Rocking sets children to sleep better than absolute rest;there is indeed scarce anything at that age which gives more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down;the manner of playing which their nurses use with children,and the weighing and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favourite amusement,evince this very sufficiently.Most people must have observed the sort of sense they have had on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf,with gradual ascents and declivities.This will give a better idea of the beautiful,and point out its probable course better,than almost anything else.On the contrary,when one is hurried over a rough,rocky,broken road,the pain felt by these sudden inequalities shows why similar sights,feelings,and sounds are so contrary to beauty:and with regard to the feeling,it is exactly the same in its effect,or very nearly the same,whether,for instance,I move my hand along the surface of a body of a certain shape,or whether such a body is moved along my hand.But to bring this analogy of the senses home to the eye:if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface,that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in a surface gradually unequal,)it must be exactly similar in its effects on the eye and touch;upon the one of which it operates directly,on the other,indirectly.And this body will be beautiful,if the lines which compose its surface are not continued,even so varied,in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention.The variation itself must be continually varied.
XXIV
Concerning Smallness To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repetition of the same reasonings,and of illustrations of the same nature,I will not enter very minutely into every particular that regards beauty,as it is founded on the disposition of its quantity,or its quantity itself.In speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty,because the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely relative to the species of the objects,which are infinite.It is true,that having once fixed the species of any object,and the dimensions common in the individuals of that species,we may observe some that exceed,and some that fall short of,the ordinary standard:those which greatly exceed are,by the excess,provided the species itself be not very small,rather great and terrible than beautiful;but as in the animal world,and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise,the qualities that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater dimensions;when they are so united,they constitute a species something different both from the sublime and beautiful,which I have before called fine:but this kind,I imagine,has not such a power on the passions either as vast bodies have which are endued with the correspondent qualities of the sublime,or as the qualities of beauty have when united in a small object.The affection produced by large bodies adorned with the spoils of beauty,is a tension continually relieved;which approaches to the nature of mediocrity.But if I were to say how I find myself affected upon such occasions,I should say,that the sublime suffers less by being united to some of the qualities of beauty,than beauty does by being joined to greatness of quantity,or any other properties of the sublime.There is something so over-ruling in whatever inspires us with awe,in all things which belongs ever so remotely to terror,that nothing else can stand in their presence.
There lie the qualities of beauty either dead or unoperative;or at most exerted to mollify the rigour and sternness of the terror,which is the natural concomitant of greatness.Besides the extraordinary great in every species,the opposite to this,the dwarfish and diminutive,ought to be considered.Littleness,merely as such,has nothing contrary to the idea of beauty.The humming-bird,both in shape and colouring,yields to none of the winged species,of which it is the least;and perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his smallness.But there are animals,which,when they are extremely small,are rarely (if ever)beautiful.
