Does not an additional Rapture flow in from this Adjunct, of which
Reason will afterwards discover the latent Cause in the same manner
as before. Your favourite Architecture will not fail to afford less
remarkable Instances, that Truth, Beauty, and Utility are inseparable.
You very well know that every Rule, Canon, and Proportion in building
did not arise from the capricious Invention of Man, but from the
unerring Dictates of Nature, and that even what are now the ornamental
Parts of an Edifice, originally were created by Necessity; and are
still displeasing to the Sight, when they are disobedient, if I may
use that moral Expression, to the Order, which Nature, whose Laws
cannot be repealed, first gave to supply that Necessity. Here I appeal
to your own Breast, and let me continue the Appeal by asking you
concerning another Science analogous to this, which is founded upon as
invariable Principles: I mean the Science of living well, in which
you are as happily learned as in the former. Say then, has not every
amiable Character, with which you have been enamoured, been proved by
a cool Examination to contain a _beautiful_ Proportion, in the Point
it was placed in, relative to Society? And what is it that constitutes
Moral Deformity, or what we call Vice, but the Disproportion which any
Agent occasions, in the Fabric of Civil Community, by a Non-compliance
to the general _Order_ which should prevail in it?
As the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Poetry are imitative of these,
their Excellence, as ARISTOTLE observes, consists in Faithfulness to
their Original: nor have they any _primary_ Beauty in themselves, but
derive their shadowy Existence in a mimetic Transcript from Objects
in the Material World, or from Passions, Characters, and Manners.
Nevertheless that _internal Sense_ we call TASTE (which is a Herald
for the whole human System, in it's three different Parts, the
refined Faculties of Perception, the gross Organs of Sense, and the
intermediate Powers of Imagination) has as quick a Feeling of this
secondary Excellence of the Arts, as for the primary Graces; and
seizes the Heart with Rapture long before the Senses, and Reason in
Conjunction, can _prove_ this Beauty by collating the Imitations with
their Originals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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