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of Achilles. Yet we love Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector more than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration is the passion 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 digreffion is perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, where our business is to shew, that objects of great dimensions 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 disquisition is almost 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. Suppose 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 sect. 24. But when the

ray

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ray passes without fuch opposition through the glass or liquor, when the glass or liquor are quite transparent, the light is sometimes softened 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 such an effect on the eye, as fmooth opaque bodies have on the eye and touch. So that the pleasure here is compounded of the foftness of the tranfmitted and the evenness of the reflected light. This pleasure may be heightened by the common principles in other things, if the shape of the glass which holds the transparent liquor be so judicioufly varied, as to present the colour gradually and interchangeably, weakened and strengthened with all the variety which judgment in affairs of this nature shall fuggeft. On a review of all that has been faid of the effects, as well as the causes 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, causes that emotion in the mind, which I have called aftonishment; the beautiful is founded on mere positive pleafure, and excites in the foul that feeling, which is called love. Their causes have made the subject of this fourth part.

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THE END OF THE FOURTH PART.

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OF WORDS.

ATURAL objects affect us, by the laws of 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 reason; from which latter refult the rules of proportion, which make a work to be praifed or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for which it was designed is or is not pro

perly perly answered. 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 share in exciting ideas of beauty and of the fublime as any of those, and sometimes a much greater than any of them; therefore an inquiry into the manner by which they excite such emotions is far from being unneceffary in a discourse of this kind.

SECT. II.

THE COMMON EFFECT OF POETRY, NOT BY RAIS ING IDEAS OF THINGS.

THE common notion of the power of poetry and eloquence, as well as that of words in ordinary conversation, is, that they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which cuftom has appointed them to stand. To examine the truth of this notion, it may be requisite to observe that words may be divided into three forts. The first are fuch as represent many fimple ideas united by nature to form fome one determinate compofition, as man, horse, tree, castle, &c. These I

call aggregate words. The second, are they that stand for one fimple idea of fuch compositions, and no more; as red, blue, round, square, and the like. These I call fimple abstract 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 offer degrees of complexity; as virtue, honour, perfuafion, magiftrate, and the like. These I call compound abstract words. Words, I am fenfible, are capable of being claffsed into more curious distinctions; but these seem to be natural, and enough for our purpose; and they are disposed in that order in which they are commonly taught, and in which the mind gets the ideas they are substituted for. I shall begin with the third fort of words; compound abstracts, such as virtue, honour, perfuafion, docility. Of these I am convinced, that whatever power they may have on the passions, they do not derive it from any representation raised in the mind of the things for which they stand. As compofitions, 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 substituted; 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,

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