PROPORTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY IN VEGETABLES.
Beauty hath usually been said to consist in certain proportions of
parts. On considering the matter, I have great reason to doubt, whether
beauty be at all an idea belonging to proportion. Proportion relates
almost wholly to convenience, as every idea of order seems to do; and it
must therefore be considered as a creature of the understanding, rather
than a primary cause acting on the senses and imagination. It is not by
the force of long attention and inquiry that we find any object to be
beautiful; beauty demands no assistance from our reasoning; even the
will is unconcerned; the appearance of beauty as effectually causes some
degree of love in us, as the application of ice or fire produces the
ideas of heat or cold. To gain something like a satisfactory conclusion
in this point, it were well to examine what proportion is; since several
who make use of that word do not always seem to understand very clearly
the force of the term, nor to have very distinct ideas concerning the
thing itself. Proportion is the measure of relative quantity. Since all
quantity is divisible, it is evident that every distinct part into which
any quantity is divided must bear some relation to the other parts, or
to the whole. These relations give an origin to the idea of proportion.
They are discovered by mensuration, and they are the objects of
mathematical inquiry. But whether any part of any determinate quantity
be a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth, or a moiety of the whole; or
whether it be of equal length with any other part, or double its length,
or but one half, is a matter merely indifferent to the mind; it stands
neuter in the question: and it is from this absolute indifference and
tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of
their most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest
the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiassed to examine
the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to
the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from
greater, from lesser, from equality and inequality. But surely beauty is
no idea belonging to mensuration; nor has it anything to do with
calculation and geometry. If it had, we might then point out some
certain measures which we could demonstrate to be beautiful, either as
simply considered, or as related to others; and we could call in those
natural objects, for whose beauty we have no voucher but the sense, to
this happy standard, and confirm the voice of our passions by the
determination of our reason. But since we have not this help, let us see
whether proportion can in any sense be considered as the cause of
beauty, as hath been so generally, and, by some, so confidently
affirmed. If proportion be one of the constituents of beauty, it must
derive that power either from some natural properties inherent in
certain measures, which operate mechanically; from the operation of
custom; or from the fitness which some measures have to answer some
particular ends of conveniency. Our business therefore is to inquire,
whether the parts of those objects, which are found beautiful in the
vegetable or animal kingdoms, are constantly so formed according to such
certain measures, as may serve to satisfy us that their beauty results
from those measures, on the principle of a natural mechanical cause; or
from custom; or, in fine, from their fitness for any determinate
purposes. I intend to examine this point under each of these heads in
their order. But before I proceed further, I hope it will not be thought
amiss, if I lay down the rules which governed me in this inquiry, and
which have misled me in it, if I have gone astray. 1. If two bodies
produce the same or a similar effect on the mind, and on examination
they are found to agree in some of their properties, and to differ in
others; the common effect is to be attributed to the properties in which
they agree, and not to those in which they differ. 2. Not to account for
the effect of a natural object from the effect of an artificial object.
3. Not to account for the effect of any natural object from a conclusion
of our reason concerning its uses, if a natural cause may be assigned.
4. Not to admit any determinate quantity, or any relation of quantity,
as the cause of a certain effect, if the effect is produced by different
or opposite measures and relations; or if these measures and relations
may exist, and yet the effect may not be produced. These are the rules
which I have chiefly followed, whilst I examined into the power of
proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks them
just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following
discussion; whilst we inquire, in the first place, in what things we
find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we can find
any assignable proportions in such a manner as ought to convince us that
our idea of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleasing
power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man.
Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there so
beautiful as flowers; but flowers are almost of every sort of shape, and
of every sort of disposition; they are turned and fashioned into an
infinite variety of forms; and from these forms botanists have given
them their names, which are almost as various. What proportion do we
discover between the stalks and the leaves of flowers, or between the
leaves and the pistils? How does the slender stalk of the rose agree
with the bulky head under which it bends? but the rose is a beautiful
flower; and can we undertake to say that it does not owe a great deal of
its beauty even to that disproportion; the rose is a large flower, yet
it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and
grows upon a large tree; yet the rose and the apple blossom are both
beautiful, and the plants that bear them are most engagingly attired,
notwithstanding this disproportion. What by general consent is allowed
to be a more beautiful object than an orange-tree, nourishing at once
with its leaves, its blossoms, and its fruit? but it is in vain that we
search here for any proportion between the height, the breadth, or
anything else concerning the dimensions of the whole, or concerning the
relation of the particular parts to each other. I grant that we may
observe in many flowers something of a regular figure, and of a
methodical disposition of the leaves. The rose has such a figure and
such a disposition of its petals; but in an oblique view, when this
figure is in a good measure lost, and the order of the leaves
confounded, it yet retains its beauty; the rose is even more beautiful
before it is full blown; in the bud; before this exact figure is formed;
and this is not the only instance wherein method and exactness, the soul
of proportion, are found rather prejudicial than serviceable to the
cause of beauty.