diftrefs, and the paflion of Pity for the fufferings of o- 

 thcrs, but alfo our Senfe of the Beautiful and Noble in Sentiments 

 and Adions. But no profpedt of utility, either for ourfelves or o- 

 thers, will excite any fuch commotion in us. 



There is an Enthufiafm belonging, not only to Philofophy and 

 the Fine Arts, but alfo to the inferior Sciences. Of thefe, the Ma- 

 thematical Science has, I believe, the leaft of that paffion : And yet 

 I fhould reckon a Geometer, Mechanic, or Computer, of no genius 

 even in his own art, if he had no Senfe of the Beauties of his The- 

 orems ; but it Is impoffible, by the nature of things, that he can 

 have the fame rapturous and ecftatlc emotions of Mind, let him 

 meafure, compute, and inveftigate, the properties of Figures ever fo 

 fuccefsfully, as the Philofopher who contemplates the Wifdom and 



Good- 



Where the reader may obferve, that the lad line is jufl: a pharaphrafe of the horrar 

 of Lucretius. — I have enlarged the more upon this paflage of Horace, that I think 

 it has not been rightly underftood by any of the commentators. 



