For as use at last takes off the painful effect of many things,it reduces the pleasurable effect in others in the same manner,and brings both to a sort of mediocrity and indifference.Very justly is use called a second nature;and our natural and common state is one of absolute indifference,equally prepared for pain or pleasure.But when we are thrown out of this state,or deprived of anything requisite to maintain us in it;when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some mechanical cause,we are always hurt.It is so with the second nature,custom,in all things which relate to it.Thus the want of the usual proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust,though their presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure.It is true,that the proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body,are frequently found in beautiful ones,because they are generally found in all mankind;but if it can be shown too,that they are found without beauty,and that beauty frequently exists without them,and that this beauty,where it exists,always can be assigned to other less equivocal causes,it will naturally lead us to conclude,that proportion and beauty are not ideas of the same nature.The true opposite to beauty is not disproportion or deformity,but ugliness:and as it proceeds from causes opposite to those of positive beauty,we cannot consider it until we come to treat of that.Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of mediocrity,in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found;but this has no effect upon the passions.
VI
Fitness Not The Cause Of Beauty It is said that the idea of utility,or of a part's being well adapted to answer its end,is the cause of beauty,or indeed beauty itself.If it were not for this opinion,it had been impossible for the doctrine of proportion to have held its ground very long;the world would be soon weary of hearing of measures which related to nothing,either of a natural principle,or of a fitness to answer some end;the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion,is the suitableness of means to certain ends,and,where this is not the question,very seldom trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things.Therefore it was necessary for this theory to insist,that not only artificial but natural objects took their beauty from the fitness of the parts for their several purposes.But in framing this theory,I am apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently consulted.For,on that principle,the wedge-like snout of a swine,with its tough cartilage at the end,the little sunk eyes,and the whole make of the head,so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting,would be extremely beautiful.The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican,a thing highly useful to this animal,would be likewise as beautiful in our eyes.The hedge-hog,so well secured against all assaults by his prickly hide,and the porcupine with his missile quills,would be then considered as creatures of no small elegance.There are few animals whose parts are better contrived than those of the monkey;he has the hands of a man,joined to the springy limbs of a beast;he is admirably calculated for running,leaping,grappling,and climbing;and yet there are few animals which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all mankind.I need say little on the trunk of the elephant,of such various usefulness,and which is so far from contributing to his beauty.How well fitted is the wolf for running and leaping!how admirably is the lion armed for battle!but will any one therefore call the elephant,the wolf,and the lion,beautiful animals?I believe nobody will think the form of a man's leg so well adapted to running,as those of a horse,a dog,a deer,and several other creatures;at least they have not that appearance:yet,I believe,a well-fashioned human leg will be allowed to far exceed all these in beauty.If the fitness of parts was what constituted the loveliness of their form,the actual employment of them would undoubtedly much augment it;but this,though it is sometimes so upon another principle,is far from being always the case.
Abird on the wing is not so beautiful as when it is perched;nay,there are several of the domestic fowls which are seldom seen to fly,and which are nothing the less beautiful on that account;yet birds are so extremely different in their form from the beast and human kinds,that you cannot,on the principle of fitness,allow them anything agreeable,but in consideration of their parts being designed for quite other purposes.I never in my life chanced to see a peacock fly;and yet before,very long before,I considered any aptitude in his form for the aerial life,I was struck with the extreme beauty which raises that bird above many of the best flying fowls in the world;though,for anything I
saw,his way of living was much like that of the swine,which fed in the farm-yard along with him.The same may be said of cocks,hens,and the like;they are of the flying kind in figure;in their manner of moving not very different from men and beasts.To leave these foreign examples;if beauty in our own species was annexed to use,men would be much more lovely than women;
and strength and agility would be considered as the only beauties.
