An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue; In Two Treatises (original) (raw)

i n t r o d u c t i o n xii Form or uniformity then is the particular quality in objects which is the "Foundation or Occasion of the Ideas of Beauty among Men" (I. II. § § I, II). Beauty is our perception or knowledge of this objective quality, and in accord with his definition of "sense" as the power of perceiving these objective qualities, he assumes a special sense of beauty. This sense is but one of a group of "internal senses" which include among others the "good Ear" or "sense of harmony" (I. VI. § IX). The formula by which the objective form in things themselves can be described is, as already noted, "uniformity amidst variety." With these words Hutcheson paraphrases Shaftesbury's concept of beauty. As in his analysis of moral actions, Hutcheson thinks that aesthetic phenomena are capable of a mathematical analysis, which he sketches in his study of "original or absolute beauty" (title of I. II.). After delineating his theory of aesthetic knowledge, Hutcheson in the remaining chapters of the first treatise develops a general aesthetic theory. This theory of beauty is not limited to a theory of art but extends to a general, almost cosmological theory. This becomes clear when we look at his basic distinction of original or absolute beauty from comparative or relative beauty at the end of the first section. Absolute beauty we "perceive in Objects without comparison to any thing external, of which the Object is suppos'd an Imitation, or Picture" (I. I. § XVI). Examples of such beauty are the works of nature-like heaven and earth, plants and animals-the harmony of music; some works of art, when their beauty, as in architecture or gardening, is not an imitation of something else. Even theorems, such as those in mathematics, can in the absolute sense be beautiful. Relative beauty is "founded on a Conformity, or a kind of Unity between the Original and the Copy" (I. IV. § I). Instances here are poetry and painting, and the creation as a whole-since in the beauty of the effects it reflects the design and wisdom of its cause, which is God the Father as the Creator (I. V.). It is the general theory of perception as developed in the first treatise that forms the basis of the similar argument in the second. We may assume that Hutcheson wanted first to establish the idea of additional senses in a field that was not as controversial as that of moral philosophy.