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fashion is indiscriminately adopted upon the blind prin- 

 ciple of imitation, and without any consideration of the 

 differences of climate, constitution, or habits of life, and 

 every one who presumes to deviate from it is thought an 

 odd mortal, a humorist void of all just feeling, taste, or 

 elegance. The fashion continues in the full exercise of its 

 tyranny for a few years or months, when another, perhaps 

 still more whimsical and unmeaning, starts into being and 

 deposes it ; all are then instantly astonished that they could 

 ever have been pleased even for a moment with anything 

 o tasteless, barbarous, and absurd. The revolutions in dress 

 only, not to mention those in building, furnishing, garden- 

 ing, &c., which have taken place within the last two cen- 

 turies afford ample illustration ' Let no one imagine,' 



says Mr. Knight, ' that he solves the question by saying 

 that there have been errors in taste, as there have been in 

 religion and philosophy; for the cases are totally different : 

 religion and philosophy being matter of belief, reason, and 

 opinion ; but taste being a matter of feeling, so that what- 

 ever was really and considerately thought to be ornamental 

 must have been previously felt to be so ; and though 

 opinions may by argument or demonstration be proved to 

 be wrong, how shall an individual pretend to prove the 

 feelings of a whole age or nation wrong, when the only 

 just criterion he can apply to ascertain the rectitude of his 

 own is their congruity with those of the generality of his 

 species.' (c. i., p. 1.) 



This argument is founded on an exaggeration of a fact 

 in reference to the philosophy of taste admitted by those 

 who contend that taste is determined by some definite and 

 invariable principles: the fact may be described under 

 the general head of the influence of association on our 

 emotions of this order. Mr. Dugald Stewart has observed 

 on the exaggeration in question, that the association of 

 ideas can never account for the origin of a new notion, or 

 of a pleasure essentially different from all the others which 

 we know. It may indeed enable us to conceive how a 

 thing indifferent in itself may become a source of pleasure 

 by being connected in the mind with something else which 

 is naturally agreeable ; but it presupposes in every in- 

 stance the existence of those notions and those feelings 

 which it is its province to combine : insomuch that it will 

 be found wherever association produces a change in our 

 judgments in matters of taste, it does so by cooperating 

 with some natural principle of the mind, and implies the 

 existence of certain original sources of pleasure and un- 

 easiness. This suggests si distinction in the circumstances 

 which please in the objects of taste, between those which 

 please in consequence of casual associations and those 

 which are fitted to please by nature. The perfection of 

 tii-.tr in reference to the last depends upon the degree in 

 which the mind is free from casual associations ; in re- 

 ference to the first it depends upon the facility with which 

 such associations are formed. (Elements of the Philosophy 

 of tin' Uiiinnii Mind, c. v., p. ii., p. 364, 4to.) 



The different modes in which association operates have 

 bi-rn illustrated with much elegance, and their true place 

 in the philosophy of taste distinguished, by Mr. Alison : 

 ' Fashion," he remarks, ' may be considered in general as 

 the custom of the great. It is the dress, the furniture, the 

 language, the manners of the great world, which constitute 

 what is called the fashion in each of these articles, and 

 which the rest of mankiud are in such haste to adopt after 

 their example. Whatever the real beauty or propriety of 

 (hot; articles may be, it is not in this light that we con- 

 sider them. They are the signs of that elegance and taste 

 and splendour which is so liberally attributed to elevated 

 rank : they are associated with the consequence which such 

 situations bestow ; and they establish a kind of distinction 

 between this envied station and those humble and mor- 

 tifying conditions of life to which no man is willing to 

 belong. It is in the light therefore of thi* connection only 

 that we are disposed to consider them ; and they accord- 

 ingly affect us with the same emotion of delight which we 

 receive from the consideration of taste or elegance in more 

 permanent instances.' (Essays on Taste, Essay i.) 



Association then can only modify, it cannot wholly ac- 

 count for our emotion of taste, and it cannot even modify 

 except by operating in a manner which implies certain ori- 

 ginal sources of pleasure and uneasiness in the objects of 

 our emotion. In some cases association heightens the 

 agreeable or disagreeable effect of objects ; in others all 

 the delight or ilisgii>,t which we experience can be resolved 

 P. C., No. IfKX). 



into the influence of association. The distinction implies 

 the fact insisted on. What constitutes the distinction, or 

 where are we to find its explanation ? We may with pro 

 priety employ our reason in reducing particular phenomena 

 to general principles ; but we must in the end arrive at 

 principles of which there is no other account to be given 

 jthan that such is the will of the author of our nature. We 

 cannot explain why such forms please or displease ; we 

 must stop short at the discovery of the respects in which 

 they please or displease. (Stewart.) 



Sir Joshua Reynolds has referred the idea of beauty to 

 some ' central form' in the objects of our perception. 'All 

 the objects which are exhibited to our view by nature, 

 upon close examination, will be found,' he says, ' to have 

 their blemishes and defects. The most beautiful forms 

 have something about them like weakness, minuteness, or 

 imperfection : but it is not every eye that perceives these 

 blemishes ; it must be an eye long used to the contempla- 

 tion and comparison of these forms ; and which, by a long 

 habit of observing what any set of objects of the same 

 kind have in common, has acqu'ired the power of discern- 

 ing what each wants in particular. This long laborious 

 comparison should be the first, study of the painter who 

 aims at the greatest style. By this means he acquires a 

 just idea of beautiful forms ; he corrects nature by herself, 

 her imperfect state by her more perfect. His eye being 

 enabled to distinguish the accidental deficiencies, excres- 

 cences, and deformities of things from their general figures, 

 he makes out an abstract idea of their forms more perfect 

 than any one original ; and, what may seem a paradox, he 

 learns to design naturally by drawing his figures unlike to 

 any one object. (Discourse III.) He observes in ex- 

 planation in another part of the same discourse : ' To the 

 principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each 

 species of beings is an invariable one, it may be objected, 

 that in every particular species there are various central 

 forms which are separate and distinct from each other, and 

 yet are undeniably beautiful ; that in the human figure, 

 for instance, the beauty of Hercules is one ; of the Gla- 

 diator another ; of Apollo another ; which makes so many 

 different ideas of beauty. It is true indeed that these 

 figures are each perfect in their kind, though of different 

 characters and proportions ; but still none of them is the 

 representation of an individual, but of a class : and as 

 there is one general form which, as I have said, belongs to 

 the human kind at large, so in each of these classes there 

 is one common idea and central form, which is the abstract 

 of the various individual forms belonging to that class. 

 Thus, though the forms of childhood and age differ ex- 

 ceedingly, there is a common form in childhood and a 

 common form in age, which is the more perfect as it is 

 more remote from all peculiarities. But .... though the 

 most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the 

 human figure are ideal, and superior to any individual 

 form of that class, yet the highest perfection of the human 

 figure is not to be found in any one of them. It is not in 

 the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the Apollo, but. 

 in that form which is taken from all, and which partakes 

 equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of 

 the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. 

 For perfect beauty in any species must combine all the 

 characters which are beautiful in that species. It cannot 

 consist in any one to the exclusion of the rest ; no one 

 therefore must be predominant, that no one may be de- 

 ficient. . . . There is likewise a kind of symmetry or pro- 

 portion which may properly be said to belong to de- 

 formity. A figure lean or corpulent, tall or short, though 

 deviating from beauty, may still have a certain union of 

 the various parts, which may contribute to make them on 

 the whole not unpleasing.' 



This theory (the principle of which extends to other 

 objects of taste besides those contemplated by Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds) reconciles the apparent inconsistency, insisted 

 on by Mr. Payne Knight and by other writers of the same 

 school, between the decisions of taste in one country and 

 in another, as tending to show that the standard of taste is 

 wholly arbitrary. The ideal beauty of the African is the 

 result of the process which has been described applied to 

 the coloured inhabitants of Africa, as the ideal beauty of 

 the European is the result of the same process applied 

 to the inhabitants of Europe. To institute a compari- 

 son between the beauty of the European and that of the 

 African, and to conclude that taste has no invariable 



VOL. XXIV. O 



