An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty, etc. | Page 8

is no particular common form, but which, to create beauty, an artist, who studies the perfection of the human form, must improve in some, if not in every part; to effect which, considered as mere form only, rules will suffice, but, considered as grace, it must express a sentiment that no rules can give!
That all feel the same sentiment of admiration for that which they think the most perfect, however the objects may differ, has induced some to believe that beauty is an arbitrary idea, and that it exists only in the imagination! But does it follow, that, because it is not possible for the savage or the man of taste to judge of any object but as experience enables him to judge, that therefore there is no preeminence in that form which is beauty to the one above that which is beauty to the other?
Somewhere there must exist, whether perceived or not, the perfection, or highest point of excellence of the human form respecting proportion; and somewhere there must exist, or does at times exist, the highest excellence of its expression, i.e. the moral charm of the human countenance, grace.
The artist, who has only seen the beauty of his own nation, will from that form his standard of perfection. But, when he comes to extend his enquiry, when he has viewed the beauty of other nations, particularly that form and that expression which the Grecian artists (who were probably on a line with the Grecian philosophers) modelled from their ideas of beauty! he will quit his partiality for the beauty of his own country, and prefer that of the Grecian, which I imagine is preferable to that of the whole world! The only criterion to prove it so, I mean its form, would be to select from every nation the most perfect in it, and from that number to choose the most perfect, were this possible to be done, respecting the external form of beauty: it could not respecting the internal expression of beauty, _grace_; for who shall be the world's arbiter of the ne plus ultra of grace!
That the artists of all ages and of all nations have terminated their enquiries after beauty in that of the Grecian form is the highest proof that can be given of its superior excellence to that of all the world!
Common form, as I have observed before, is so much nearer beauty than deformity, that it is, in abstract idea, the model to compose beauty of form from. The universal appearance of nature is, to every eye, right, fit, faultless, &c. therefore, if every part of the copy be the same, particularly, I mean, in the human form, beauty of form must result.
The beauty of every part of the human body, forming a perfect whole, is analogous to an instrument of music in perfect concord, and mere exactitude of proportion in its parts, exclusive of the idea of mind, would, I imagine, have no more effect upon the spectator than the mere concord of the strings of an instrument has on the hearer; it amounts to no more than blameless right, nor, till influenced by sentiment, can it go farther.
But, as we are incapable of separating the idea of the human form from the human mind, and as the touch of an instrument in perfect concord gives a presentiment of harmony, so does the perception of the concordance of the parts of a beautiful form give a perception of grace. The mind, as I have observed before, cannot rest in fixed perfection, the _Spotless white_; and its natural transition from beauty must be into the region of grace.
Section 3. Grace.
The principles, which constitute grace, genius, or taste, are one; which is denominated grace in the object, genius in the production of the object, and taste in the perception of it.
The existence of grace seems to depend more upon the character of mental than of corporeal beauty. All its motions seem to indicate and, to be regulated by the utmost delicacy of sentiment! I have placed it between the highest sentiment of the human mind, sublmity, that no rules can teach, and the highest sentiment that rules can teach, exact beauty, the two extremes of the vrai reel and the vrai ideal. Grace seems, as it were, to hang between the influence of both; the irregular sublime giving character and relief to the negative and determined qualities of beauty; and beauty, i.e. truth, confining within due bounds the eccentric qualities of sublimity, forming, both to sight and in idea, orderly variety, the waving line, neither straight nor crooked. The waving line is the symbol, or memento, as I may say, of grace, wherever it is seen in whatever form, animate or inanimate; and may be justly styled the line of taste or grace!
The