and this has been shown by Burke, that any rugged, any sudden projection, any sharp angle, is in the highest degree contrary to the idea of beauty. Such projections and angles are destitute of all the qualities which have just been enumerated—simplicity, regularity, uniformity, proportion, order; and conformably to the principles I have laid down in a previous chapter, they can present only relations which are naturally disagreeable. This view is corroborated by the fact, that all very sharp, broken, or angular objects, were disagreeable to the boy couched by Cheselden, as they are to all eyes of very nice sensibility.
Now, as angular forms give, to the sense of touch, sharpness, roughness, or harshness, so do opposite forms give smoothness or fineness. Hence, Burke makes smoothness his second characteristic of beauty, and that far more truly than he makes littleness its first, for, as he observes, “smoothness is a quality so essential to beauty, that I do not now recollect anything beautiful that is not smooth.”
Such being really the case, I am bound to expose Knight’s sophistry on this point. “This elegant author,” says he, “has expatiated upon the gratifications of feeling smooth and undulating surfaces in general: but, I believe, these gratifications have been confined to himself; and probably to his own imagination acting through the medium of his favorite system: for, except in the communication of the sexes, which affords no general illustration, and ought therefore to be kept entirely out of the question, I have never heard of any person being addicted to such luxuries; though a feeling-board would certainly afford as cheap and innocent a gratification, as either a smelling-bottle, a picture, or a flute, provided it were capable of affording any gratification at all.”
This is a good specimen of the kind of perverted reasoning, which peculiarly distinguishes Knight.
A man affecting the character of philosopher, ought calmly to have observed that, by young people before puberty, and, consequently, when there is not the slightest sexual bias, smooth objects are generally found to be agreeable, and rough or harsh ones to be the reverse. This would at once have set him right upon this point.
If, to such a man, it should for a moment have appeared worth while to ask why we do not make use of feeling-boards, as well as of smelling-bottles, he ought to have sought the solution of his difficulty in the nature of the senses; and then, with a trifle more of ability than Payne Knight hereby shows himself to have possessed, he would have seen that smoothness affords us as much pleasure as any smell, but that, as it would have been always troublesome, and often impossible, to apply our fingers to smooth surfaces, we generally receive the varied and incessant pleasure it affords, by means of sight; that it is borne by light to the eye, as smell is by the air; and that this is the reason why, except when contact is indispensable, we have no need of anything in the way of a feeling-board.
But Knight says: “Smoothness being properly a quality, perceivable only by the touch, and applied metaphorically to the objects of the other senses, we often apply it, very improperly, to those of vision; assigning smoothness as a cause of visible beauty, to things which, though smooth to the touch, cast the most sharp, harsh, and angular reflections of light upon the eyes; and these reflections are all that the eye feels, or naturally perceives.... Such are all objects of cut-glass or polished metal; as may be seen by the manner in which painters imitate them: for, as the imitations of painting extend only to the visible qualities of bodies, they show those visible qualities fairly and impartially.... Yet the imitative representation of such objects in painting is far less harsh and dazzling than the effects of them in reality: for there are no materials that a painter can employ, capable of expressing the sharpness and brilliancy of those angular reflections of the collected and condensed rays, which are emitted from the surfaces of polished metals.”
It seems, to me, scarcely possible to find sophistry more worthless than this, or rather a more contemptible quibble; for that which, availing himself of our technicalities about light, he calls angularity, sharpness, &c., has no analogy with disagreeable angularity of form. To produce the brilliance and splendor which he calls angular, and describes as so offensive, we polish crystalline and metallic bodies in the highest degree!—we value precisely those which thus admit of greatest splendor!—and, on that very account, the diamond (rightly or wrongly, is not the question) is deemed the most valuable object on earth!
So much for those elements of beauty, in inanimate things, which fall under the cognizance of our fundamental sense, or that of touch.
As to sight and its objects, it is true that, as this organ varies in different persons, their taste is modified, with regard to colors. But the preference of light and delicate colors to dark and glaring ones, is almost universal among persons of sensibility.
Alison, indeed, ascribes the effects of all colors to association. “White,” he says, “as it is the color of day, is expressive to us of the cheerfulness or gayety which the return of day brings: black, as the color of darkness [night], is expressive of gloom and melancholy.” And he adds: “Whether some colors may not of themselves produce agreeable sensations, and others disagreeable sensations, I am not anxious to dispute.” But this is the very point into which Alison ought to have inquired. Nature does nothing without foundation in the simplest principles; and this foundation is not only anterior to, but is the cause of all association.
That, independent of any association, blackness is naturally disagreeable, if not painful, is happily determined by the case of the boy restored to sight by Cheselden, who tells us that the first time the boy saw a black object, it gave him great uneasiness; and that, some time after, upon accidentally seeing a negro-woman, he was struck with great horror at the sight. This appears to be perfectly conclusive.
Knight indeed says: “As to the uneasiness which the boy, couched by Cheselden, felt at the first sight of a black object, it arose either from the harshness of its outline, or from its appearing to act as a partial extinguisher applied to his eyes, which, as every object that he saw, seemed to touch them, would, of course, be its effect.” It is highly probable that black operates in both these ways; and it has therefore natural effects, independent of all association.
As to sounds, Alison observes, that the cries of some animals are sublime, as the roar of the lion, the scream of the eagle, &c.; and he thinks they become so, because we associate them with the strength and ferocity of the animals which utter them. By opposite associations, he accounts for the beauty of the notes of birds. And he says, that there is a similar sublimity or beauty, in the tones of the human voice, and that “such sounds are associated, in our imaginations, with the qualities of mind of which they are in general expressive, and naturally produce in us the conception of these qualities.”
This writer endeavors to establish his views on this subject, by observing, that “grandeur or sublimity of sound, can no otherwise arise from its loudness, than as that loudness excites an idea of power in the sonorous object, or in some other associated with it in the mind: for a child’s drum, close to the ear, fills it with more real noise, than the discharge of a cannon a mile off; and the rattling of a carriage in the street, when faintly and indistinctly heard, has often been mistaken for thunder at a distance. Yet no one ever imagined the beating of a child’s drum, or the rattling of a carriage over the stones, to be grand or sublime; which, nevertheless, they must be, if grandeur or sublimity belong at all to the sensation of loudness. But artillery and lightning are powerful engines of destruction; and with their power we sympathize, whenever the sound of them excites any sentiments of sublimity.”
Now, all this is directly opposed to the doctrine it is meant to support. It distinctly implies that loudness is so natural and so frequent a result of the violent contact of bodies, that we sometimes mistakenly ascribe power to objects, of which we have not correctly distinguished the sounds, owing to imitation, distance, &c. The occasional mistake implies the general truth.
Alison, himself, notwithstanding his doctrine of association, is accordingly led to observe, that “there are some philosophers who consider these as the natural signs of passion or affection, and who believe that it is not from experience, but by means of an original faculty, that we interpret them: and this opinion is supported by great authorities.”
He adds the following observations, which, notwithstanding the error they involve, are too much to the purpose to be omitted here, and which in reality illustrate a natural and true theory, better than they do his own:—
“It