PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED.
If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favor of
proportion has arisen, not so much from the observation of any certain
measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation
which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered as the
opposite; on this principle it was concluded that where the causes of
deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and necessarily be
introduced. This I believe is a mistake. For _deformity_ is opposed not
to beauty, but to the _complete common form_. If one of the legs of a
man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there
is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and
this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation
produce from accidents. So if the back be humped, the man is deformed;
because his back has an unusual figure, and what carries with it the
idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man's neck be considerably
longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part,
because men are not commonly made in that manner. But surely every
hour's experience may convince us that a man may have his legs of an
equal length, and resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of
a just size, and his back quite straight, without having at the same
time the least perceivable beauty. Indeed beauty is so far from
belonging to the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that
manner is extremely rare and uncommon. The beautiful strikes us as much
by its novelty as the deformed itself. It is thus in those species of
animals with which we are acquainted; and if one of a new species were
represented, we should by no means wait until custom had settled an idea
of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty or ugliness:
which shows that the general idea of beauty can be no more owing to
customary than to natural proportion. Deformity arises from the want of
the common proportions; but the necessary result of their existence in
any object is not beauty. If we suppose proportion in natural things to
be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom will show
that beauty, which is a _positive_ and powerful quality, cannot result
from it. We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are creatures
vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and
custom. But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to
affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but strongly
when they are absent. I remember to have frequented a certain place,
every day for a long time together; and I may truly say that, so far
from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and
disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any
means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably
uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track. They who use
snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the
acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so
sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the
most uneasy mortal in the world. Indeed so far are use and habit from
being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use
is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting. For as use
at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the
pleasurable effect in others in the same manner, and brings both to a
sort of mediocrity and indifference. Very justly is use called a second
nature; and our natural and common state is one of absolute
indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure. But when we are
thrown out of this state, or deprived of anything requisite to maintain
us in it; when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some
mechanical cause, we are always hurt. It is so with the second nature,
custom, in all things which relate to it. Thus the want of the usual
proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their
presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure. It is true that the
proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body, are
frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in
all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are found without
beauty, and that beauty frequently exists without them, and that this
beauty, where it exists, always can be assigned to other less equivocal
causes, it will naturally lead us to conclude that proportion and beauty
are not ideas of the same nature. The true opposite to beauty is not
disproportion or deformity, but _ugliness_: and as it proceeds from
causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until
we come to treat of that. Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of
mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found;
but this has no effect upon the passions.