1808. Thus, also, Animate, or Vital Beauty, possesses three general classes or characteristics, determined by the internal, medial, and external relations; and, regarding the human figure, as comprising specifically the perfection of all animate beauty, as sublimely contemplated by the Greek Sculptors and Painters, and successfully imitated by modern Artists; and regarding it, also, according to the variation by which all animate species are distinguished, it will be found of three kinds, or classes, in this respect also. 1809. Of these classes, the first is that of Feminine Beauty,—graceful, fair, and delicate,—as generalized in the Medician Venus, &c.; the second is Masculine Beauty,- grand, powerful, energetic, and majestic,—as in the Jupiter of Phidias, the Farnesian Hercules, &c.; and the third is an intermediate class, or Neutral Beauty,- elegant, symmetrical, and refined, as in the Belviderian Apollo, the Antinous, &c. 1810. A like analogy is exemplified musically in the classification of the human voice; and also in colours, and throughout all nature, animate and inanimate, regarded as beautiful. 1811. If, again, we analyze, in universal relation, the various species of animate beauty, we distinguish, first, in external and physical relation, the Beauty of Desire, or appetite, — the lowest grade of animate beauty; in medial and esthetical relation, the Beauty of Admiration, or the simply beautiful to sense; and, thirdly, in internal and ethical relation, the Beauty of Affection, Approbation, or Love, or moral and intellectual beauty: to the first belongs health, in the object; to the second, colour, figure, symmetry, &c.; and, to the last, expression and sentiment: but to each belongs, nevertheless, some participation of the others. Thus, animate beauty is the object of desire, admiration, and love, attendant on pleasure: whence the God of Love has been variously feigned by the Poets to be the offspring of beauty, - the Cupid of Venus. 1812. It appears, therefore, that each genus, and class or kind of beauty, is of triple relation to appetite, sense, and passion,- or to sensation in its universal acceptation; and that beauty is of infinite variety and composition: whence arises, again, the indefiniteness of the general term beauty in its current acceptation. 1813. Hence, also, it has been disputed whether beauty be any thing, positive or absolute, or real or abstract, or conventional or prejudice, or whether it be merely relation; and we have maintained, without doubt, that beauty is entirely relative, according to a harmonic principle. 1814. Among the Greeks, who appear to have rendered beauty more tangible and positive than any other people, there appear to have been certain relative and abstract principles established concerning it, such as the attainment of middle forms, individually and abstractly, the combining of many such forms generally and harmoniously in one subject; thus dispensing individually that conjoint perfection which nature has assigned only to the species, and producing consummate works by converting the real and diversified of nature into the ideal and abstract of art. 1815. It must be kept in view, nevertheless, that beauty belongs principally to sensible objects, and that, therefore, sense must be appealed to concerning it; without which, beauty may be subtilized, abstracted, and idealized, till the natural recognition thereof is lost. There is, therefore, a constant necessity for the artist's recurring to nature, as the Greeks did in the study of general forms and abstract beauty, and that he rest not till he has discovered her laws. 1816. There is also a metaphorical and metonomical use of the term Beauty, by which it is applied to sensible and moral signification, more especially in its higher reference, in which use it was much employed by the Greeks. Thus Socrates, in the Republic of Plato, remarks that "it ever was, and ever will be, deemed a noble saying, that whatever is beneficial is beautiful, and whatever is hurtful is base." 1817. It is to the common mistake of regarding as absolute the things which are only relative, that we are principally to attribute the variety of opinions, and the diversity of discussions, concern ing beauty, &c. All good is relative: beauty is good; and that which is beautiful or good in one respect or relation, is deformed or evil in another just as the same sound in music is, under different relations, a concord and a discord. 1818. Beauty is also as various as its objects. On the one extreme is the beauty of utility or fitness, which is material beauty; on the other extreme, is the beauty of sentiment, which is the beauty of mind: between which, as between matter and mind, lies the beauty of sense, which is beauty in its principal reference or respect, as we have already remarked. 1819. Beauty, in its ordinary sense, too, is relative; for there is a beauty belonging to every sensitive creature by which it is affected. The Toad and Viper have beauties which are as much of the first order in their special relations as human beauties, or those of general nature, are to man: he-the very being whom the viper and toad have reason to regard as the perfection of ugliness! 1820. Whatever is sufficient to its relative purpose, and proper end sensibly, is beautiful; and it is to narrow and selfish views of beauty, no less than to the regarding it as absolute, that the common notion of beauty owes its indefiniteness and discordance, not only in popular opinion, but in literature. 1821. It has contributed, also, to the unsettled state of this question, that beauty has been con founded with utility and sublimity; between which there are these essential differences, that utility belongs principally to the external, and that sense is transcended by the sublime; so that, in fact, beauty is situate between them: but beauty is always bounded, while the grasp of sublimity is not perceptible. 1822. Hence, there may be utility in a matter of fact, which, addressed to sense, may be beautiful, or, transcending it, may become sublime. Thus, there is sublimity in a blade of grass, and in every work of creation to which imagination is inadequate, no less than in the celebrated example of intellectual and literary sublime, the creation of light, as declared by Moses: "God said, Let there be light! and there was light." which Milton thus renders sensible and beautiful: "God said, Let there be light! and forthwith light etherealFirst of things-quintessence pure— Sprung from the deep, and from her native east 1823. The sublimity of the original depends upon mass, condensation, and transcendence, still more apparent in the earlier version of Wicliffe, "God said, Be light! and light was." The beauty of Milton's paraphrase depends upon |