Thus Hume says, in his essay on the Standard of Taste, "Beauty is no quality of things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty." And so Dr. Reid, though in almost all his reasonings directly opposed to Hume, and though it may seem at variance with the fundamental principles of his own philosophy, and inconsistent with some of his own averments on the subject, seems to lean to the same opinion. "I apprehend," he says, "that it is in the moral and intellectual perfections of mind, and in its active powers, that beauty originally dwells; and that from this, as the fountain, all the beauty which we perceive in the visible world is derived." And, not to mention others, Dr. Alison, and notoriously Lord Jeffrey, have laboured hard, in their famous Essays on Beauty in trying to prove that it is not a property of things extra-mental and material at all, but only an emotion of the soul unconsciously projected on the canvass of nature through the power of habit and association. "That vast variety of objects to which we give the name of beautiful," says Jeffrey, "become entitled to that appellation, merely because they all possess the power of recalling or reflecting those sensations of which they have been the accompaniments, or with which they have been associated in an imagination by any other more casual bond of connection." Things are beautiful, according to these writers, only because they have become associated in our minds with some agreeable feeling or emotion in ourselves or in other sentient beings, or when they are the natural signs of such feelings or emotions, and are calculated to awaken the imagination and excite us to some pleasing train of thought, or when they bear some analogy or fanciful resemblance to things with which these emotions are necessarily connected.

It would be an endless task to consider in detail all the facts and illustrations which writers like those we have mentioned have amassed in support of their theory; but it may not be uninteresting to see by what process they might come to entertain the belief that beauty is not a quality of things themselves, but a something only with which we clothe the outer world. For assuredly men in general don't believe so. They say of a tree or flower that it is beautiful, and think accordingly. It never occurs to them to doubt it; and you might as well call in question the existence of the object as to try and get them to believe that it has no inherent beauty. There it is, they'll say: I see it; and seeing with them is believing.

There are facts, however, which are calculated to shake our faith a little in what thus seems to be the evidence of the senses, and the verdict of the common sense of men; for common sense, let me say, is variable, and veers with light and knowledge. We put a straight stick in the water, and it seems bent: we sit in a train in rapid motion, and seemingly trees and posts fly past us, when really it is we who thus are flying: we shut our eyes, putting our hands upon them heavily, and direct them as if to look straight forward, and we see all sorts of brilliant colours moving and melting into each other, vanishing and reappearing: and, to give no other instance, we say that the fire is hot, though strictly speaking it is the fire that makes us hot. Now may there not be some such illusion in the case of beauty? If we see things straight as crooked, and things stationary as in motion, what reason have we for trusting our senses when we see things as beautiful? May they not in themselves be the reverse of what they appear to us? If we can make colours for ourselves by putting our hands upon our eyes, why may we not clothe the world with them? If we naturally and unconsciously transfer what can belong to a sentient being only the sensation of heat-to the fire, and say that it is hot, may we not in the same way unconsciously transfer our feelings to the outer world, and say of things that they are beautiful? There is a perfect analogy between the two cases, is there not? And if there is a general illusion in the one case, why may there not be in the other? And that there is such an illusion in the case of beauty may be plausibly maintained, and has been plausibly maintained.

First, from the variety of objects to which beauty is ascribed. If beauty be a quality of objects, how, it may be asked, could things so various and unlike as a statue and a thought, a cloud and an eye, a hill and a dog, be possessed of it? There is but little resemblance, it would seem, between a trunk of a tree and a lyric poem, a gnarled stick and a perfect circle, a waving line and a theory of morals, a tumble-down wall o'er-grown with ivy and the life of a hero, a spire of grass and a foaming cataract; yet they may all be called beautiful. Have they anything in common which entitles them to the epithet? "How shall mind assert its supremacy so as to establish an order between things belonging to such different domains as a pillar, a song, a colour, and a smile? Under what mysterious art of mastery shall we comprehend the

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MARITIME MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOL. II.

NOVEMBER, 1873.

No. 5.

A DISCUSSION ON BEAUTY:

BEING IN THE MAIN A CRITICISM OF THE ALISON-JEFFREY THEORY.

PART I.

THE readers of the MARITIME MONTHLY may perhaps remember that the very first subject to which it invited their attention was "Use and Beauty." The writer did not venture on a discussion of the nature of the Beautiful; but among other hints incidentally given, he suggested towards the close of his remarks especially, that Use and Beauty were pretty closely related, and that a good deal might be said upon the Use of Beauty. I think there might, and I have sometimes felt disposed to take advantage of the hint, and to say my say upon that subject. It is one which would be strictly congruous with the season of the year, and on which it might be neither unpleasant nor unprofitable to reflect for a while.

But if it would not exhaust the patience of those whom it may concern to follow me through a somewhat subtle, and intricate philosophical discussion, I would like to preface my reflections on the Use of Beauty, by some remarks on Beauty itself. It may look more logical to some to begin with the existence and the nature of the thing, before we talk of its use. For be it known unto you, my readers, that many sensible men have talked as if there was, strictly speaking, no such thing as beauty at all,as if it were all a mock appearance and mirage,-a thing that' may seem to be, but is not, a mere reflection of the feelings, and the shadow of a dream like Fichte's thought of his own existence.

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thought that stirs a man's heart, the swelling wave that breaks at his feet, and the minster bell that travels over the green meadow and wreathes itself with invisible pulsations through the curiously convolved chambers of the ear?" Things tall and things short; things crooked and things straight; things material and things mental; colours, and sounds, and silence,-things the most contrary and unlike are said to be beautiful. Now what is it that makes them so? Must there not, be some one quality in them all which entitles them to the same name? And if there is, what is it? But who is to decide the question? For every taste differs from almost every other. And hence,

In the second place, it may be argued from the want of agreement among men as to what is beautiful, that beauty is no property of things. There is no disagreement, it is said, among those in whose organization there is no defect, as to the colours and forms of things. Where one sees green, another sees green; and what one calls crooked, another calls crooked. It is the same with tastes, &c. We are all agreed that sugar is sweet, and that doctors' drugs in general are bitter; that ice is cold and fire hot; and that sounds are loud or low. If beauty, then, was a property of things and perceived by the senses, we should expect that there would be the same agreement among men as to its presence or absence. But what do we find to be the case? Where one may see it constantly and be thrilled by it, another may perceive nothing which he can at all admire, and a good deal perhaps which he does not like. A man of poetic temperament may gaze in rapture on a landscape, in which another, who is of a less imaginative turn of mind, and is bent on business and money-making, may see nothing that is fitted to arouse one pleasurable emotion. One may like a form and pattern which another would not look at. The uneducated speak of things as beautiful which cause loathing to the cultured, and vice versa. To one there is no beauty like that of a mathematical demonstration; another sees nothing that is attractive in it. The lover beholds a charm and beauty in the loved one, which no other mortal eye can see; and each one thinks his place the best. In short, what one regards as beautiful, another may think detestable.

But not only is there a difference of tastes in different individuals, there is a difference of tastes, often contradictory in the same inividual at different times and in different places. Our taste