Besides imagination and reason, the man of taste ought to possess an enlightened but ardent love of beauty; he must take delight in meeting it, must search for it, must summon it. To comprehend and demonstrate that a thing is not beautiful, is an ordinary pleasure, an ungrateful task; but to discern a beautiful thing, to be penetrated with its beauty, to make it evident, and make others participate in our sentiment, is an exquisite joy, a generous task. Admiration is, for him who feels it, at once a happiness and an honor. It is a happiness to feel deeply what is beautiful; it is an honor to know how to recognize it. Admiration is the sign of an elevated reason served by a noble heart. It is above a small criticism, that is skeptical and powerless; but it is the soul of a large criticism, a criticism that is productive: it is, thus to speak, the divine part of taste. After having spoken of taste which appreciates beauty, shall we say nothing of genius which makes it live again? Genius is nothing else than taste in action, that is to say, the three powers of taste carried to their culmination, and armed with a new and mysterious power, the power of execution. But we are already entering upon the domain of art. Let us wait, we shall soon find art again and the genius that accompanies it. FOOTNOTES: [96] Except the estimable _Essay on the Beautiful_, by P. Andre, a disciple of Malebranche, whose life was considerably prolonged into the eighteenth century. On P. Andre, see 3d Series, vol. iii., _Modern Philosophy_, p. 207, 516. [97] See in the works of Diderot, _Pensees sur la Sculpture, les Salons_, etc. [98] See 1st Series, vol. iv., explained and estimated, the theories of Hutcheson and Reid. [99] The theory of Kant is found in the _Critique of Judgment_, and in the _Observations_ on the _Sentiment of the Beautiful and the Sublime_. See the excellent translation made by M. Barny, 2 vols., 1846. [100] On Hutcheson and Smith, their merits and defects, the part of truth and the part of error, which their philosophy contains, see the detailed lectures which we have devoted to them, 1st Series, vol. iv. [101] See the exposition and refutation of the doctrine of Condillac and Helvetius, _Ibid._, vol. iii. [102] See lecture 5, in this vol. LECTURE VII. THE BEAUTIFUL IN OBJECTS. Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful: the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.