of Achilles. Yet we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector more than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is the paffion which Homer would excite in favour of the Greeks, and he has done it by bestowing on them the virtues which have but little to do with love. This short digref fion is perhaps not wholly befide our purpose, where our business is to fhew, that objects of great dimenfions are incompatible with beauty, the more incompatible as they are greater; whereas the small, if ever they fail of beauty, this failure is not to be attributed to their fize.

SECT. XXV,

OF COLOUR.

WITH regard to colour, the difquifition is almoft infinite; but I conceive the principles laid down in the beginning of this part are fufficient to account for the effects of them all, as well as for the agreeable effects of transparent bodies, whether fluid or folid. Suppofe I look at a bottle of muddy liquor, of a blue or red colour: the blue or red rays cannot pass clearly to the eye, but are fuddenly and unequally stopped by the intervention of little opaque bodies, which without preparation change the idea, and change it too into one difagreeable in its own nature, conformable to the principles laid down in fect. 24. But when the

ray

ray paffes without fuch oppofition through the glafs or liquor, when the glass or liquor are quite transparent, the light is fometimes foftened in the paffage, which makes it more agreeable even as light; and the liquor reflecting all the rays of its proper colour evenly, it has fuch an effect on the eye, as fmooth opaque bodies have on the eye and touch. So that the pleasure here is compounded of the foftnefs of the tranfmitted and the evennefs of the reflected light. This pleafure may be heightened by the common principles in other things, if the shape of the glass which holds the transparent liquor be fo judiciously varied, as to prefent the colour gradually and interchangeably, weakened and ftrengthened with all the variety which judgment in affairs of this nature shall suggeft. On a review of all that has been faid of the effects, as well as the caufes of both, it will appear, that the fublime and beautiful are built on principles very different, and that their affections are as different: the great has terrour for its basis; which, when it is modified, caufes that emotion in the mind, which I have called astonishment; the beautiful is founded on mere positive pleasure, and excites in the foul that feeling, which is called love. Their caufes have made the fubject of this fourth part.

THE END OF THE FOURTH PART.

1

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

OF THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART V.

SECTION I.

OF WORDS.

ATURAL objects affect us, by the laws of

NAT

that connexion which Providence has eftablished between certain motions and configurations of bodies, and certain confequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in the fame manner, but with the fuperadded pleasure of imitation. Architecture affects by the laws of nature, and the law of reafon; from which latter refult the rules of proportion, which make a work to be praised or cenfured, in the whole or in fome part, when the end for which it was defigned is or is not pro perly

perly anfwered. But as to words; they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or architecture; yet words have as confi. derable a fhare in exciting ideas of beauty and of the fublime as any of thofe, and fometimes a much greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which they excite fuch emotions is far from being unneceffary in a difcourfe of this kind.

SECT. II.

THE COMMON EFFECT OF POETRY, NOT BY RAISING IDEAS OF THINGS.

THE common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary converfation, is, that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which cuftom has appointed them to ftand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requifite to obferve that words may be divided into three forts. The firft are fuch as represent many fimple ideas united by nature to form fome one determinate compofition, as man, horfe, tree, caftle, &c. Thefe I call aggregate words. The fecond, are they that ftand for one fimple idea of fuch compofitions, and no more; as red, blue, round, fquare, and the like. Thefe I call fimple abftra&t words. The

third, are those, which are formed by an union, an arbitrary union of both the others, and of the various relations between them in greater or leffer degrees of complexity; as virtue, honour, perfuafion, magiftrate, and the like. Thefe I call compound abstract words. Words, I am fenfible, are capable of being claffed into more curious diftinctions; but these feem to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are difpofed in that order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the ideas they are substituted for. I fhall begin with the third fort of words; compound abstracts, fuch as virtue, honour, perfuafion, docility. Of thefe I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the paffions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the mind of the things for which they ftand. As compositions, they are not real effences, and hardly cause, I think, any real ideas. Nobody, I believe, immediately on hearing the founds, virtue, liberty, or honour, conceives any precife notions of the particular modes of action and thinking, together with the mixt and fimple ideas, and the feveral relations of them for which these words are fubftituted; neither has he any general idea, compounded of them; for if he had, then fome of those particular ones, though indistinct perhaps, and confused, might come foon to be perceived. But this, I take it, is hardly ever the cafe. For,

put