| BEAUTY.—Beauty is absolute, real, and ideal. The absolutely beautiful belongs to Deity. The really beautiful is presented to us in the objects of nature and the actions of human life. The ideally beautiful is aimed at by art. Plato identified the beautiful with the good, τὸ καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθόν. But, although the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true are related to each other, they are distinct. There may be truth and propriety or proportion in beauty—and there is a beauty in what is good or right, and also in what is true. But still these ideas are distinct. Dr Hutcheson (Inquiry Concerning Beauty, &c.) distinguishes beauty into «absolute,» or that beauty which we perceive in objects without comparison to anything external, of which the object is supposed an imitation or picture; such as that beauty, perceived from the works of nature; and «comparative» or relative beauty, which we perceive in objects, commonly considered as imitations or resemblances of something else. According to Hutcheson, the general foundation or occasion of the ideas of beauty is «uniformity amidst variety» (Inquiry, sec. 2).»All the objects we call beautiful agree in two things, which seem to concur in our sense of beauty. (1) When they are perceived, or even imagined, they produce a certain agreeable emotion or feeling in the mind; and (2) this agreeable emotion is accompanied with an opinion or belief of their having some perfection or excellence belonging to them » (Reid, Intellectual Powers, essay VIII. ch. IV.).Berkeley, in his Alciphron, and Hume, in many parts of his works, made utility the foundation of beauty. But objects which are useful are not always beautiful, and objects which are beautiful are not always useful. That which is useful is useful for some end; and that which is beautiful is beautiful in itself, and independent of the pleasure which it gives or the end it may serve.On the question whether mental or material objects first give us feelings of beauty, see Stewart, Active Powers, I. 279; Smith, Theory of Mor. Sent., pt. IV. ch. I.; Alison, Essay on Taste; Price, in his Review of Principal Questions in Morals, sec. 2; art. «Beauty» in the Ency. Brit., 9th ed., by Lord Jeffrey; Kames, Elements of Criticism, vol. I. ch. III.; Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful.— V. .ÆSTHETICS. |
