description: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from Seet. 2. SECT. II. Of Original or Abfolute Beauty. of I. Q INGE it is certain that we have Ideas of Beauty and Harmony, let us examine what Quality in Objects excites thefe Ideas, or is the occafion of them. And let it be here obferv'd, that our Inquiry is only about the 6)ualitys which are beautiful to Men ; or about the Foundation of their Senfe of Beauty : for, as was above hinted, Beauty has always relation to the Senfe of fbmeMind; and when we afterwards fhew how generally the Objects which occur to us, are beautiful, we mean that fuch Objects are agreeable to the Senfe of Men : for as there are not a few Objects, which feem no way beautiful to Men, fb we fee a variety of other Animals who feem delighted with them ; they may have Senfes other- wife conftituted than thofe of Men, and may have the Ideas of Beauty excited by Objedts of a quite different Form. We fee Animals fitted for every Place; and what to Men appears rude and ihapelefs, or loath- fom, may be to them a Taradife. k If. That we may more diftindtly difco- ver the general Foundation or Occafion of the Ideas of Beauty among Men, it will be Sect. 2- neceflary to confider it firft in its Jimpler vv-' Kinds, iiich as occurs to us in regular Figures ; and we may perhaps find that the lame Foundation extends to all the more complex Species of it. III. The Figures which excite in Us the uniformly Ideas of Beauty, feem to be thofe in which Wlth v there is 'Uniformity amidjl Variety. There "'y' are many Conceptions of Objectswhich are agreeable upon other accounts, fuch as Gran- dew, Novelty', Santtity, and fome others, v which ihall be mention'd hereafter . But f what we cah1 Beautiful in Objedts, to fpeak l- in the Mathematical Style, feems to be in a compound Ratio of Uniformity and Va riety : ...
language: English
title: An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises
titlecomplete: An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises
genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 30
series: Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics
publisher: Classworks