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

see in each individual we do not call deformity: when it is so, it stands
on the limit of the common circle, in opposition to beauty.
From common form seem to originate beauty and deformity; and, as
they recede from each other in opposite directions, they become less
and less like their parent, common form, but never totally unlike; for it
is their likeness to that form that constitutes the one beauty, and the
other deformity; for, were there no resemblance in deformity to the
common form, it would be a different species, and no longer disgust;

and none in beauty, it would no longer please.
There 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