BEAUTIFUL. [1] Before delving into the difficult research into the origin of the beautiful , I would first note, with all the authors who have written on the subject, that by a sort of fatality, the topics most addressed among men are rather ordinarily those least known to them; and that such is, among many others, the lot of the beautiful . Everyone reasons about the beautiful : it is admired in the works of nature: it is demanded in the productions of the Arts: at each moment its quality is conferred or denied; however, if one were to ask men with the surest and most exquisite taste what is its origin, its nature, the precise notion of it, its true idea, its exact definition; whether it is something absolute or relative; whether there is an essential, eternal, unchanging beautiful that would be the rule and the model for a subaltern beautiful ; or whether beauty is like fashions: one would immediately see divided opinions; some declare their ignorance, while others fall into skepticism. How is it that almost all men agree that there is a beautiful ; that so many among them feel strongly where it lies, yet so few know what it is?

In order to reach, if this proves possible, a solution to these difficulties, we shall begin by exposing the varying opinions of authors who have written the best on the beautiful ; we shall then offer our ideas on the same topic, and we shall end this article with some general observations on human understanding and its operations relative to the question at hand.

Plato wrote two dialogues on the beautiful , Phaedra and Hippias Major : in the latter, he teaches what the beautiful is not, rather than what it is; and in the former, he speaks less about the beautiful than about the natural love one has for it. In Hippias Major, the point is only to confound the vanity of a sophist; in Phaedra , it is to spend a few agreeable moments with a friend in a delicious locale.

Saint Augustine composed a treatise on the beautiful : but this work is lost, and all that remains by Saint Augustine on this important topic are a few scattered thoughts in his writings, by which one can see that the exact rapport among the parts of a whole, which makes the whole one , was, according to him, the distinctive character of beauty .  [2] Were I to ask an architect, says this great man, why, after erecting an arcade on one wing of his building, he erects another on the other, he will undoubtedly reply: so that the parts of his architecture will have good symmetry together . But why does this symmetry seem to you so necessary? So that it will be pleasing . But who are you to appoint yourself arbiter of what should or should not appeal to men? And how do you know that symmetry appeals to us? I am sure of it because things so arranged have decency, rightness, and grace; in a word, because it is beautiful . Fine: but, tell me, is it beautiful because it is pleasing? Or is it pleasing because it is beautiful ? That’s easy, it is pleasing because it is beautiful . I agree with you, but, let me ask you again: what makes this beautiful ? And if you are embarrassed by my question, precisely because the masters of your craft rarely venture so far, at least you will easily agree that similitude, equality, and concordance of the parts of your building with one another, reduce everything to a sort of unity that satisfies reason. That is what I meant to say . Yes: but be careful, there is no true unity in bodies, as they are all composed of an innumerable number of parts, each of which in turn is composed of an infinity of others. Where do you then see this unity that leads you in the construction of your design; this unity which you consider an inviolable law in your craft; this unity which your building must imitate in order to be beautiful , but which nothing on earth can imitate perfectly, since nothing on earth can be perfectly one . What then follows from this? Should we not recognize that there exists above our minds some original sovereign, eternal, perfect unity, that is the essential rule of the beautiful , and which you seek in the practice of your craft? From which Saint Augustine concludes, in another work, that it is unity which constitutes, so to say, the form and the essence of the beautiful, in every domain . Omnis porro pulchritudinis forma, unitas est . 

M. Wolf states, in his Psychology , that there are things which please us, and others which do not; and that this difference is what constitutes the beautiful and the ugly : what pleases us is called beautiful , what does not is ugly . [3]

He adds, that beauty consists in perfection; such that by the force of this perfection, a thing clad in it is conducive to producing pleasure in us.

He then distinguishes between two types of beauty , the true and the apparent: the true one is that which originates in real perfection; and the apparent one is that which originates in apparent perfection.

It is evident that Saint Augustine had gone much further in his research into the beautiful than the Leibnizian philosopher: the latter seems to claim first that something is beautiful because it pleases us; when it only pleases us because it is beautiful ; as Plato and Saint Augustine have noted quite well. It is true that he then brings perfection into the idea of beauty : but what is perfection? Is the perfect any clearer or more intelligible than the beautiful ?

All those who, priding themselves on not speaking merely out of convention and without thinking, says M. Crouzas, will want to go deep inside themselves, and pay attention to what is happening there, to the way they think, and to what they feel when they exclaim that is beautiful ; they will become aware that with this term they express a certain relationship [ rapport ] between an object and agreeable feelings or with ideas of approval, and they will come to agree that to say that is beautiful is to say, I see something of which I approve or which pleases me. [4]

We see that M. Crouzas's definition is not taken from the nature of the beautiful , but only from the effect one experiences in its presence: it has the same flaw as M. Wolf's. M. Crouzas was well aware of this; this is why he then busies himself with identifying the characteristics of the beautiful : he enumerates five: variety, unity, regularity, order , proportion .

Whence it follows either that Saint Augustine's definition is incomplete, or that M. Crouzas's is redundant. If the idea of unity does not include those of variety, regularity, order, and proportion, and if these qualities are essential to the beautiful , then Saint Augustine should not have omitted them: if the idea of unity does include these characteristics, then M. Crouzas should not have added them.

M. Crouzas fails to define what he means by variety ; he seems to understand by unity , the relation of all the parts to a single end; he makes regularity consist in the similar disposition of the parts among themselves; he designates by order a certain degradation of the parts, that must be observed in the passage from one to another; and he defines proportion as unity seasoned with variety , regularity , and order in each part.

I will not attack this definition of the beautiful by the vague things it contains; I will merely point out here that it is particular [to him], and that it only applies to Architecture, or at the very least to great wholes in other genres, like a piece of eloquence, a drama, etc., but not to a word , a thought , a part of an object .

Mr. Hutcheson, famous professor of moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, has composed his own system: it amounts to thinking that one should no longer ask what is the beautiful , but rather ask what is the visible .  [5] By the visible , we understand what is made to be perceived by the eyes; and what Mr. Hutcheson means by beautiful is what is made to be seized by the internal sense of the beautiful . His internal sense of the beautiful is a faculty with which we distinguish beautiful things, as the sense of vision is a faculty with which we receive the notion of colors and shapes. This author and his followers go to great lengths to demonstrate the reality and the necessity of this sixth sense ; and here is how they set about their task.

1. Our mind, they say, is passive in pleasure and displeasure. Objects do not affect us precisely as we would wish; some make on our soul a necessary impression of pleasure; others are displeasing to us necessarily: all the power of our will is reduced to seeking the first type of object, and to fleeing the other: it is the very constitution of our nature, sometimes individual, which makes the ones agreeable and the others disagreeable. See Pain and Pleasure.

2. There is perhaps no object that can affect our soul without being more or less a necessary occasion of pleasure or displeasure. A figure, an architectural work, a painting, a musical composition, an action, a feeling, a characteristic, an expression, a speech; all these things either please us or displease us in some way. We feel that pleasure or displeasure is necessarily stimulated by the contemplation of the idea which presents itself to our mind with all its circumstances. This impression is made, even though there is nothing in some of these ideas that we would ordinarily call sensory perceptions ; and in those which come from the senses, the pleasure or displeasure which accompanies them arises from the order or the disorder, from the arrangement or the lack of symmetry, from the imitation of the strangeness that we notice in the objects; and not from the simple ideas of color, sound, and extension, considered individually. See Taste.

3. This posed, says Mr. Hutcheson, I call by the name internal senses , those determinations of the mind to be pleased or displeased by certain forms or certain ideas, when it considers them: and to distinguish the internal senses from the corporeal faculties designated by the same name, I call internal sense of the beautiful the faculty which discerns the beautiful in regularity, order, and harmony; and internal sense of the good , that which approves of the affections, actions, and behaviors of virtuous and reasonable agents. See Good.

4. Since the determinations of the mind to be pleased or displeased by certain forms or certain ideas, when it considers them, is witnessed in all men, at least if they are not stupid; without yet investigating what the beautiful is, it appears constant that there is in all men a natural sense that is particular to this object; that they agree in finding beauty in shapes, as generally as they experience pain when too close to a large fire, or pleasure in eating when they are hungry, even though there is among them an infinite diversity of tastes.

5. As soon as we are born, our external senses start to work and to transmit to us perceptions of sensory objects; and no doubt this is what convinces us that they are natural. But the objects of what I call the internal senses , or the senses of the beautiful and the good , do not present themselves to our mind so soon. Some time passes before children reflect, or at least before they give indications of reflection on proportions, resemblances, and symmetries, on affections and characteristics: only a bit later do they come to know the things that stimulate taste or internal repugnance; and this is what makes one imagine that those faculties which I call the internal senses of the beautiful and the good , only come from instruction and education. But whatever notion one might have of virtue and beauty , a virtuous or good object is an occasion for approval and pleasure, as naturally as delicacies are the objects of our appetite. And what does it matter if the first objects are presented early or late? If the senses only develop within us little by little, and one after another, would they be any less senses or faculties? And would we be welcome to claim that there really is, in visible objects, neither colors, nor shapes, because we would have needed time and instruction to perceive them, and because there would not be among all of us, two persons who would perceive them in the same way? See Sense.

6. We call sensations , the perceptions which are stimulated in our mind by the presence of external objects, and by the impression that they make on our organs. See Sensation. And when two perceptions are completely different from each other, and when all they have in common is the generic name of sensation , the faculties through which we receive these different perceptions, are called different senses . Sight and hearing, for example, refer to different faculties, one of which gives us the ideas of color, and the other, the ideas of sound: but, however different sounds may be to one another, and colors to one another, all colors are related to one sense, and all sounds to another sense; and it seems that each of our senses has its organ. Now, if you apply the preceding observation to the good and the beautiful , you will see that the cases are exactly the same. See Good.

7. The defenders of the internal sense mean by beautiful , the idea that certain objects stimulate in our souls, and by the internal sense of the beautiful , the faculty we have to receive this idea; and they observe that animals have faculties similar to our external senses, and that sometimes they even have them to a degree superior to us; but that none of them gives any sign of what we understand here by internal sense . A being, they add, can have entirely the same external sensation that we experience, without observing the resemblances and relationships [ rapports ] among objects; he can even discern these resemblances and relationships without feeling much pleasure in doing so; in any case, the mere ideas of the shape and forms, etc., are distinct from pleasure. Pleasure can be found where proportions are neither considered, nor known; it might even be absent, despite all the care given to order and proportions. What then should we call this faculty which acts upon us without our knowing well why? Internal sense .

8. This denomination is founded on the relationship [ rapport ] of the faculty which it describes with the other faculties. This relationship consists primarily in that the pleasure which the internal sense causes us to experience differs from the knowledge of its principles. The knowledge of its principles may increase or decrease; but this knowledge is neither it, not its cause. This sense has necessary pleasures, since the beauty and ugliness of an object are always the same for us, whatever plan we might form to think otherwise. A disagreeable object, for all that it is useful, does not appear more beautiful for being so; a beautiful object, as harmful as it might be, does not appear the uglier for it. Were you to propose the whole world to us, in order to have us forced, through some reward, to deem ugliness beautiful , and the beautiful ugly ; add to these rewards the most terrible threats, you will not bring about any change in our perceptions or the judgment of our internal sense : our mouth might praise or blame as you wish, but the internal sense will remain incorruptible.

9. Whence it appears, continue the same proponents of this system, that certain objects are immediately and in themselves, the occasions of the pleasure that beauty gives; that we have a specific sense to enjoy it; that this pleasure is individual, and that it has nothing in common with interest. Indeed, does it not happen on a hundred occasions that we forego the useful for the beautiful ? Isn’t this generous preference sometimes noted in the lowliest conditions? An upstanding artisan will give himself over to the satisfaction of producing a masterpiece that ruins him, rather than to the advantage to making a bad piece of work that would enrich him.

10. If one does not add to the consideration of the useful some particular feeling, some subtle effect of a faculty different from understanding and the will, one would only value a house for its functionality, a garden for its fertility, a suit for its comfort. Now, this narrow evaluation of things does not exist either in children or savages. Leave nature to itself, and the internal sense will rule over its empire: perhaps it will be mistaken in its object, but the feeling of pleasure will not be less real for it. An austere philosophy, enemy of luxury, will break the statues, topple the obelisks, turn our palaces into huts and our gardens into forests: but it will not any less feel the real beauty of these objects; the internal sense will revolt against it, and it will be reduced to making a merit of its courage.

This is how, I say, Hutcheson and his followers endeavor to establish the necessity of the internal sense of the beautiful : but they only manage to demonstrate that there is something obscure and impenetrable in the pleasure the beautiful gives us; that this pleasure seems independent of the knowledge of relationships [ rapports ] and perceptions; that the consideration of utility does not enter into it all, and that he produces enthusiastic followers whom neither rewards nor threats can shake.

What is more, these philosophers distinguish in corporeal beings an absolute beauty , and a relative beauty . They do not mean, by an absolute beauty , a quality so inherent in the object that it renders it beautiful in and of itself, without any relationship to the mind that perceives and judges it. The term beautiful , like other terms for sensory ideas, properly designates, according to them, the perception of a spirit; just as cold and hot, sweet and bitter, are sensations of our mind, even though there is doubtless nothing resembling these sensations in the objects which provoke them, despite the popular prejudice that believes otherwise. We do not see, they say, how objects could be called beautiful , if there were not a spirit endowed with the sense of beauty to pay homage to them. Thus, by absolute beauty , they understand only that which is recognized in some objects without comparison to any external thing of which these objects may be the imitation or the painting. Such is, they say, the beauty we perceive in the works of nature, in some artificial forms, and in shapes, solids, and surfaces; and by relative beauty , they understand that which one sees in objects commonly considered to be imitations and images of some others. Thus their division has its basis in the different sources of pleasure that the beautiful gives us, rather than in the objects; since it is constant that absolute beauty has, so to speak, a relative beauty , and relative beauty an absolute beauty .

On absolute beauty, according to Hutcheson and his followers . We have made felt, they say, the necessity of a specific sense that alerts us through pleasure of the presence of the beautiful ; now let us see what qualities an object must have to stimulate this sense. We should not forget, they add, that we are only dealing here with these qualities relative to man; since there are certainly many objects which give him an impression of beauty , and which are displeasing to other animals. Since the latter have senses and organs which are configured differently from ours, if they were to judge beauty , they would associate ideas of it with entirely different forms. The bear can find his cave comfortable: but he does not find it either beautiful or ugly; perhaps if he had the internal sense of the beautiful , he would regard it as a delicious retreat. Please note in passing that a very unfortunate being would be one who had the internal sense of the beautiful , and who only recognized the beautiful in objects that were harmful to him: providence has provided here with respect to us; and a truly beautiful thing is generally a good thing.

To discover the general occasion for the ideas of the beautiful among men, Hutcheson's followers examine the simplest beings, for example, shapes; and they find that among the shapes, the ones that we call beautiful present to our senses uniformity in variety. They assert that an equilateral triangle is less beautiful than a square; a pentagon less beautiful than a hexagon, and so on, because equally uniform objects are more beautiful as they are more varied; and they are more varied as they have more comparable sides. It is true, they say, that by greatly increasing the number of sides, we lose sight of the relationships among them and with the line; whence it follows that the beauty of these shapes does not always increase with the number of sides. They raise this objection, but they don’t really try to answer it. They note only that the lack of parallelism between the sides of heptagons and other odd-sided polygons diminishes their beauty: but they still maintain that, everything else being equal, a regular shape with twenty sides surpasses in beauty that which only has twelve; that the latter wins over one that has only eight, and this latter over the square. They follow the same reasoning with surfaces and solids. Of all the regular solids, the one with the greatest number of sides is, for them, the most beautiful , and they think that the beauty of these bodies continues to diminish down to the regular pyramid.

But if among equally uniform objects, the most varied are the most beautiful ; according to them, reciprocally among equally varied objects, the most beautiful will be the most uniform; thus, the equilateral triangle, or even the isosceles, is more beautiful than the scalene; the square more beautiful than the rhombus or the lozenge. The same reasoning applies to regular solid bodies, and in general to all those which have some uniformity, like cylinders, prisms, obelisks, etc., and one must agree with them, that these bodies do appeal more to the eye than crude figures in which no uniformity, no symmetry, and no unity can be perceived.

To build an argument about the relationship [ rapport ] between uniformity and variety, they compare circles and spheres with ellipses and slightly off-center spheroids; and they claim that the perfect uniformity of the first is balanced by the variety of the second, and that their beauty is about the same.

The beautiful , in the works of nature, has the same foundation, according to them. Whether you consider, they say, the shapes of celestial bodies, their revolutions, their aspects; or if you descend from the heavens to the earth, and you consider the plants that cover it, the colors of the flowers, the structure of the animals, their species, their movements, the proportion of their parts, the relationship [ rapport ] between their mechanism and their well-being; or if you launch yourself into the skies and you examine the birds and the meteors; or if you dive into the seas and compare the fish to one another, you will find everywhere uniformity in variety, everywhere you will see these qualities balancing each other in beings equally beautiful , and reason coming in twos, unequal in beings of unequal beauty ; in a word, if it is still allowed to use the language of the Geometers, you will see in the bowels of the earth, at the bottom of the seas, at the heights of the atmosphere, in all of nature and in each of its parts, uniformity in variety, and beauty always rationally composed of these two qualities.

They then treat beauty in the Arts, where one cannot consider the productions as a true imitation, such as Architecture, the mechanical Arts, and natural harmony; they make every effort to subject them to their law of uniformity in variety; and if their proof sins, it is not through the omission of enumeration; they descend from the most magnificent palace to the smallest building, from the most precious work to trinkets, showing caprice wherever uniformity is lacking, and insipidity wherever variety is absent.

But there is a class of beings that are very different from the previous ones, and with which Hutcheson's followers are quite embarrassed; because we recognize beauty in them, but the rule of uniformity in variety does not apply to them; these are the demonstrations of abstract and universal truths. If a theorem contains an infinite number of particular truths which are nothing but the development of it, this theorem is properly only the corollary of an axiom from which an infinite number of other theorems follow; however, we say here is a beautiful theorem , and we do not say here is a beautiful axiom .

Below we will present the solution to this difficulty according to other principles. Let's move on to the examination of relative beauty , that beauty one perceives in an object considered as the imitation of an original, according to those [principles] of Hutcheson and his followers.

There is nothing special about this part of his system. According to this author, and according to everyone, this beauty can only consist in the conformity that is found between the model and the copy.

Whence it follows that for relative beauty , it is not necessary that there be any beauty in the original. Forests, mountains, cliffs, chaos, the wrinkles of old age, the pallor of death, the effects of illness, are pleasing in painting; they are also pleasing in poetry: what Aristotle called a moral character is not that of a virtuous man; and what is meant by fabula bene morata , is nothing but an epic or dramatic poem, in which the actions, feelings and speeches are consistent with the characters, good or bad.

However, it cannot be denied that the painting of an object that will have some absolute beauty , will ordinarily appeal more than a painting of an object that will lack this beauty. The only exception there might be to this rule, is the case where the conformity of the painting with the state of the spectator, making up for what is lost in the absolute beauty of the model, the painting becomes that much more interesting; this interest which comes from imperfection, is the reason why one has always wanted the hero of an epic or heroic poem not to be without some defect.

Most of the other beauties of poetry and eloquence follow the rule of relative beauty . Conformity with the true renders comparisons, metaphors, and allegories beautiful , even when there is no absolute beauty in the objects they represent.

Hutcheson here insists on our penchant for comparison. Here, according to him, is its origin. The passions almost always produce in animals the same movements as in us; and the inanimate objects of nature, often have positions that resemble the attitudes of the human body in certain states of the soul; no more was needed, adds the author we are analyzing, to make the lion the symbol of fury, the tiger that of cruelty; a straight oak tree, whose proud crown rises into the clouds, that of audacity; the motions of an agitated sea, the painting of the agitations of anger; and the softness of a poppy's stem, which a few rain drops have forced to bow its head, the image of a dying person.

Such is Hutcheson's system, which will undoubtedly appear more singular than true. We cannot, however, recommend too highly the reading of his work, above all in the original; one will find in it a great number of sensitive observations on the way to reach perfection in the practice of the fine arts. We shall now lay out the ideas of Father André, Jesuit. His Essai sur le beau [Essay on the beautiful] is the most consistent, extensive, and unified system I know. [6] I would dare to assert that it is, in its field, what the treatise on the beaux Arts réduits à un seul principe [fine arts reduced to a single principle] is in its domain. [7]  These are two good works that are missing but one more chapter to be excellent; and one would have to be very ungrateful to these authors for having omitted it. Abbé Batteux connects all the principles of the fine arts to the imitation of la belle nature [the beauty of nature]; but he fails to teach us what the beauty of nature is. Father André divides the beautiful in general into its different types with considerable sagacity and philosophy; he defines them all with precision: but nowhere in his book do we find the definition of this overall category, of the beautiful in general, unless, like Saint Augustine, he should make it consist in unity. He speaks constantly about order, proportion, harmony, etc., but he says not a word about the origin of these ideas.

Father André distinguishes between the general ideas of the pure spirit, which give us the eternal rules of the beautiful; the natural judgments of the soul, where feeling mixes with purely spiritual ideas, but without destroying them; and the prejudices of education and customs, which sometimes seem to topple both the former and the latter. He divides his work into four chapters. The first deals with visible beauty ; the second, with the beautiful in morals [ moeurs ]; the third, with the beautiful in the works of the mind , and the fourth, with musical beauty .

He raises three questions on each of these subjects; he claims that one might find in each an essential beauty , absolute, independent of any institution, even divine; a natural beauty , dependent on the institution of the Creator, but independent of our opinions and our tastes; an artificial and in some sense arbitrary beauty , but still with some dependence on the eternal laws.

He has essential beauty originate in regularity, order, proportion, and symmetry in general; natural beauty in regularity, order, proportions, and symmetry as observed in the creations of nature; artificial beauty , in regularity, order, symmetry, and the proportions observed in our mechanical products, our adornments, our buildings, and our gardens. He notes that this last beauty mixes the arbitrary and the absolute. In Architecture, for example, he discerns two types of rules: some which flow from the notion, independent of us, of original and essential beauty , and which require without exception that columns be perpendicular, storeys be parallel, members be symmetrical, designs be articulated and elegant, and that there be unity in the whole. The others are based on particular observations, made by masters in different epochs, and by which they have determined the proportions of the parts in the five orders of Architecture. It is as a consequence of these rules that, in the Tuscan, the height of a column is seven times the diameter of its base, in the Doric order eight times, nine in the Ionic, ten in the Corinthian, and the same in the composite; that columns have a bulge from their base a third of the way up the barrel; that in the other two-thirds, they narrow gradually in eluding the capital; that the spaces between the columns be at most eight modules, and at least three; that the height of the porticos, the arcades, the doors, and the windows be double their width. These rules, being based only on visual observation, and on equivocal examples, are always a bit uncertain and are not absolutely indispensable. Thus we sometimes see that great Architects go beyond them, add to them, subtract from them, and create new ones based on circumstances.

Here, then, in the productions of the Arts, are an essential beauty , a beauty of human creation , and a systematic beauty : an essential beauty which consists in order; a beauty of human creation , which consists in the free but dependent application by the artist of the laws of the order, or, to speak more clearly, in the choice of a certain order; and a systematic beauty , which arises from observations, and which leads to variations even among the most knowledgeable artists; but never to the prejudice of essential beauty , which is a barrier that must never be crossed. Hic murus aheneus esto . [8] If it has sometimes happened that the great masters allowed themselves to be carried away by their genius beyond this barrier, it was on rare occasions when they foresaw that this deviation would add more to the beauty than it would detract from it; but they are no less guilty of a fault with which one could reproach them.

Arbitrary beauty is subdivided according to the same author into a beauty of genius , a beauty of taste , and a beauty of sheer caprice : a beauty of genius based on the knowledge of essential beauty , which prescribes inviolable rules; a beauty of taste , based on the knowledge of the works of nature and the productions of the great masters, which direct the application and use of essential beauty ; a beauty of sheer caprice , which, being based on nothing, should never be accepted anywhere.

What becomes, then, of the system of Lucretius and the Pyrrhonists, in Father André's system? What is left to the arbitrary? Almost nothing: thus, the only response to the objection of those who claim that beauty is a matter of education and prejudice, he is content to develop the source of their error. Here, he says, is how they have reasoned: they have looked in the best works for examples of the beauty of sheer caprice , and they have had no trouble finding them, and in demonstrating that the beautiful recognized there was capricious: they have taken examples of the beauty of taste , and they have demonstrated very aptly that there was arbitrariness also in this beauty ; and without going any further, or noticing that their enumeration was incomplete, they have concluded that everything that we call beautiful , was arbitrary and capricious; but it is easy to see that their conclusion was accurate only with regard to the third branch of artificial beauty , and that their reasoning did not tackle either the other two branches of this kind of beauty , or natural beauty , or essential beauty .

Father André then turns to the application of his principles to morals [ moeurs ], the works of the mind, and Music; and he demonstrates that there are in these three kinds of beautiful objects an essential beauty , absolute and independent of all institutions, even divine, which establishes that a thing is whole; a natural beauty dependent on the institution of the Creator, but independent of us; and an arbitrary beauty , dependent on us, but without being prejudicial toward essential beauty .

An essential beauty in morals, in works of the mind, and in Music, based on arrangement, regularity, proportion, rightness, decency, agreement, which can be noticed in a beautiful action , a good play , a beautiful concert , and which establishes that moral, intellectual, and harmonic productions are wholes .

A natural beauty is in morals nothing but the observation of essential beauty in our behavior, relative to our position among the creatures of nature; in the works of the mind, just the imitation and the faithful painting of the productions of nature in every genre; in harmony, just a submission to the laws that nature has introduced into sonic bodies, their resonance and the conformation of the ear.

An artificial beauty , which consists in morals in conforming to the customs of one's nation, to the genius of one's fellow citizens, to their laws; in the works of the mind, in respecting the rules of discourse, knowing the language, and following the dominant taste; in Music, in appropriately inserting dissonance, in conforming one's productions to the received movements and intervals.

Whence it follows that, according to Father André, essential beauty and truth are not manifest anywhere with such profusion as in the universe; moral beauty , in the Christian philosophy; and intellectual beauty , in a tragedy accompanied by music and sets.

The author who gave us the essai sur le mérite et la vertu [ Essay on Merit and Virtue ] rejects all these distinctions of the beautiful , and claims, with many others, that there is but one beautiful , whose foundation is utility: thus, everything that is organized in such a way as to produce most perfectly the effect that one has proposed, is supremely beautiful .  [9] If you ask him, what is a beautiful man , he will respond that it is the one whose well-proportioned limbs conspire in the most advantageous way to the accomplishment of the animal functions of man. See essai sur le mérite et la vertu , p. 48. Man, woman, the horse and the other animals, he will add, each occupy a rank in nature: now, in nature, this rank determines the duties to fulfill; the duties determine the organization; and the organization is more or less perfect or beautiful , according to how easy or difficult it is for the animal to perform his functions. But this facility is not arbitrary, and, as a consequence, neither are the forms which constitute it, nor the beauty which depends on these forms. Then, moving down from there to the most common objects, to chairs, tables, doors, etc., he will strive to prove to you that the form of these objects only appeals to us in proportion to how well they are suited to the use for which they are destined; and if we change fashions so often, that is, if we are so inconstant in our taste for the forms that we give them, that is, he will say, because this conformation which is the most perfect relative to its use, is very difficult to find; there is here a sort of maximum which escapes all the finesses of natural and artificial Geometry, and around which we turn constantly: we catch a glimpse of it wonderfully when we approach it and when we have passed it, but we are never sure of having attained it. Whence this perpetual revolution in the forms: either we abandon them for others, or we argue endlessly about the ones we keep. Moreover, this point is not everywhere in the same place; this maximum has on a thousand occasions broader or narrower limits: some examples will suffice to clarify his thought. All men, he will add, are not capable of the same attention, do not have the same force of mind; they are more or less patient, more or less educated, etc. What will this diversity produce? A spectacle made up of Academicians will find the plot of Heraclius admirable, and the people will deem it a big muddle; some will restrain the length of a comedy to three acts, and others will claim that it can be extended to seven; and so on, and so forth. No matter how plausibly this system is explained to me, I find it impossible to accept it.

I agree with the author that into all our judgments is mixed a delicate glimpse of what we are, an imperceptible return toward ourselves, and that there are a thousand occasions when we believe we are enchanted only by beautiful forms, and when indeed they are in fact the main reason, but not the only one, for our admiration; I agree that this admiration is not always as pure as we imagine: but as only one fact is needed to topple a system, we are forced to abandon that of the author we have just mentioned, whatever attachment we night have had in the past to his ideas; and here are our reasons.

There is no one who has not experienced how our attention is trained mainly on the similitude of parts, in the very things in which this similitude does not contribute at all to utility: as long as the feet of a chair are equal and solid, what does it matter if they have the same shape? They can differ on this point without being any less functional. One can thus be straight, and the other like a cloven hoof; one curves outward, the other inward. If you make a doorway in the shape of a coffin, its form might appear better shaped to the human figure than any of the forms in use. Of what use are the imitations of nature and its productions in Architecture? What is the purpose of placing a column and garlands where only a wooden post or solid stone are necessary? What good are these caryatids? Is a column meant to fulfill the function of a man, or has a man ever been destined to do the job of a column in the corner of a vestibule? Why imitate natural objects in tablatures? What does it matter that in this imitation the proportions are well or badly observed? If utility is the only foundation of beauty bas-reliefs, fluting, vases, and in general all ornaments become ridiculous and superfluous.

But the taste for imitation is felt in things whose sole purpose is to please; and we often admire forms, without being guided by the notion of utility. While the owner of a horse would find it beautiful only when he compares the form of this animal with the service he claims to get from it, the same is not true for the passer-by to whom the horse does not belong. Finally, we see beauty every day in flowers, plants, and thousands of works of nature, the uses of which are unknown to us.

I know that a response could be made to all of the difficulties I have just proposed against the system I am fighting: but I think these responses would be more subtle than solid.

It follows from the preceding that Plato, having proposed less to teach truth to his disciples than to disabuse his fellow citizens concerning the sophists, gives us in his works, in every line, examples of the beautiful , and shows us very well what it is not, but does not say anything about what it is.

That Saint Augustine has reduced all beauty to unity or to the exact relationship [ rapport ] of the parts to a whole, and to the exact relationship of the parts to one part considered as a whole, and so on ad infinitum ; which seems to me to constitute the essence of the perfect better than of the beautiful .

That M. Wolf has confused the beautiful with the pleasure that it occasions, and with perfection; although there are beings that please without being beautiful , and others that are beautiful without pleasing; although every being is susceptible of the utmost perfection, and there are some which are not susceptible of the least beauty : such are all the objects of smell and taste, considered relative to these senses.

That M. Crouzas, by overloading his definition of the beautiful, did not realize that the more he multiplied the types of the beautiful , the more he made it particular; and, having proposed to treat the beautiful in general, he started out by putting forward an idea of it that is applicable only to some types of the beautiful in particular.

That Hutcheson, who proposed two objectives, first, to explain the origin of the pleasure we experience in the presence of the beautiful ; and second, to seek the qualities that a being must have to give rise in us this individual pleasure, and as a consequence appear beautiful to us; has less proved the reality of his sixth sense , than made us aware of the difficulty of developing without this help the source of the pleasure given to us by the beautiful ; and that his principle of uniformity in variety is not general; that his application of it to Geometrical shapes is more subtle than true, and that this principle does not apply at all to another type of beauty , that of the demonstrations of abstract and universal truths.

That the system proposed in the essai sur le mérite et sur la vertu , in which utility is taken as the one and only basis of the beautiful , is more defective yet than any of the preceding ones.

Finally, that Father André, or the author of the Essay on the Beautiful, is the one who, so far, has best tackled this issue, has best felt its depth and its difficulty, has established the truest and most solid principles, and best deserves to be read.

The only thing one might have wanted in Father André's work, was a development of the origin of the notions found within us of rapport , order, and symmetry: since, with the sublime tone with which he speaks of these notions, we do not know whether he believes they are acquired and artificial, or if he believes them to be innate: but one must add in his favor that the style of his work, more rhetorical than philosophical, kept him away from this discussion, into which we shall now enter.

We are born with the faculty of feeling and thinking: the first step of the faculty of thinking is to examine one’s perceptions, to bring them together, to compare them, to combine them, to perceive among them relationships [ rapports ] of agreement and disagreement, etc. We are born with needs which constrain us to have recourse to different expedients, among which we have often been convinced by the effect we expected from them, and by those they did produce, of which some are good, some are bad, some are quick, some are short, some are complete, some are incomplete, etc. Most of these expedients were a tool, a machine, or some other sort of invention of this kind: but every machine supposes a combination, an arrangement of parts directed toward the same end, etc. Here then are our needs, and the most immediate exercise of our faculties, which conspire as soon as we are born to present us with ideas of order, arrangement, symmetry, mechanism, proportion, and unity: all these ideas come from the senses, and are artificial; and we have passed from the notion of a multitude of artificial and natural beings, which are arranged, in proportion, combined, made symmetrical, to the positive and abstract notion of order, arrangement, proportion, combination, relationships [ rapports ], symmetry, and to the abstract and negative notion of disproportion, disorder, and chaos.

These ideas are as experiential as all the others: they have also come to us through the senses; if there were no God, we would have them nonetheless: they preceded in us by a long time that of his existence: they are as positive, as distinct, as clear, as real, as those of length, breadth, depth, quantity, number: as they have their origin in our needs and the exercise of our faculties, had three been on the surface of the earth some people in whose language these ideas had no name, they would exist nonetheless in their minds, to a greater or lesser extent, more or less developed, based on a greater or lesser number of experiences, applied to a greater or lesser number of beings; for there lies the entire difference there can be between one people and another, between one man and another among the same people; and whatever may be the sublime expressions that are used to designate the abstract notions of order, proportion, rapports, harmony; whether they are called, if you will, eternal , original , sovereign , essential rules of the beautiful ; they have passed through our senses to reach our understanding, just like the vilest ideas; and they are but abstractions of our minds.

But scarcely had the exercise of our intellectual faculties and the necessity of satisfying our needs with inventions, machines, etc., sketched into our understanding of notions of order, relationships [ rapports ], proportion, connection, arrangement, and symmetry, than we found ourselves surrounded by beings in whom the same ideas were, so to speak, repeated ad infinitum ; we could not take a single step in the universe without some production awakening them; they entered into our soul at each moment and from all sides; everything that happened within us, everything that existed outside us, everything that remained from past centuries, everything produced by the industry, reflection, and discoveries of our contemporaries, produced before our eyes, continued to inculcate in us notions of order, relationships, arrangement, symmetry, agreement, disagreement, etc., and there is not a single notion, unless perhaps that of existence, which could have become as familiar to men as that which concerns us here.

Thus, if only ideas of order, relationships [ rapports ], proportion, arrangement, symmetry, agreement, disagreement entered into the idea of the beautiful , be it absolute , relative , general , or particular ; these ideas flowing from no another source but those of existence, number, length, breadth, depth, and an infinite number of others, about which there is no dispute, we could, it seems to me, use the first ones in a definition of the beautiful , without being accused of substituting one term in place of another, and falling into a vicious circle.

Beautiful is a term that we apply to an infinite number of beings: but whatever difference there may be among these beings, we must either make a false application of the term beautiful , or there must be in all these beings a quality for which the term beautiful is the sign.

This quality cannot be one of those which constitute their specific difference; for either there would be only one beautiful being, or at the most a single beautiful type of beings.

But among the qualities common to all the beings we call beautiful , which shall we choose as the thing for which beautiful is the sign? Which one? It is obvious, it seems to me, that it can only be the one whose presence renders all of them beautiful ; whose frequency or rarity, if it is susceptible of frequency or rarity, makes them more or less beautiful ; the absence of which makes them cease to be beautiful ; which cannot change its nature without causing the beauty of the whole species to be changed, and of which the opposite quality would render the most beautiful , disagreeable and ugly; the one, in one word, by which beauty begins, increases, varies infinitely, declines, and disappears: now, only the idea of rapports is capable of such effects.

I then call beautiful outside of myself, that which contains in itself that which awakens in my understanding the idea of rapports ; and beautiful with respect to myself, everything that awakens this idea.

When I say everything, however, I exclude the qualities relative to taste and smell; even though these qualities can awaken in us the idea of rapports , we do not call beautiful the objects in which they reside, when they are considered only relative to these qualities. We do say an excellent dish, a delicious aroma ; but not a beautiful dish, a beautiful aroma . When we say, then, here is a beautiful turbot, here is a beautiful rose , we consider other qualities in the rose and the fish than those which are relative to the senses of taste and smell.

When I say, everything that contains in itself what it takes to awaken in my understanding the idea of rapport , or everything that awakens this idea , [I mean] that the forms which are in the objects must be distinguished from the notion that I have of them. My understanding does not put anything in things, and takes away nothing from them. Whether or not I think about the façade of the Louvre, all the parts that compose it still have a certain form, and a certain arrangement among them: whether or not there are men, it would be no less beautiful ; but only for possible beings constituted as we are in body and spirit; since for others, it could be neither beautiful nor ugly , or could just be ugly . Whence it follows that, although there is no absolute beauty , there are two sorts of beautiful in relation [ par rapport ] to us, a real beautiful , and a perceived beautiful .

When I say, everything that awakens in us the idea of rapports , I do not mean that, in order to call a being beautiful , we must appreciate what kind of rapports rule there; I do not demand that someone who sees a piece of Architecture be able to assert what the Architect himself is not aware of, that this part is to that one what a certain number is to another number; or that someone who listens to a concert sometimes knows more than the Musician does, that this sound is to that one in a ratio [ rapport ] of 2 to 4, or 4 to 5. It is enough that he perceive and sense that the components of this architecture, and the sounds of this piece of music have rapports , either among themselves, or with other objects. It is the indeterminacy of these rapports , the ease with which one can grasp them, and the pleasure which accompanies their perception, which has led people to imagine that the beautiful was a matter of feeling rather than reason. I dare to assert that every time a principle will be known to us from our earliest childhood, and that out of habit we apply it easily and quickly to the objects placed before us, we will believe we judge by feeling: but we will be forced to acknowledge our mistake every time the complexity of the rapports and the novelty of the object suspend the application of the principle: then pleasure will not be felt until the understanding has pronounced that the object is beautiful . Anyway, the judgment in such a case is almost always of relative beauty , and not real beauty .

Whether one considers rapports in customs, and one has moral beauty , or one considers them in works of Literature, and one has literary beauty ; or one considers them in pieces of music, and one has musical beauty ; or one considers them in the works of nature, and one has natural beauty ; or one considers them in the mechanical works of men, and one has artificial beauty ; or one considers them in representations of works of art or nature, and one has mimetic beauty : in whatever object, and from whatever angle you should consider the rapports in a single object, the beautiful will have different names.

But the same object, whatever it may be, can be considered on its own and in itself, or relative to others. When I declare of a flower that it is beautiful , or of a fish that it is beautiful , what do I mean? If I consider this flower or this fish by itself, I do not mean anything else but that I perceive among the parts of which they are composed order, arrangement, symmetry, rapports (as all these words designate only different ways of envisaging the rapports themselves): in this sense, every flower is beautiful , every fish is beautiful ; but what type of beauty ? That which I call real beauty .

If I consider the flower and the fish relative to other flowers and other fish; when I say that they are beautiful , that means that among the beings of their kind, among the flowers this one, among the fish that one, these awaken in me the most ideas of rapports , and the most of certain rapports ; since I will soon show that all rapports not being of the same nature, some contribute more and others less to beauty . But I can assure you that under this new way of considering objects, there is beautiful and ugly : but what sort of beautiful , what sort of ugly ? The one I call relative .

If, instead of taking a flower or a fish, one generalizes, and one takes a plant or an animal; if one specifies, and one takes a rose or a turbot, one will still draw the same distinction between relative beauty and real beauty .

Whence we see that there are several relative beauties , and that a tulip can be beautiful or ugly among tulips, beautiful or ugly among flowers, beautiful or ugly among the productions of nature.

But one can imagine that one has to have seen a lot of roses and a lot of turbots to declare that these are beautiful or ugly among roses and turbots; a lot of plants and a lot of fish, to declare that the rose and the turbot are beautiful or ugly among the plants and fish; and that one must have a great knowledge of nature to declare that they are beautiful or ugly among the productions of nature.

What then is meant, when we tell an artist, imitate the beauty of nature ? Either we do not know what we are ordering, or we are telling him: if you have to paint a flower, and if you don’t really care which one you paint, take the most beautiful among the flowers; if you have to paint a plant, and your subject does not require that it be an oak or a dry, broken, branchless elm, take the most beautiful among the plants; if you have to paint a natural object, and it doesn’t matter to you which one you choose, take the most beautiful .

Whence it follows, 1. that the principle of the imitation of the beauty of nature requires the deepest and most extensive study of its productions of all kinds.

2. That even if one had the most perfect knowledge of nature, and of the limits that it has set in the production of each being, it would be no less true that the number of occasions when the most beautiful could be employed in the Arts of imitation, would be to those when the less beautiful must be preferred, as unity is to infinity.

3. That, even though there is in effect a maximum of beauty in each work of nature, considered in itself; or, to take an example, even though the most beautiful rose that it produces would never have either the height or the breadth of an oak, nevertheless there is neither beautiful nor ugly in its productions, considered relative to the use that one could make of it in the Arts of imitation.

Depending on the nature of a being, on whether it stimulates in us the perception of a greater number of rapports , and on the nature of the rapports that it stimulates, it is pretty, beautiful, more beautiful, very beautiful or ugly; low, small, tall, elevated, sublime, outrageous, burlesque , or amusing ; and one would have to write a very large work, and not a dictionary entry, to go into this level of detail: it is enough for us to have shown the principles; we leave to the reader to attend to their consequences and applications. But we can assure him that, whether he takes his examples from nature or he borrows them from Painting, Ethics, Architecture, or Music, he will always find that he uses the term real beauty for everything that contains in itself what it takes to awaken the idea of rapports ; and uses the term relative beauty for everything which awakens the rapports appropriate to the things for which he must make a comparison.

I will bring in just one example, taken from Literature. Everyone knows the sublime word from the tragedy about the Horaces , qu’il mourût [he should die]. [10] I ask someone who does not know Corneille’s play at all, and who has no idea at all of the response of the aged Horace, what he thinks of this phrase he should die . It is obvious that the person I ask, not knowing what this he should die is; being unable to guess if it is a complete sentence or a fragment, and hardly seeing any grammatical rapport among these three words, will reply that it does not seem to him either beautiful or ugly . But if I tell him that this is the response of a man who was consulted as to what another should do in a fight, he begins to perceive in the respondent a sort of courage, which does not allow him to believe that it would always be better to live than to die; and the he should die begins to interest him. If I add that the honor of the fatherland is at stake in this fight; that the combatant is the son of the person who is being asked; that he is the only one he has left; that the young man had to face three enemies, who had already taken the life of two of his brothers; that the old man is talking to his daughter; that he is a Roman: then the response he should die , which was neither beautiful nor ugly , is embellished to the degree that I have developed its rapports with the circumstances and in the end is sublime.

Change the circumstances and the rapports , and transfer the he should die from the French theater to the Italian stage, and from the mouth of the aged Horace to that of Scapin, and the he should die will become burlesque.

Change the circumstances once again, and suppose that Scapin is in the service of a harsh, miserly, and drunk master, and that they are attacked on the highway by three or four brigands. Scapin flees, his master defends himself: but outnumbered, he is also obliged to flee; and someone comes and informs Scapin that his master has escaped the danger. What, Scapin will say, his hopes betrayed; so he ran, then: ah, the coward! But, someone will reply, one against three, what did you want him to do ? He should die , he will answer, and this he should die will become amusing. It is thus a constant that beauty begins, increases, varies, declines, and disappears with rapports , just as we have said above.

But what do you mean by a rapport , someone might ask me? Is it not to change the accepted meanings of terms, to call beautiful something which has never been considered as such? It seems that in our language the idea of beautiful is always associated with that of greatness, and that one does not define the beautiful by placing its specific difference in a quality that applies to an infinite number of beings, which have neither greatness nor sublimity. M. Crouzas sinned, no doubt, when he loaded his definition of the beautiful with such a great number of characteristics that it found itself limited to a very small number of beings: but is it not to fall into the other extreme to make it so general that it seems to embrace everything, without excepting even a bunch of shapeless rocks haphazardly thrown over the edge of a quarry? All objects, someone will add, are susceptible to rapports among them, among their parts, and with other beings; there are none that could not be arranged, ordered, made symmetrical. Perfection is a quality that can apply to all of them, but the same is not true of beauty : it is true only of a very small number of objects.

Here, it seems to me, is, if not the only, at least the strongest objection one might make to me, and I will attempt to answer it.

A rapport in general is an operation of the understanding, which considers either a being, or a quality, as this being or quality supposes the existence of another being or another quality. For example: when I say that Pierre is a good father , I consider in him a quality that supposes the existence of another, that of son; so on with other rapports , whatever they might be. Whence it follows that, even though a rapport resides only in our understanding, as to the perception, it nevertheless has its basis in things; and I would say that a thing contains in itself real rapports , whenever it is shrouded with qualities that a being made up of body and mind like me cannot consider without supposing the existence either of other beings, or of other qualities, either in the thing itself, or outside it; and I will divide the rapports into real and perceived ones. But there is a third kind of rapports ; these are the intellectual or fictive rapports ; those which human understanding seems to put into things. A sculptor casts an eye over a block of marble; his imagination, quicker than his chisel, removes all the superfluous parts from it and makes out a shape there: but strictly speaking, this shape is imaginary and fictive; he could make in a portion of space determined by intellectual lines, what he has just executed in his imagination in a shapeless block of marble. A philosopher casts an eye over a heap of rocks scattered haphazardly; he destroys in thought all the parts of this heap that produce irregularity, and he manages to produce from it a globe, a cube, a regular shape. What does this mean? That, whereas the hand of the artist can only trace a design on hard surfaces, he can transport this design by thought onto any body; what do I mean, on any body? In space and in the void. The image, either transported by thought into the air, or extracted by the imagination from the most shapeless bodies, can be either beautiful or ugly : but not so the ideal canvas to which it has been attached, or the shapeless body from which it has been made to emerge.

When I say, then, that a being is beautiful through the rapports that one notices in it, I do not refer to the intellectual or fictive rapports that our imagination brings to it, but to the real rapports that are there, and that our understanding notices with the aid of our senses.

At the same time, I claim that whatever the rapports may be, it is those which would constitute beauty , not in the narrow sense in which pretty is the opposite of beautiful , but in a sense, I dare to say, that is more philosophical and more in conformity with the idea of the beautiful in general, and the nature of languages and things.

If someone has the patience to gather together all the beings that we call beautiful , he will soon notice that in this crowd there is an infinite number in which smallness or greatness is irrelevant: [11] smallness and greatness count for nothing whenever the being is by itself, or when being one of a large species, it is considered by itself. When the first clock or the first watch was declared beautiful , was anyone paying attention to anything but its mechanism, or the rapport of its parts to each other? When we declare today that the watch is beautiful , are we paying attention to anything other than its use and its mechanism? If, then, the general definition of the beautiful must apply to all the beings to which the epithet is given, the idea of greatness is excluded from it. I am endeavoring to exclude the idea of greatness from the idea of the beautiful, because it seemed to me that it was the one most commonly attached to it. In Mathematics, a beautiful problem means a problem that is difficult to solve; a beautiful solution , the easy and simple solution to a difficult and complicated problem. The idea of great , sublime , elevated , has no place on those occasions when one still uses the word beautiful. Just survey in this way all the beings that are called beautiful : one will exclude greatness; another utility; a third, symmetry; some even the marked appearance of order and symmetry; such would be the painting of a storm, a tempest, chaos: and we will be forced to agree that the only common quality, which applies to all these beings, is the idea of rapports .

But if we ask if the general idea of the beautiful applies to all beings so called, are we speaking only of our own language, or are we talking about all languages? Must this definition apply only to beings that we call beautiful in French, or to all beings that would be called beautiful in Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldean, Greek, Latin, English, Italian, and all the languages which have existed, do exist, and will exist? And in order to prove that the idea of rapports is the only one that would remain after the use of so broad an exclusionary rule, will the philosopher be forced to learn all of them? Is it not enough for him to have ascertained that the meaning of the word beautiful varies across all languages; that it is found to apply to one sort of beings here, to which it does not apply there; but that in whatever language one might use, it supposes the perception of rapports ? The English say a fine flavour, a fine woman , a beautiful woman, a beautiful aroma. [12] Where would an English philosopher be if, having treated the beautiful , he wanted to attend to this strangeness in his language? It is the people who have made the languages; it is up to the philosopher to discover the origin of things; and it would be fairly surprising if the principles of one did not often find themselves in contradiction with the usages of the other. But the principle of the perception of rapports , applied to the nature of the beautiful , does not have this disadvantage even here; and it is so general, that it would be difficult for anything to elude it.

Among all peoples, in all the places on earth, and in all times, there has been a term for color in general, and other terms for particular colors , and for their shades. What should a philosopher do if someone were to ask him to explain what a beautiful color is? If not to indicate the origin of the application of the term beautiful to one color in general, whichever it might be, and then to indicate the causes that could have led to the preference for a certain shade over another. Similarly, it is the perception of the rapports which gave rise to the invention of the term beautiful ; and as the rapports and the minds of men have varied, the terms pretty, beautiful, charming, great, sublime, divine, and an infinite number of others have been created, in relation to the physical as well as the moral. These are the shades of the beautiful : but I expand this thought, and I add:

When someone demands that the general idea of the beautiful apply to all beautiful beings, is he referring only to those which bear this epithet here and now, or those that were called beautiful at the birth of the world, that were called beautiful five thousand years ago, three thousands leagues away, and that will be called so in the centuries to come; those we have considered as such in childhood, in maturity, and in old age; those which are admired by civilized societies [ peuples policés ], and those which charm the savages? Will the truth of this definition be local, particular, and momentary? Or will it extend to all beings, in all ages, to all men, in all places? If one takes the latter position, one will come very close to my principle, and one will scarcely find another way to reconcile the judgments of the child and the grown man: the child, who needs only a trace of symmetry and imitation to admire and to be amused; the grown man, who needs palaces and works of an immense sweep to be impressed; of the savage and the educated man: the savage, who is charmed at the sight of a glass pendant, a brass ring, or a cheap bracelet; and the civilized man, who only lends his attention to the most perfect works; of the first men, who showered huts, cottages, and barns with the terms beautiful , magnificent , etc., and the men of today, who have limited the application of these terms to the latest efforts of human ability.

Place beauty in the perception of rapports , and you will have the history of its progress from the birth of the world until today: choose as the distinguishing characteristic of the beautiful in general any other quality you please, and your idea will be found concentrated immediately in a point of space and time.

The perception of rapports is thus the foundation of the beautiful ; it is thus the perception of rapports , which has been designated by an infinite number of different terms in the different languages, all of which indicate only different sorts of the beautiful .

But in ours, and in almost all others, the term beautiful is often understood in opposition to pretty ; and from this new perspective, it seems that the question of the beautiful is no longer but a grammatical issue, and that it is a matter only of specifying precisely the ideas attached to this term. See the following article Beautiful opposed to Pretty.

After having attempted to lay out what constitutes the origin of the beautiful , it remains only to seek out that of the different opinions men have about beauty : from this research we will attain certainty in our principles; because we shall demonstrate that all these differences result from the diversity of rapports , perceived or introduced, in the productions of nature as well as in those of the arts.

The beautiful which results from the perception of a single rapport , is ordinarily less than that which results from the perception of several rapports . The sight of a beautiful face or a beautiful painting is more affecting than that of a single color; a starry sky, more than an azure curtain; a landscape, more than an open countryside; a building, more than a flat piece of land [ terrein uni ]; a piece of music, more than a sound. However, the number of rapports must not be multiplied ad infinitum ; and beauty does not follow this progression: we only admit as a rapport in beautiful things what a good mind can grasp easily and clearly. But what is a good mind? What is the point in works beyond which, lacking rapports , they are too uniform [ unis ], and beyond which they are too overloaded with them? First source of diversity in judgments. Here the disagreements begin. Everyone agrees that there is a beautiful which is the result of perceived rapports : but depending on whether one has more or less knowledge, experience, the habit of judging, meditating, seeing, a naturally broader mind, one says that an object is either poor or rich, confused or full, miserly or overloaded.

But how many compositions are there in which the artist is forced to use more rapports than the vast majority can grasp, and in which scarcely anyone but fellow artists, that is to say, the men least inclined to do him justice, know the full merit of his productions? What becomes of the beautiful then? Either it is presented to a flock of ignoramuses who are not in a position to feel it, or it is felt by a few envious people who say nothing; this is often the full effect of a great piece of music. M. d'Alembert has said in the Preliminary Discourse of this Work, a Discourse that well deserves to be cited in this article, that after having created an art of learning Music, one would do well to create one of listening to it: I would add that after having created an art of Poetry and Painting, it is in vain that one has made one of reading and seeing; and that there will always reign in the judgments of certain works an apparent uniformity, less injurious, in truth, for the artist than the sharing of feelings, but always very painful.

Among the rapports an infinite number of types can be distinguished: there are some which get stronger, weaker, or temper each other. What a difference in what one would think of the beauty of an object, if one grasped them all, or if one grasped only some of them! Second source of diversity in judgments. There are indeterminate and definite ones: we are content with the first to grant the term beautiful , every time it is not the immediate and sole purpose of science or art to determine them. But if this determination is the immediate and sole purpose of a science or art, we demand not only rapports , but also their value: here is the reason why we say a beautiful theorem, and why we do not say a beautiful axiom; although we could not deny that the axiom expressing a rapport does not also have its real beauty . When I say in Mathematics that the whole is greater than its part, I state confidently an infinite number of particular propositions about a divided quantity: but I determine nothing about how much the whole exceeds its portions; it is almost as if I said: the cylinder is larger than the sphere inscribed within it, and the sphere larger than the cone inscribed within it. Yet, the proper and immediate object of Mathematics is to determine by how much one of these bodies is either larger or smaller than the other; and the person who will demonstrate that they are always to one another as the numbers 3, 2, 1, will have produced an admirable theorem. Beauty , which always consists in rapports , will in this instance logically be composed of the number of rapports , and the difficulty there was in perceiving them; and the theorem that will articulate that any line which falls from the top of an isosceles triangle to the middle of its base, divides the angle into two equal angles, will not be marvelous: but that which will state that the asymptotes of a curve constantly approach each other without ever intersecting, and that the spaces formed by a segment of the axis, a segment of the curve, the asymptote, and the prolongation of the Y axis, are to each other as such a number to another, will be beautiful . A circumstance that is not irrelevant to beauty , in this instance and in countless others, is the combined action of surprise and rapports , which takes place every time the theorem whose truth one has demonstrated was formerly considered to be a false proposition.

There are rapports that we deem more or less essential; such is that between the relative height of a man, a woman, and a child: we say of a child that he is beautiful , even though he is short; a beautiful man absolutely must be tall; this quality is less demanded in a woman; and it is more allowed for a short woman to be beautiful , than for a short man to be beautiful . It seems to me that we judge beings, then, not only in themselves, but still relative to the places they occupy in nature, in the great whole; and depending on whether this great whole is better or less known, the scale that is formed for the height of beings is more or less exact: but we never really know when it is right. Third source of diversity in tastes and judgments in the arts of imitation. The great masters preferred their scale to be a bit too big than too small: but no two of them had the same scale, or, perhaps, that of nature.

Interest, passions, ignorance, prejudices, usage, morals, climates, customary laws, governments, religions, events, impede the beings around us, render them either capable or incapable of awakening several ideas within us, destroy in them very natural rapports , and establish in them some that are capricious and accidental. Fourth source of diversity in judgments.

People bring everything back to their own art and knowledge: we more or less play the role of the critic of Apelles; and although we only know the shoe, we also judge the leg; or although we only know the leg, we descend also to the shoe. [13] But we do not bring this temerity or this ostentation about details only to the judgment of artistic productions; those of nature are not exempt from it. Among the tulips in a garden, the most beautiful for a connoisseur will be the one in which he will notice a range of colors, a leaf, uncommon varieties: but the Painter, interested in the effects of light, in hues, in chiaroscuro, in shapes relevant to his art, will neglect all the characteristics that the florist admires, and will take as a model the very flower despised by the connoisseur. Diversity of talents and knowledge, fifth source of diversity in judgments.

The mind has the power to connect ideas that it has received separately, to compare objects by means of the ideas it has of them, to observe the rapports they have with one another, to broaden or narrow its ideas at will, to consider separately each of the simple ideas that could be found combined in the sensation that it received of them. This latest operation of the mind is called abstraction . See Abstraction. Ideas of corporeal substances are composed of a variety of simple ideas, which together made their impressions when the corporeal substances were presented to our senses: it is only by specifying in detail these sensory ideas, that one can define substances. See Substance. These sorts of definitions can stimulate a fairly clear idea of a substance in a man who has never perceived it directly, as long as he has at some other time received separately, by means of the senses, all the simple ideas that enter into the composition of the complex idea of the defined substance: but if lacks the notion of any of these simple ideas of which this substance is composed, and if he lacks the sense necessary to perceive them, or if this sense is damaged beyond repair, there is no definition that could stimulate in him the idea for which he would not have had beforehand a sensory perception. See Definition. Sixth source of diversity in the judgments men will carry of beauty from a description, for how many false notions among them, or half notions of the same object!

But they should not agree more about intellectual beings: they all are represented by signs; and there is scarcely one of these signs which is so precisely defined that its meaning would not be broader or narrower for one man than another. Logic and Metaphysics would be very close to perfection if the Dictionary of the language were well-made: but this is a work still to be hoped for; and since words are the colors used by Poetry and Eloquence, [14] what kind of conformity should we expect from the judgments of a painting, so long as we do not know even what to hold on to about colors and shades? Seventh source of diversity in judgments.

No matter what the being we judge; tastes and distastes stimulated by instruction, education, prejudice, or a certain artificial order in our ideas, are all based on the opinion we hold that these objects have some perfection or some defect in their qualities, for the perception of which we have the appropriate senses or faculties. Eighth source of diversity.

It can be asserted that the simple ideas which the same object stimulates in different people, are as different as the tastes and distastes that are noticed in them. This is indeed a felt truth; and it is no more difficult for several people to differ among themselves at the same time, with regard to simple ideas, than for the same man to differ with himself at different times. Our senses are in a state of constant vicissitude: one day, we have no eyes, another day we hear badly; and from one day to another, we see, smell, and hear differently. Ninth source of diversity in the judgments of men of the same age, and of the same man at different ages.

The most beautiful object is accidentally associated with disagreeable ideas: if one likes Spanish wine, one need only take it with an emetic in order to hate it; we are not free to experience nausea or not to do so at the sight of it: Spanish wines are always good, but our condition is not the same with respect [ par rapport ] to it. Similarly, that vestibule is always magnificent, but my friend lost his life there. That theatre never ceased to be beautiful after I was booed there: but I cannot see it without my ears again being struck by the noise of booing. I see under this vestibule only my dying friend; I no longer feel its beauty . Tenth source of diversity in judgments, occasioned by this host of accidental ideas, which we are not free to remove from the main idea. Post equitem sedet atra cura. [15]

When dealing with objects that are composite, and which present at the same time natural and artificial forms, as in Architecture, gardens, decorations, etc., our taste is based on another association of ideas, half reasonable, half capricious: some weak analogy with the gait, the cry, the shape, the color of a harmful object, the opinion of our country, the conventions of our compatriots, etc., all influence our judgments. If these causes tend to make us regard lively and bright colors as a mark of vanity or some other evil disposition of the heart or mind; if certain forms are customarily used by peasants, or by people whose profession, jobs, character are odious or despicable to us; then these associated ideas will return despite us, with those of color and form; and we will declare against this color and these forms, even though there is nothing innately disagreeable in them. Eleventh source of diversity.

What then would be the object in nature about whose beauty all men would be in perfect accord? The structure of plants? The mechanism of animals? The world? Yet those who are struck most by the rapports , the order, the symmetries, the connections that reign among the parts of this great whole, ignorant of the goal the creator had in creating it, are they not carried along by the ideas they have of divinity to declare that it is perfectly beautiful ? And do they not see this work as a masterpiece, primarily because its author lacked neither the power nor the will to create it thus? See Optimism. However, on how many occasions do we not have the same right to infer the perfection of the work from the mere name of the worker, and when we cannot help but admire? This painting is by Raphael, enough said. Twelfth source, if not of diversity, at least of error in judgments.

Purely imaginary beings, such as the sphinx, the mermaid, the faun, the minotaur, the ideal man, etc., are those about whose beauty there seems to be the least disagreement, and this is not surprising: these imaginary beings are in truth formed according to the rapports we see observed in real beings; but the model they must resemble, spread over all the productions of nature, is really everywhere and nowhere.

Notwithstanding all these causes of diversity in our judgments, there is no reason at all to think that real beauty , that which consists in the perception of rapports , is a mere chimera; the application of this principle can vary infinitely, and its accidental modifications can give rise to dissertations and literary wars: but the principle is no less constant. There are perhaps not two men on the face of the earth who see exactly the same rapports in the same object, and who judge it beautiful to the same degree: but if there were a single one who was not affected by rapports in any genre, he would be a perfect imbecile; and if he were insensible to them only in some genres, this phenomenon would reveal in him a defect of animal economy, and we would still be far from skepticism, by the general condition of the rest of the species.

The beautiful is not always the work of an intelligent cause: movement often establishes, either in a being considered on its own, or among several beings compared to one another, a prodigious multitude of surprising rapports . Natural history collections offer a great number of examples of this. The rapports are then the results of fortuitous combinations, at least in relation [ par rapport ] to us. Nature imitates, playfully, on a hundred occasions, the productions of art; and one could ask, I am not saying that that philosopher thrown by a storm onto the shore of an unknown island, was right to exclaim, at the sight of some Geometrical shapes, take heart, my friends, here are some human footsteps ; but how many rapports must be noticed in a being to have complete certainty that it is the work of an artist? On what occasion would a single defect in symmetry prove more than the sum total of rapports ? How are the duration of the chance cause and the rapports observed in the effects thus produced related? And, with the exception of the works of the Almighty, could there ever be cases in which the number of rapports could be balanced by [the number of times] they are cast? [16]

1. This article was later included in the Amsterdam edition of Diderot’s Oeuvres (Works), under the title, “Treatise on the Beautiful;” Naigeon later included it in his edition of Diderot’s works under the title, “Recherches philosophiques sur l'origine et la nature du beau” (Philosophical research on the origin and nature of the beautiful).

2. Rapport is a key term in this article and in Diderot’s own theory of the beautiful, to which he will turn in the second half of the article. As Jennifer Tsien and Jacques Morizot explain: “[Diderot’s] definition of taste depends on what he calls ‘rapports,’ or connections between various aspects of a work. An artist creates these rapports and the most refined, the most erudite, and the most sensitive viewer is the one who can discern the largest number of them.” Jennifer Tsien and Jacques Morizot, “18th Century French Aesthetics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

3. Christian Wolff (1679-1754), was a German philosopher and mathematician influenced by Descartes and associated with Leibniz. He published two volumes in Latin with this title: Psychologia empirica (Frankfurt, 1732) and Psychologia rationalis (Frankfurt, 1734).

4. Jean-Pierre de Crousaz (1663-1750), was a Swiss theologian and philosopher who introduced Cartesian philosophy to his colleagues in Lausanne. The reference is to his Traité du beau (Amsterdam, 1715).

5. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1745), eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher; author of An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1726.

6. Yves-Marie André (1675-1764), Essai sur le beau (Amsterdam, 1759).

7. Charles Batteux (1713-1780), Les beaux arts réduits à un seul principe (Paris, 1746).

8. “Let that be your wall of bronze,” Horace, Epistles, 1.1.60, trans. A. S. Kline.

9. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), “Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit,” in vol. 2 of Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (London, 1711). One of Diderot’s first publications was a translation of this text into French: Principes de la philosophie morale; ou Essai de M. S*** sur le mérite et la vertu (Amsterdam, 1745).

10. Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), Horace (1640), act III, scene 6. The daughter (Julie) asks: « Que vouliez-vous qu’il fît contre trois ? » [What do you want him to do against three?] Her father, the aged Horace replies: « Qu’il mourût,/ Ou qu’un beau désespoir alors le secourût [He should die/Or a beautiful despair should then help him]. Oeuvres de P. Corneille (Paris, 1759), 5:46.

11. Grandeur can mean either greatness or simply size , that is, largeness as opposed to smallness , and sometimes specifically, as we shall see below, height : tallness or shortness.

12. A fine flavour, a fine woman is in English in the original, followed by the French usage, in which fine is translated as belle (beautiful) and (incidentally) flavour as odeur (aroma or scent).

13. The reference is to an anecdote about Apelles of Kos, the renowned painter of Alexander the Great, recounted by Pliny: “When a cobbler commented on his mistakes in painting a shoe, Apelles made the corrections that very night; the next morning the cobbler noticed the changes, and proud of his effect on the artist's work began to criticize how Apelles portrayed the leg—whereupon Apelles emerged from his hiding-place to state: Ne sutor ultra crepidam —‘Let the shoemaker venture no further than the shoe.’” Christiane J. Hessler, “ Ne supra crepidam sutor ,” Fifteenth Century Studies , 33 (2008), 133-150; quoted in Wikipedia article on Apelles.

14. Couleurs literally means colors , but it also can refer to the paints in an artist’s palette.

15. “Behind the horseman sits black care.” Horace, Odes , 3.1.40.

16. The final word of the article is jets , which is difficult to translate. A jet can refer to the casting of a fishing line, and a sculpture can be said to have been made in a single casting ( une figure d’un seul jet ). In this case I take it to suggest the casting or throwing of dice, where each cast would produce a chance cause and thus a different set of rapports .