Poetry and Music, Laughter, the Sublime, etc. While Beattie had given the preference to psychological and aesthetic questions, James Oswald (1772) appealed to common sense in matters of religion, describing it as an instinctive faculty of judgment concerning truth and falsehood. The most eminent among the followers of Reid was Dugald Stewart (professor in Edinburgh; _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, 1792-1827; _Collected Works_, edited by Hamilton, 1854-58), who developed the doctrines of the master and in some points modified them. Thomas Brown (1778-1820), who is highly esteemed by Mill, Spencer, and Bain, approximated the teachings of Reid and Stewart to those of Hume. The philosophy of the Scottish School was long in favor both in England and in France, where it was employed as a weapon against materialism. By way of appendix we may mention the beginnings of a psychological aesthetics in Henry Home (Lord Kames, 1696-1782), and Edmund Burke (1728-97).[1] Home, in ethics a follower of Hutcheson, is fond of supporting his aesthetic views by examples from Shakespeare. Beauty (chap. iii.) appears to belong to the object itself, but in reality it is only an effect, a "secondary quality," of the object; like color, it is nothing but an idea in the mind, "for an object is said to be beautiful for no other reason but that it appears so to the spectator." It arises from regularity, proportion, order, simplicity--properties which belong to sublimity as well (chap, iv.), but to which they are by no means so essential, since it is satisfied with a less degree of them. While the beautiful excites emotions of sweetness and gayety, the sublime rouses feelings which are agreeable, it is true, but which are not sweet and gay, but strong and more serious. Burke's explanation goes deeper. He derives the antithesis of the sublime and the beautiful from the two fundamental impulses of human nature, the instinct of self-preservation and the social impulse. Whatever is contrary to the former makes a strong and terrible impression on the soul; whatever favors the latter makes a weak but agreeable one. The terrible delights us (first depressing and then exalting us), when we merely contemplate it, without being ourselves affected by the danger or the pain--this is the sublime. On the other hand, that is beautiful which inspires us with tenderness and affection without our desiring to possess it. Sublimity implies a certain greatness, beauty, a certain smallness. Delight in both is based on bodily phenomena. Terror moderated exercises a beneficent influence on the nerves by stimulating them and giving them tension; the gentle impression of beauty exerts a quieting effect upon them. The disturbances caused by the former, and the recovery induced by the latter, are both conducive to health, and hence, experienced as pleasures.