Beauty Part 8

These characteristics are too universal not to support the doctrine of natural appropriation and power, of which a.s.sociation is merely a consequence.

It may be said, that all this chiefly regards mere geometrical forms, not objects in nature. But, on referring to inanimate objects, it will be found that they everywhere present these forms.

The round, the simplest form appears to characterize all elementary bodies and all that are free from compression, to be in fact the most elementary and the most readily a.s.sumed in nature. This form, accordingly, is presented by the drops of water and of every liquid, by every atom probably of oxygen, hydrogen, and azote, by the smallest as well as the largest bodies, even the innumerable celestial orbs.

All the other, the angular forms are presented by inanimate bodies under compression, or by mineral crystals.

Thus, then, do these simple geometrical forms characterize the simplest bodies in nature; and it appears that this first kind of beauty is peculiarly their own. It will, in the sequel, be as clearly seen, that each of the other cla.s.ses of natural beings presents beauty of a different kind, which similarly characterizes it. Hence, no rational theory of beauty could be formed by writers, who indiscriminatingly jumbled together the characteristics of all the kinds of beauty, and expected to find them everywhere.

As, then, from all that has been said, it appears that all the elements of beauty which have thus been noticed, belong to inanimate beings, and as this is shown by the pa.s.sages I have quoted from the best writers, it seems surprising, not merely that they should not have seen this to be the case, but, that it should not have led them to observe, that there exists also a second beauty, of living beings, and third, of thinking beings, as well as others of the useful, the ornamental, and the intellectual arts respectively, in each of which some new element was only added to the characters of the preceding species.

It seems still more surprising that Alison, who deviates so widely from all fundamental principles, should have actually stumbled upon an observation of a few of the characteristics of inanimate beings, and traced them as they pa.s.s upward through some living and thinking beings--whose new characteristics, however, he did not discriminate. He observes, that "the greater part of those bodies in nature, which possess hardness, strength, or durability, are distinguished by angular forms. The greater part of those bodies, on the contrary, which possess weakness, fragility, or delicacy, are distinguished by winding or curvilinear forms.

In the mineral kingdom, all rocks, stones, and metals, the hardest and most durable bodies we know, a.s.sume universally angular forms. In the vegetable kingdom, all strong and durable plants are in general distinguished by similar forms. The feebler and more delicate race of vegetables, on the contrary, are mostly distinguished by winding forms. In the animal kingdom, in the same manner, strong and powerful animals are generally characterized by angular forms; feeble and delicate animals, by forms of the contrary kind."[13]

SECTION II.

ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN LIVING BEINGS.

I have now to show that, in living beings, while the characters of the first and fundamental beauty, that of inanimate beings, are still partially continued, new characteristics are added to them.

Plants accordingly possess both rigid parts, like some of those described in the preceding section, and delicate parts, which, in ascending through the cla.s.ses of natural beings from the simplest to the most complex, are the very first to present to us new and additional characters totally distinct from those of the preceding cla.s.s.

I. To begin as nature does, then, we find the trunks and stems of plants, which are near the ground, resembling most in character the inanimate bodies from among which they spring. They a.s.sume the simplest and most universal form in nature, the round one; but as growth is their great function, they extend in height and become cylindrical.

Even the branches, the twigs, and the tendrils, continue this elementary character; but it is in them, or in the stem when, like them, it is tender, that such elementary characters give way to the purposes of life, namely, growth and reproduction, and that we discover the new and additional characters of beauty which this cla.s.s presents to us.

II. To render this matter plain, I must observe that the formation of rings, which unite in tubes, appears to be almost universally the material condition of growth and reproduction. Every new portion of these tubes, moreover, and every superadded ring, is less than that which preceded it.

It is from this that results the first characteristic of this second kind of beauty, namely, fineness or delicacy. Hence, Burke made the possession of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength, his fifth condition in beauty; and he here erred only from that want of discrimination which led him to confound together all the conditions of beauty, and prevented his seeing that they belonged to different genera.

Now, as fine and delicate bodies, which are growing, will shoot in that direction where s.p.a.ce, air, and light, can best be had, and as this, amid other twigs and tendrils, will greatly vary, so will their productions rarely continue long in the same straight line, but will, on the contrary, bend. Hence, the curved or bending form is the second characteristic of this kind of beauty.

It is worthy of remark, that, as the trunks, stems, twigs, and tendrils, of plants a.s.sume the simplest and most universal form in nature, the round one, so their more delicate parts have again the tendency to bend into a similar form.

In the young and feeble branches of plants, it is observed by Alison, that the bending form is "beautiful, when we perceive that it is the consequence of the delicacy of their texture, and of their being overpowered by the weight of the flower.... In the smaller and feebler tribe of flowers, as in the violet, the daisy, or the lily of the valley, the bending of the stem const.i.tutes a very beautiful form, because we immediately perceive that it is the consequence of the weakness and delicacy of the flower."

From the circ.u.mstances now described, it results that all the parts of plants present the most surprising variety. They vary their direction every moment, as Burke observes, and they change under the eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point.

Variety is therefore the third characteristic of this second kind of beauty; and in the indiscriminating views of Burke, he made two similar conditions, viz: "Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other;" thus applying these to beauty generally, to which they are not applicable, but in a confused and imperfect way.

It is scarcely necessary to observe that variety, as a character of beauty, owes its effect to the need of changing impressions, in order to enliven our sensibility, which does not fail to become inactive under the long-continued impression of the same stimulant.

It is connected with this variety that unequal numbers are preferred, as we see in the number of flowers and of their petals, in that of leaves grouped together, and in the indentations of these leaves.

From all this springs the fourth and last characteristic of this second species of beauty, namely, contrast. This strikes us when we at once look at the rigid stem and bending boughs, and all the variety which the latter display.

It will be observed, that, of all the characteristics of beauty, none tend to render our perceptions so vivid as variety and contrast.

I conclude this section with a few remarks on the errors which Alison has committed on this subject.

"In the rose," says that writer, "and the white lily, and in the tribe of flowering shrubs, the same bending form a.s.sumed by the stem is felt as a defect; and instead of impressing us with the idea of delicacy, leads us to believe the operation of some force to twist it into this direction."--This, however, is no defect arising from the bending form not being abstractly more beautiful, but from its being contrary to the nature of the stem of flowering shrubs to bend, from its being, as he himself observes, the result of some force to twist it.

He a.s.serts, however, that in plants, angular forms are beautiful, when they are expressive of fineness, of tenderness, of delicacy, or such affecting qualities; and he thinks that this may perhaps appear from the consideration of the following instances:--

"The myrtle, for instance, is generally reckoned a beautiful form, yet the growth of its stem is perpendicular, the junction of its branches form regular and similar angles, and their direction is in straight or angular lines. The known delicacy, however, and tenderness of the vegetable, at least in this climate, prevail over the general expression of the form, and give it the same beauty which we generally find in forms of a contrary kind."--The mistake here committed is in supposing the beauty of the myrtle to depend on its angularity, instead of its being evergreen, fragrant, and suggesting pleasures of a.s.sociation.

"How much more beautiful," he says, "is the rose-tree when its buds begin to blow, than afterward, when its flowers are full and in their greatest perfection! yet, in this first situation, its form has much less winding surface, and is much more composed of straight lines and of angles, than afterward when the weight of the flower weighs down the feeble branches, and describes the easiest and most varied curves."--But he answers himself by adding: "The circ.u.mstance of its youth, a circ.u.mstance in all cases so affecting, the delicacy of its blossom, so well expressed by the care which Nature has taken in surrounding the opening bud with leaves, prevail so much upon our imagination, that we behold the form itself with more delight in this situation than afterward, when it a.s.sumes the more general form of delicacy."

"There are few things in the vegetable world," he says, "more beautiful than the knotted and angular stem of the balsam, merely from its singular transparency, which it is impossible to look at without a strong impression of the fineness and delicacy of the vegetable."--But it is its transparency, not its angularity, that is beautiful.

The beauty of color is not less conspicuous than that of form in this cla.s.s of beings.

SECTION III.

ELEMENTS OF BEAUTY IN THINKING BEINGS.

I have next to show that, in thinking beings, while the characters of inanimate, and those of living beauty, are still more or less continued, new characteristics are also added to them.

I. In animals, accordingly, the bones bear a close a.n.a.logy to the wood of plants. They generally a.s.sume the same rounded form; but, as thinking beings are necessarily moving ones, their bones are hollow to combine lightness with strength, and they are separated by joints to permit flexion and extension.

II. As animals, like plants, grow and reproduce, a portion of their general organization, their vascular system, which serves the purpose of growth and reproduction, consists, like plants, of trunks, branches, &c.; and the surface of their bodies, the skin, is formed by a tissue of these vessels. Accordingly, both the vessels themselves, and the tissue which they form, present the delicacy, the bending, the variety, and the contrast, which are the characters of the preceding species of beauty.

The undulating and serpentine lines which art seeks always to design in its most beautiful productions, exist in greater number at the surface of the human body than at that of any other animal. Wherever, as Hogarth observes, "for the sake of the necessary motion of the parts, with proper strength and agility, the insertions of the muscles are too hard and sudden, their swellings too bold, or the hollows between them too deep, for their outlines to be beautiful; nature softens these hardnesses, and plumps up these vacancies with a proper supply of fat, and covers the whole with the soft, smooth, springy, and, in delicate life, almost transparent skin, which, conforming itself to the external shape of all the parts beneath, expresses to the eye the idea of its contents with the utmost delicacy of beauty and grace."

It is princ.i.p.ally in the features of the face, as has often been observed, and on the surface of the torso and of the members of a beautiful woman, that these delicate, bending, varied, and contrasted lines are multiplied: by their union, they mark the outlines of different parts, as in the region of the neck, of the bosom, at the shoulders, on the surface of the abdomen, on the sides, and princ.i.p.ally in the gradual transitions from the head to the neck, and from the loins to the inferior extremities.

These lines vary under different circ.u.mstances; much enbonpoint producing round lines, and leanness or old age producing straight ones.

Woman and man stand pre-eminent among animals as to this kind of beauty; and to them succeed the swifter animals, as the horse, the stag, &c.

The animals, on the contrary, of which the surface presents right lines and square forms, are correspondingly deprived of beauty; as the toad, the hog, and all the animals which seem to us ugly.

In all animals, also, the beauty of color, even when slightly varied, becomes extremely interesting.--In human beauty, considerable variety is produced by the different shades of the skin.

Such, indeed, is the variety resulting from all this, that some degree even of intricacy is produced. The undulating lines which cross in every direction, and the tortuous paths of the eye, are the means of an agreeable complication.

Hence Burke, following Hogarth, says: "Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s: the smoothness, the softness, the easy and insensible swell, the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest s.p.a.ce the same, the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the great const.i.tuents of beauty?

The hair affords an excellent instance of this agreeable complication.

Soft curls agitated by the wind have been the theme of every poet. And yet, says Hogarth, "to show how excess ought to be avoided in intricacy, as well as in every other principle, the very same head of hair, wisped and matted together, would make the most disagreeable figure; because the eye would be perplexed, and at a fault, and unable to trace such a confused number of uncomposed and entangled lines."

III. But animals have a higher system of organs and functions which peculiarly distinguishes them, and which presents new and peculiar characteristics of beauty. This consists of the organs by which they receive impressions from, and react upon the objects around them--the first organs which Nature presents having altogether external relations, and the first, consequently, in which we look for fitness for any purpose.

The importance of fitness to the beauty of such objects is learned imperceptibly. Lines and forms, though the most elegant, fail to please us, if ill distributed in this respect: and objects, to a great extent dest.i.tute of the other characters of natural beauty, become beautiful when regarded in relation to fitness. Thus would this sense appear to be so powerful, as in some measure to regulate our other perceptions of beauty.

It is fitness which leads us to admire in one animal, what would displease us if found in another. "The variety," says Barry, "and union of parts, which we call beautiful in a greyhound, are pleasing in consequence of the idea of agility which they convey. In other animals, less agility is united with more strength; and, indeed, all the different arrangements please because they indicate either different qualities, different degrees of qualities, or the different combinations of them."