AND OF THE ORIGIN OF
OUR IDEAS of BEAUTY, &c.

    Sunt certi denique fines,
  Quos ultra citraquè nequit consistere rectum.
    HOR.

To Mrs. MONTAGU.

MADAM,

Were I not prompted by gratitude, admiration, and affection, to dedicate to you the best produce of my abilities, which I imagine this to be, yet, as the subject, of which it particularly treats, is moral excellence, the universal voice of mankind, with whom your very name is synonymous with virtue itself, must plead my apology for taking this liberty. Besides, madam, it was natural for me, as an author, to with to avail myself of the advantage, which this address affords me, of prepossessing the minds of my readers with an example of that perfection to which all my arguments tend, as a preparative, or aid, to their better comprehending my meaning.

The influence of virtue is every way beneficial! Your character, not only secures me from all imputation of flattery, but this public avowal of my admiration of its excellence conveys an honourable testimony of the consistency of my principles; having endeavoured to inculcate, that the love and esteem of true virtue is true honour. And I may add, that the sweet gratification I feel, in the indulging the strongest and best propension of my nature, in thus expatiating in its praise, is true pleasure, true happiness.

I am, Madam,

Your obliged,

Most obedient,

And most humble, servant,

The AUTHOR.

CHAPTER I.

A SKETCH of the MENTAL SYSTEM respecting our Perceptions of Taste, &c.

The mind of man, introspecting itself, seems, as it were, (in conjunction with the inscrutable principles of nature,) placed in the central point of the creation: from whence, impelled by her energetic powers and illumined by her light, the intellectual faculties, like rays, shoot forth in direct tendency to their ultimate point of perfection; and, as they advance, each individual mind imperceptibly imbibes the influence and light of each, and is by this imbibition alone enabled to approach it.

But, though the light of nature and of reason direct the human mind to perfection, or true good, yet, being in its progress perpetually impeded by adventitious causes, casual occurrences, &c. &c. which induce false opinions of good and evil, its progressive powers generally stop at a middle point between mere uncultivated nature and perfection, a medium which constitutes what we call common sense, and which, in degree, seems as distant from the perfection of the mental faculties as common form is from the perfection of form, beauty.

[Illustration:
           SUBLIMITY.
               |
             GRACE
               |
        BEAUTY | TRUTH
               |
  COMMON SENSE | COMMON FORM
               |
            NATURE]

On meditating on this subject, and marking the progressive stages or degrees of human excellence, the great leading general truths, or mental rests, as I may call them, the common, the beautiful, the graceful, and the sublime, I have been naturally led to form a kind of diagrammatic representation of their respective distances, &c. &c. which I present to my reader on the opposite page, requesting him to refer to it now and then as he goes on, in order to facilitate his comprehension of my meaning.

And here it may be necessary to premise, that, however whimsical and absurd this delineation may appear to my reader, something analogous to the thought may be found in the works of many eminent philosophers, particularly in those of Bacon[A] and of Locke:[B] the latter suggesting that the whole system of morality might be reduced to mathematical demonstration; and the former, in his treatise on the Advancement of Learning, gives a description of the stages of science very much resembling my delineation of the stages of intellectual perfection, or taste.

[Footnote A: Advancement of Learning, Book 2d.]

[Footnote B: Essay on human Understanding, Chap. 3d, Book the 4th, and
Chap. 12th, same Book, Sect. 8th.]

It could have been no dishonour to me to have been led by such conductors! Yet, as the truth cannot dishonour me neither, I must aver, that my little system was projected, and brought to the exact state it now is in, without my having the least apprehension that any thing similar had been suggested before by any person whatever; nor have I, in consequence of the discovery I have lately made of the opinions of these respectable authors, added or omitted a single thought in my treatise. But to return from my digression.

In the exact center of my circle of humanity, I have placed nature, or the springs of the intellectual powers, which tend, in a straight line, to its boundary; and, on its boundary, I have placed demonstrable beauty and truth, and the utmost power of rules; and, midway; I have placed common sense and common form, half deriving their existence from pure nature, and half from its highest cultivation, as far as art or rules can teach. A conjunction which would itself be the perfection of humanity, but that it is mixed with all that is not nature, and all that is not art, and thereby made mediocrity, i.e. common sense.

The intellectual powers, arriving at the limit of my common circle, i.e. at the limit of the basis of my pyramidical system, where I have placed the fixed proportions of beauty and of truth, (if they progress,) mount up as a flame, with undulating[A] motion, refining as they advance, and terminate in the pinnacle, or ultimate point, sublimity; forming in the imagination the figure of a pyramid, or cone, from the limit of whose base, (on which, as I have before observed, I have placed demonstrable truth and beauty, the utmost power of rules, &c.) from that limit up to the ultimate point of sublimity, I call the region of intellectual pleasure, genius, or taste; and in its center I place grace, whose influence pervades, cheers, and nourishes, every part of it, an object which, in this ideal region, is similar in its situation and degree to that of common sense in the common or fundamental region. Grace seems to partake of the perception both of beauty and of sublimity, as common sense partakes of nature and of art. Grace is the characteristic object or general form of the ideal region, and its perception is the general limit of the powers of imagination or taste. Few, very few, attain to the point of sublimity; the ne plus ultra of human conception! the alpha and omega. The sentiment of sublimity sinks into the source of nature, and that of the source of nature mounts to the sentiment of sublimity, each point seeming to each the cause and the effect; the origin and the end!

[Footnote A: I use that expression, because it is the peculiar motion of grace as well as of a flame.]

Having thus drawn the outline of my pyramidical mental system, I propose to expatiate a little on each point or stage throughout the great characteristic line of intellectual power.

The first point The exact center, nature, or the origin of our intellectual faculties, admits of no investigation, its idea, as I have observed before, loses itself in the sentiment of sublimity, and we see nothing; and therefore I pass on to an object which is perceptible, the common general character of