The natural delight of our mind in moral beauty.
Thus we are led to enquire after good final reasons.
But besides our natural sense of beauty and harmony in material objects, arising from unity amidst variety, we have analogous to it another sense, viz. a sense of beauty in affections, actions and characters. Beauty in merely corporeal forms is indeed exceeding entertaining to the mind. “There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is great or uncommon. The first discovery of it strikes the mind with secret joy, and spreads a chearfulness and delight through all its faculties.”27 But does not every one feel that beauty of the moral kind is yet more charming and transporting than any corporeal beauty! And what is that, but such a tendency of an action to publick good, as shews generous intention, and benevolent affection in the agent. Now as by the former sense we are impelled and pointed to look out for unity of design, simplicity and consent of parts, and therefore to trace analogies in nature, and to reduce like appearances to general laws; so by the latter, we are prompted and directed to enquire after the goodness and fitness of general laws, that is, their tendency to the good of the whole to which they belong, or which<52> is constituted and regulated by them. This taste of the mind as naturally leads us to such researches as any other appetite impells us to gratify it. And do not these two dispositions in our nature, so analogous to one another, make an excellent provision or assistance for our making progress in knowledge? They naturally point us towards the objects, and methods of enquiring, that will be at once most pleasing and useful. They tell us, as it were, what we ought chiefly to employ our enquiries about, and how we ought to manage them.
The natural delight of our mind in great objects.
IV. To conclude. We are considerably aided and directed in our researches after knowledge, by our natural delight in great objects, or such as wonderfully dilate and expand the mind, and put its grasp to the trial. For thus we are prompted not only to admire the grandeur of nature in general, or in the large and astonishing prospects its immensity affords us; and in the greatness of some particular objects of nature, of an enlivening and sublime kind; but in that greatness of manner which appears every where in its methods of operation, even in the minutest objects of sense; and to copy after this greatness of nature in our imitations of it by arts.a The mind being naturally great,<53> and fond of power and perfection, delights highly in trying its strength, and in stretching itself, and there fore is exceeding pleased with those objects<54> that dilate it, or give it occasion and excite it to expand itself.
The imagination a most useful power.
It is necessary to render us capable of social commerce by discourse.
We could not have mutual commerce by discourse, were not the moral world analogous to the natural world.
The right method of teaching language would teach us this analogy.
Let us now proceed to consider a little some of our faculties or powers, by which we are fitted for knowledge. And here we may observe, 1. That the imagination is a faculty of wonderful use in our frame: it is by this faculty that we have memory, and are able to recal absent objects to our mind, set lovely pictures of them before us, and thus contemplate and examine them, as if they were actually present with us. 2. It is this faculty that renders us capable of many delightful imitative arts, which for that reason are called arts of imagination. Both these facts are too obvious to need any proof. 3. But it is well worth while to remark how it comes about, that imagination is capable of affording us such a vast variety of pleasures, and of inventing so many fine arts, as rhetoric, poetry, painting, &c. for it is evident, that without the imagination these arts would be absolutely unknown to us. Now it has been often observed on that subject, that such is the analogy between sensible and moral objects, that there is none of the latter sort that may not be cloathed with a sensible form or image, and represented to us as it were in a material shape and hue. So true is this, that not only are wit and poetry owned to take place only in consequence of this analogy or resemblance of moral and natural ideas; but even all language is confessed to be originally taken from sensible objects, or their properties and effects. But the real truth of the matter perhaps is not very generally attended to, which is, “That moral ideas could not at all be expressed by words, if they could not be pictured to us by means of analogous sensible objects.” Not only are those the best words to express moral objects in oratory or poetry, which suggest the liveliest, the strongest, the clearest images or pictures of<55> them derived from sensible forms: but in general, words cannot express any moral objects, but by exciting pictures of them in our minds. But all words being originally expressive of sensible qualities, no words can express moral ideas, but so far as there is such an analogy be twixt the natural and moral world, that objects in the latter may be shadowed forth, pictured or imaged to us by some resemblances to them in the former. It is imagination therefore that renders us capable of social intercourse and commerce, even about moral ideas, and their relations, by mutual discourse. And so far as language can go in communicating sentiments, so far have we an indisputable proof of analogy between the sensible and the moral world; and consequently of wonderful wisdom and goodness, in adjusting sensible and moral relations and connexions one to another; the sensible world to our minds, and reciprocally the connexions of things relative to our moral powers to the connexions of things that constitute the sensible world. It is this analogy that makes the beauty, propriety, and force of words, expressive of moral ideas, by conveying pictures of them into the mind; so little attended to in teaching languages, whereby the study of language is rendered so jejune and insipid; whereas, if rightly taught, by it great insight would early be got into one of the most entertaining and useful parts of knowledge; and that clearly manifests the wisdom and goodness of nature in our fabric; namely, the analogy or consent between the moral and natural world, in consequence of which, words primitively signifying sensible ideas, may convey moral ones into the mind by analogy.
It is by fancy that our passionate part is reached.
But whatever may be thought of this assertion, it is plain from the consideration of poetry, oratory, or any of the arts which are capable of touching or moving the heart agreeably, that nature has given us the imaginative faculty on purpose to enable us to<56> give warming as well as enlightening colours to truths; or to embellish, recommend and enforce them upon the mind. For tho’ truths may be rendered evident and certain to the understanding by reasoning about them, yet they cannot reach our heart, or bestir our passionate part but by means of the imagination. The fine arts are, indeed, but so many different languages by which truths may be represented, illustrated and recommended to us. And these arts show us the power and use of fancy, by making us feel its influence on the heart, or how directly it makes its way to it. But the moral power of imagination, must be evident to every one who reflects how it is, for instance, that any absent object is able to outweigh a present pleasure in our mind. For how else is it that the remote one receives strength, but by the lively affecting manner in which imagination represents it, so as to render it as it were present, or, at least, tho’ absent, so efficacious, that no interveening self-denial, or suffering is sufficient to retard the mind from pursuing it, with the utmost intenseness? ’Tis a lively picture drawn by the fancy that does all this.
Why we are so constituted.
Now, if it be asked, why we are so constituted? Perhaps if we had a fuller knowledge of the human mind, we might be able to see many reasons for it: mean time, ’tis sufficient to vindicate nature for having so framed us, that we plainly see, how in consequence of such a constitution, we are able to become Poets, in the proper sense of the word, that is, Creators; able to vie with nature and rival it; and that to it we owe a vast variety