OF FALSE OPINIONS HELD CONCERNING BEAUTY.
Sec. 1. Of the false opinion that truth is beauty, and vice versa.
I purpose at present to speak only of four of the more current opinions
respecting beauty, for of the errors connected with the pleasurableness
of proportion, and of the expression of right feelings in the
countenance, I shall have opportunity to treat in the succeeding
chapters; (compare Ch. VI. Ch. XVI.)
Those erring or inconsistent positions which I would at once dismiss
are, the first, that the beautiful is the true, the second, that the
beautiful is the useful, the third, that it is dependent on custom, and
the fourth, that it is dependent on the association of ideas.
To assert that the beautiful is the true, appears, at first, like
asserting that propositions are matter, and matter propositions. But
giving the best and most rational interpretation we can, and supposing
the holders of this strange position to mean only that things are
beautiful which appear what they indeed are, and ugly which appear what
they are not, we find them instantly contradicted by each and every
conclusion of experience. A stone looks as truly a stone as a rose looks
a rose, and yet is not so beautiful; a cloud may look more like a castle
than a cloud, and be the more beautiful on that account. The mirage of
the desert is fairer than its sands; the false image of the under heaven
fairer than the sea. I am at a loss to know how any so untenable a
position could ever have been advanced; but it may, perhaps, have arisen
from some confusion of the beauty of art with the beauty of nature, and
from an illogical expansion of the very certain truth, that nothing is
beautiful in art, which, professing to be an imitation, or a statement,
is not as such in some sort true.
Sec. 2. Of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness. Compare Chap. xii.
Sec. 5.
That the beautiful is the useful, is an assertion evidently based on
that limited and false sense of the latter term which I have already
deprecated. As it is the most degrading and dangerous supposition which
can be advanced on the subject, so, fortunately, it is the most
palpably absurd. It is to confound admiration with hunger, love with
lust, and life with sensation; it is to assert that the human creature
has no ideas and no feelings, except those ultimately referable to its
brutal appetites. It has not a single fact nor appearance of fact to
support it, and needs no combating, at least until its advocates have
obtained the consent of the majority of mankind, that the most beautiful
productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of art, spades and
millstones.
Sec. 3. Of the false opinion that beauty results from custom. Compare Chap.
vi. Sec. 1.
Somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that the sense
of the beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even
this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. For all that can
be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity
deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly, of much of their
repulsiveness, whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is
the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that because it is possible
to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of
lusciousness in grapes. Nevertheless, there are some phenomena resulting
from the tendency of our nature to be influenced by habit of which it
may be well to observe the limits.
Sec. 4. The twofold operation of custom. It deadens sensation, but confirms
affection.
Sec. 5. But never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty.
Custom has a twofold operation: the one to deaden the frequency and
force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object
to the affections. Commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power
of sensation very perfect, it has rather the last operation than the
first; with meaner minds, the first takes place in the higher degree, so
that they are commonly characterized by a desire of excitement, and the
want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. But both take place in some
degree with all men, so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds
become less rapturous owing to their repetition. It is however
beneficently ordained that repulsiveness shall be diminished by custom
in a far greater degree than the sensation of beauty, so that the
anatomist in a little time loses all sense of horror in the torn flesh,
and carous bone, while the sculptor ceases not to feel to the close of
his life, the deliciousness of every line of the outward frame. So then
as in that with which we are made familiar, the repulsiveness is
constantly diminishing, and such claims as it may be able to put forth
on the affections are daily becoming stronger, while in what is
submitted to us of new or strange, that which may be repulsive is felt
in its full force, while no hold is as yet laid on the affections, there
is a very strong preference induced in most minds for that to which they
are not accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in
those which are least open to sensations of positive beauty. But however
far this operation may be carried, its utmost effect is but the
deadening and approximating the sensations of beauty and ugliness. It
never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the
slightest connection with nor power over their nature. By tasting two
wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavor; nay, we
may even do more than can ever be done in the case of sight, we may
confound the two flavors together. But it will hardly be argued
therefore that custom is the cause of either flavor. And so, though by
habit we may deaden the effect of ugliness or beauty, it is not for that
reason to be affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensation. We
may keep a skull beside us as long as we please, we may overcome its
repulsiveness, we may render ourselves capable of perceiving many
qualities of beauty about its lines, we may contemplate it for years
together if we will, it and nothing else, but we shall not get ourselves
to think as well of it as of a child's fair face.
Sec. 6. Instances.
It would be easy to pursue the subject farther, but I believe that every
thoughtful reader will be perfectly well able to supply farther
illustrations, and sweep away the sandy foundations of the opposite
theory, unassisted. Let it, however, be observed, that in spite of all
custom, an Englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the
superiority of the turban to the hat, or of the plaid to the coat, that
whatever the dictates of immediate fashion may compel, the superior
gracefulness of the Greek or middle age costumes is invariably felt, and
that, respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with
disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached to
the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty
whatsoever, (these ideas being only received by minds under some
certain degree of cultivation,) and whose disgust arises naturally from
what they may suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill health. It would
be futile to proceed into farther detail. I pass to the last and most
weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty
is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting
ideas.
Sec. 7. Of the false opinion that beauty depends on the association of
ideas.
Frequent has been the support, and wide the acceptance of this
supposition, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive sentences were
ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction
or a confusion of terms. Thus Alison, "There are scenes undoubtedly more
beautiful than Runnymede, yet to those who recollect the great event
that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on
the imagination." Here we are wonder-struck at the audacious obtuseness
which would prove the power of imagination by its overcoming that very
other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer denies. For
the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above
sentence is, that imagination is _not_ the source of beauty, for
although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are
scenes "more beautiful than Runnymede." And though instances of
self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are to be found in
few writers except Alison, yet if the arguments on the subject be fairly
sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always
encumbered and placed in logical form, they will be found invariably to
involve one of these two syllogisms, either, association gives pleasure,
and beauty gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty. Or, the
power of association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the
power of association _is_ the power of beauty.
Sec. 8. Association. Is, 1st, rational. It is of no efficiency as a cause
of beauty.
Nevertheless it is necessary for us to observe the real value and
authority of association in the moral system, and how ideas of actual
beauty may be affected by it, otherwise we shall be liable to
embarrassment throughout the whole of the succeeding argument.
Association is of two kinds. Rational and accidental. By rational
association I understand the interest which any object may bear
historically as having been in some way connected with the affairs or
affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware
of such connection: which to call beauty is mere and gross confusion of
terms, it is no theory to be confuted, but a misuse of language to be
set aside, a misuse involving the positions that in uninhabited
countries the vegetation has no grace, the rock no dignity, the cloud no
color, and that the snowy summits of the Alps receive no loveliness from
the sunset light, because they have not been polluted by the wrath,
ravage, and misery of men.
Sec. 9. Association accidental. The extent of its influence.
By accidental association, I understand the accidental connection of
ideas and memories with material things, owing to which those material
things are regarded as agreeable or otherwise, according to the nature
of the feelings or recollections they summon; the association being
commonly involuntary and oftentimes so vague as that no distinct image
is suggested by the object, but we feel a painfulness in it or pleasure
from it, without knowing wherefore. Of this operation of the mind (which
is that of which I spoke as causing inextricable embarrassments on the
subject of beauty) the experience is constant, so that its more
energetic manifestations require no illustration. But I do not think
that the minor degrees and shades of this great influence have been
sufficiently appreciated. Not only all vivid emotions and all
circumstances of exciting interest leave their light and shadow on the
senseless things and instruments among which or through whose agency
they have been felt or learned, but I believe that the eye cannot rest
on a material form, in a moment of depression or exultation, without
communicating to that form a spirit and a life, a life which will make
it afterwards in some degree loved or feared, a charm or a painfulness
for which we shall be unable to account even to ourselves, which will
not indeed be perceptible, except by its delicate influence on our
judgment in cases of complicated beauty. Let the eye but rest on a rough
piece of branch of curious form during a conversation with a friend,
rest, however, unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten,
though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the
memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole
life after, take a certain pleasure in such boughs which it had not
before, a pleasure so slight, a trace of feeling so delicate as to
leave us utterly unconscious of its peculiar power, but undestroyable by
any reasoning, a part, thenceforward, of our constitution, destroyable
only by the same arbitrary process of association by which it was
created. Reason has no effect upon it whatsoever. And there is probably
no one opinion which is formed by any of us, in matters of taste, which
is not in some degree influenced by unconscious association of this
kind. In many who have no definite rules of judgment, preference is
decided by little else, and thus, unfortunately, its operations are
mistaken for, or rather substituted for, those of inherent beauty, and
its real position and value in the moral system is in a great measure
overlooked.
Sec. 10. The dignity of its function.
For I believe that mere pleasure and pain have less associative power
than duty performed or omitted, and that the great use of the
associative faculty is not to add beauty to material things, but to add
force to the conscience. But for this external and all-powerful witness,
the voice of the inward guide might be lost in each particular instance,
almost as soon as disobeyed; the echo of it in after time, whereby,
though perhaps feeble as warning, it becomes powerful as punishment,
might be silenced, and the strength of the protection pass away in the
lightness of the lash. Therefore it has received the power of enlisting
external and unmeaning things in its aid, and transmitting to all that
is indifferent, its own authority to reprove or reward, so that, as we
travel the way of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of
turning all the voices of nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her
lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be
beautiful in our eyes, by its kind message, or of withering and
quenching her sympathy into a fearful, withdrawn, silence of
condemnation, or into a crying out of her stones, and a shaking of her
dust against us. Nor is it any marvel that the theoretic faculty should
be overpowered by this momentous operation, and the indifferent appeals
and inherent glories of external things in the end overlooked, when the
perfection of God's works is felt only as the sweetness of his promises,
and their admirableness only as the threatenings of his power.
Sec. 11. How it is connected with impressions of beauty.
But it is evident that the full exercise of this noble function of the
associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible
conclusions on subjects of theoretic preference. For it is quite
impossible for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious
underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually,
from those great laws of choice under which he is comprehended with all
his race. And it is well for us that it is so, the harmony of God's good
work is not in us interrupted by this mingling of universal and peculiar
principles; for by these such difference is secured in the feelings as
shall make fellowship itself more delightful, by its inter-communicate
character, and such variety of feeling also in each of us separately as
shall make us capable of enjoying scenes of different kinds and orders,
instead of morbidly seeking for some perfect epitome of the beautiful in
one; and also that deadening by custom of theoretic impressions to which
I have above alluded, is counterbalanced by the pleasantness of acquired
association; and the loss of the intense feeling of the youth, which
"had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest,
unborrowed from the eye," is replaced by the gladness of conscience, and
the vigor of the reflecting and imaginative faculties, as they take
their wide and aged grasp of the great relations between the earth and
its dead people.
Sec. 12. And what caution it renders necessary in the examination of them.
In proportion therefore to the value, constancy, and efficiency of this
influence, we must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of positive
opinions on the subject of beauty. For every one of us has peculiar
sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him in certain scenes and
things, sources which are sealed to others, and we must be wary on the
one hand, of confounding these in ourselves with ultimate conclusions of
taste, and so forcing them upon all as authoritative, and on the other
of supposing that the enjoyments of others which we cannot share are
shallow or unwarrantable, because incommunicable. I fear, for instance,
that in the former portion of this work I may have attributed too much
community and authority to certain affections of my own for scenery
inducing emotions of wild, impetuous, and enthusiastic characters, and
too little to those which I perceive in others for things peaceful,
humble, meditative, and solemn. So also between youth and age there will
be found differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false
choice in either, but of different temperament, the youth sympathizing
more with the gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the
gray hairs with their completion, sufficiency and repose. And so,
neither condemning the delights of others, nor altogether distrustful of
our own, we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what
is pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from what
is our strength to what is our crown, only observing in all things how
that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dislike,
and not affection. For by the very nature of these beautiful qualities,
which I have defined to be the signature of God upon his works, it is
evident that in whatever we altogether dislike, we see not all; that the
keenness of our vision is to be tested by the expansiveness of our love,
and that as far as the influence of association has voice in the
question, though it is indeed possible that the inevitable painfulness
of an object, for which we can render no sufficient reason, may be owing
to its recalling of a sorrow, it is more probably dependent on its
accusation of a crime.