Chapter XV (4)

"But it is not the outline only which is thus systematically
false. The drawing of the solid form is worse still; for it
is to be remembered that, although clouds of course arrange
themselves more or less into broad masses, with a light side
and a dark side, both their light and shade are invariably
composed of a series of divided masses, each of which has in
its outline as much variety and character as the great outline
of the cloud; presenting, therefore, a thousand times repeated,
all that I have described as the general form. Nor are these
multitudinous divisions a truth of slight importance in the
character of sky, for they are dependent on, and illustrative
of, a quality which is usually in a great degree overlooked--the
enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds. Between the illumined
edge of a heaped cloud and that part of its body which turns
into shadow, there will generally be a clear distance of several
miles--more or less, of course, according to the general size
of the cloud; but in such large masses as Poussin and others of
the old masters, which occupy the fourth or fifth of the visible
sky, the clear illumined breadth of vapour, from the edge to
the shadow, involves at least a distance of five or six miles.
We are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountainous
range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapour which
compose it are linger and higher than any mountain-range of the
earth; and the distances between mass and mass are not yards of
air, traversed in an instant by the flying form, but valleys
of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the slow motion of
ascending curves, which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling
energy of exulting vapour rushing into the heaven a thousand
feet in a minute; and that the topling angle, whose sharp edge
almost escapes notice in the multitudinous forms around it, is
a nodding precipice of storms, three thousand feet from base to
summit. It is not until we have actually compared the forms of
the sky with the hill-ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring
alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin
to conceive or appreciate the colossal scale of the phenomena of
the latter. But of this there can be no doubt in the mind of any
one accustomed to trace the forms of cloud among hill-ranges--as
it is there a demonstrable and evident fact--that the space of
vapour visibly extended over an ordinarily clouded sky is not
less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon,
than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate
form, if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in
terms of _miles_; and that every boiling heap of illuminated
mist in the nearer sky is an enormous mountain, fifteen or
twenty thousand feet in height, six or seven miles over in
illuminated surface, furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines,
torn by local tempests into peaks and promontories, and changing
its features with the majestic velocity of a volcano."--(Vol. i.
p. 228.)

The forms of clouds, it seems, are worth studying: after reading this, no landscape-painter will be disposed, with hasty slight invention, to sketch in these "_mountains_" of the sky. Here is his description, or part of it, first of falling, then of running water. With the incidental criticism upon painters we are not at present concerned:--

"A little crumbling white or lightly-rubbed paper will soon give
the effect of indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than
foam--she shows beneath it, and through it, a peculiar character
of exquisitely studied form, bestowed on every wave and line of
fall; and it is this variety of definite character which Turner
always aims at, rejecting as much as possible everything that
conceals or overwhelms it. Thus, in the Upper Fall of the Tees,
though the whole basin of the fall is blue, and dim with the
rising vapour, yet the attention of the spectator is chiefly
directed to the concentric zones and delicate curves of the
falling water itself; and it is impossible to express with what
exquisite accuracy these are given. They are the characteristic
of a powerful stream descending without impediment or break, but
from a narrow channel, so as to expand as it falls. They are the
constant form which such a stream assumes as it descends; and
yet I think it would be difficult to point to another instance
of their being rendered in art. You will find nothing in the
waterfalls, even of our best painters, but springing lines of
parabolic descent, and splashing and shapeless foam; and, in
consequence, though they may make you understand the swiftness
of the water, they never let you feel the weight of it: the
stream, in their hands, looks _active_, not _supine_, as if
it leaped, not as if it fell. Now, water will leap a little
way--it will leap down a weir or over a stone--but it _tumbles_
over a high fall like this; and it is when we have lost the
parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary--when we have lost
the spring of the fall, and arrived at the _plunge_ of it--that
we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. Where water
takes its first leap from the top, it is cool and collected,
and uninteresting and mathematical; but it is when it finds
that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it
thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it
begins to writhe and twist, and sweep out, zone after zone, in
wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like,
lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides sounding for the
bottom. And it is this prostration, the hopeless abandonment
of its ponderous power to the air, which is always peculiarly
expressed by Turner....

"When water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much
interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then
in a pool as it goes long, it does not acquire a continuous
velocity of motion. It pauses after every leap, and curdles
about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and if, in
this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind, it meets
with any obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of
it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round: if it comes to a
step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then, after a little
splashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath. But if its
bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows,
so that it cannot rest--or if its own mass be so increased by
flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it,
but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following
current before it has had time to tranquillise itself--it of
course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus
got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the
whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked accelerating motion.
Now, when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not
part at it, but clears it like a racehorse; and when it comes
to a hollow, it does not fill it up, and run out leisurely at
the other side, but it rushes down into it, and comes up again
on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea. Hence
the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and
all the lines of the water altered in their nature. The quiet
stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light
and springy and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing
when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet
curdling water, and another similar leap below. But the stream,
when it has gained an impetus, takes the shape of its bed,
never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes
down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing--not
foaming nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong
sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and
ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard. If it meet a rock
three or four feet above the level of its bed, it will neither
part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but
clear it in a smooth dome of water without apparent exertion,
coming down again as smoothly on the other side, the whole
surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its
extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the
form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a
line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole river
has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with this only
difference, that the torrent waves always break backwards, and
sea-waves forwards. Thus, then, in the water which has gained
an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangement of curved
lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, following
every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace,
and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most
beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly
produce."--(Vol. i. p. 363.)

It is the object of Mr Ruskin, in his first volume of _Modern Painters_, to show what the artist has to do in his imitation of nature. We have no material controversy to raise with him on this subject; but we cannot help expressing our surprise that he should have thought it necessary to combat, with so much energy, so very primitive a notion that the imitation of the artist partakes of the nature of a _deception_, and that the highest excellence is obtained when the representation of any object is taken for the object itself. We thought this matter had been long ago settled. In a page or two of Quatremère de Quincy's treatise on _Imitation in the Fine Arts_, the reader, if he has still to seek on this subject, will find it very briefly and lucidly treated. The aim of the artist is not to produce such a representation as shall be taken, even for a moment, for a real object. His aim is, by imitating certain qualities or attributes of the object, to reproduce for us those pleasing or elevating impressions which it is the nature of such qualities or attributes to excite. We have stated very briefly the accepted doctrine on this subject--so generally accepted and understood that Mr Ruskin was under no necessity to avoid the use of the word imitation, as he appears to have done, under the apprehension that it was incurably infected with this notion of an attempted deception. Hardly any reader of his book, even without a word of explanation, would have attached any other meaning to it than what he himself expresses by representation of certain "truths" of nature.

With respect to the imitations of the landscape-painter, the notion of a deception cannot occur. His trees and rivers cannot be mistaken, for an instant, for real trees and rivers, and certainly not while they stand there in the gilt frame, and the gilt frame itself against the papered wall. His only chance of deception is to get rid of the frame, convert his picture into a transparency, and place it in the space which a window should occupy. In almost all cases, deception is obtained, not by painting well, but by those artifices which disguise that what we see _is_ a painting. At the same time, we are not satisfied with an expression which several writers, we remark, have lately used, and which Mr Ruskin very explicitly adopts. The imitations of the landscape-painter are not a "language" which he uses; they are not mere "signs," analogous to those which the poet or the orator employs. There is no analogy between them. Let us analyse our impressions as we stand before the artist's landscape, not thinking of the artist, or his dexterity, but simply absorbed in the pleasure which he procures us--we do not find ourselves reverting, in imagination, to _other_ trees or other rivers than those he has depicted. We certainly do not believe them to be real trees, but neither are they mere signs, or a language to recall such objects; but _what there is of tree there_ we enjoy. There is the coolness and the quiet of the shaded avenue, and we feel them; there is the sunlight on that bank, and we feel its cheerfulness; we feel the serenity of his river. He has brought the spirit of the trees around us; the imagination rests in the picture. In other departments of art the effect is the same. If we stand before a head of Rembrandt or Vandyke, we do not think that it lives; but neither do we think of some other head, of which that is the type. But there is majesty, there is thought, there is calm repose, there is some phase of humanity expressed before us, and we are occupied with so much of human life, or human character, as is then and there given us.

Imitate as many qualities of the real object as you please, but always the highest, never sacrificing a truth of the mind, or the heart, for one only of the sense. Truth, as Mr Ruskin most justly says--truth always. When it is said that truth should not be always expressed, the maxim, if properly understood, resolves into this--that the higher truth is not to be sacrificed to the lower. In a landscape, the gradation of light and shade is a more important truth than the exact brilliancy (supposing it to be attainable,) of any individual object. The painter must calculate what means he has at his disposal for representing this gradation of light, and he must pitch his tone accordingly. Say he pitches it far below reality, he is still in search of truth--of contrast and degree.

Sometimes it may happen that, by rendering one detail faithfully, an artist may give a false impression, simply because he cannot render other details or facts by which it is accompanied in nature. Here, too, he would only sacrifice truth _in the cause of truth_. The admirers of Constable will perhaps dispute the aptness of our illustration. Nevertheless his works appear to us to afford a curious example of a scrupulous accuracy or detail producing a false impression. Constable, looking at foliage under the sunlight, and noting that the leaf, especially after a shower, will reflect so much light that the tree will seem more white than green, determined to paint all the white he saw. Constable could paint white leaves. So far so well. But then these leaves in nature are almost always in motion: they are white at one moment and green the next. We never have the impression of a white leaf; for it is seen playing with the light--its mirror, for one instant, and glancing from it the next. Constable could not paint motion. He could not imitate this shower of light in the living tree. He must leave his white paint where he has once put it. Other artists before him had seen the same light, but, knowing that they could not bring the breeze into their canvass, they wisely concluded that less white paint than Constable uses would produce a more truthful impression.

But we must no longer be detained from the more immediate task before us. We must now follow Mr Ruskin to his second volume of _Modern Painters_, where he explains his theory of the beautiful; and although this will not be to readers in general the most attractive portion of his writings, and we ourselves have to practise some sort of self-denial in fixing our attention upon it, yet manifestly it is here that we must look for the basis or fundamental principles of all his criticisms in art. The order in which his works have been published was apparently deranged by a generous zeal, which could brook no delay, to defend Mr Turner from the censures of the undiscerning public. If the natural or systematic order had been preserved, the materials of this second volume would have formed the first preliminary treatise, determining those broad principles of taste, or that philosophical theory of the beautiful, on which the whole of the subsequent works were to be modelled. Perhaps this broken and reversed order of publication has not been unfortunate for the success of the author--perhaps it was dimly foreseen to be not altogether impolitic; for the popular ear was gained by the bold and enthusiastic defence of a great painter; and the ear of the public, once caught, may be detained by matter which, in the first instance, would have appealed to it in vain. Whether the effect of chance or design, we may certainly congratulate Mr Ruskin on the fortunate succession, and the fortunate rapidity with which his publications have struck on the public ear. The popular feeling, won by the zeal and intrepidity of the first volume of _Modern Painters_, was no doubt a little tried by the graver discussions of the second. It was soon, however, to be again caught, and pleased by a bold and agreeable miscellany under the magical name of "The Seven Lamps;" and these Seven Lamps could hardly fail to throw some portion of their pleasant and bewildering light over a certain rudimentary treatise upon building, which was to appear under the title of "The Stones of Venice."

We cannot, however, congratulate Mr Ruskin on the manner in which he has acquitted himself in this arena of philosophical inquiry, nor on the sort of theory of the Beautiful which he has contrived to construct. The least metaphysical of our readers is aware that there is a controversy of long standing upon this subject, between two different schools of philosophy. With the one the beautiful is described as a great "idea" of the reason, or an intellectual intuition, or a simple intuitive perception; different expressions are made use of, but all imply that it is a great primary feeling, or sentiment, or idea of the human mind, and as incapable of further analysis as the idea of space, or the simplest of our sensations. The rival school of theorists maintain, on the contrary, that no sentiment yields more readily to analysis; and that the beautiful, except in those rare cases where the whole charm lies in one sensation, as in that of colour, is a complex sentiment. They describe it as a pleasure resulting from the presence of the visible object, but of which the visible object is only in part the immediate cause. Of a great portion of the pleasure it is merely the vehicle; and they say that blended reminiscences, gathered from every sense, and every human affection, from the softness of touch of an infant's finger to the highest contemplations of a devotional spirit, have contributed, in their turn, to this delightful sentiment.

Mr Ruskin was not bound to belong to either of these schools of philosophy; he was at liberty to construct an eclectic system of his own;--and he has done so. We shall take the precaution, in so delicate a matter, of quoting Mr Ruskin's own words for the exposition of his own theory. Meanwhile, as some clue to the reader, we may venture to say that he agrees with the first of these schools in adopting a primary intuitive sentiment of the beautiful; but then this primary intuition is only of a sensational or "animal" nature--a subordinate species of the beautiful, which is chiefly valuable as the necessary condition of the higher and truly beautiful; and this last he agrees with the opposite school in regarding as a derived sentiment--derived by contemplating the objects of external nature as types of the Divine attributes. This is a brief summary of the theory; for a fuller exposition we shall have recourse to his own words.

The term _Æsthetic_, which has been applied to this branch of philosophy, Mr Ruskin discards; he offers as a substitute _Theoria_, or _The Theoretic Faculty_, the meaning of which he thus explains:--

"I proceed, therefore, first to examine the nature of what
I have called the theoretic faculty, and to justify my
substitution of the term 'Theoretic' for 'Æsthetic,' which is
the one commonly employed with reference to it.

"Now the term 'æsthesis' properly signifies mere sensual
perception of the outward qualities and necessary effects of
bodies; in which sense only, if we would arrive at any accurate
conclusions on this difficult subject, it should always be used.
But I wholly deny that the impressions of beauty _are in any
way sensual_;--they are neither sensual nor intellectual, _but
moral_; and for the faculty receiving them, whose difference
from mere perception I shall immediately endeavour to explain,
no terms can be more accurate or convenient than that employed
by the Greeks, 'Theoretic,' which I pray permission, therefore,
always to use, and to call the operation of the faculty itself,
Theoria."--(P. 11.)

We are introduced to a new faculty of the human mind; let us see what new or especial sphere of operation is assigned to it. After some remarks on the superiority of the mere sensual pleasures of the eye and the ear, but particularly of the eye, to those derived from other organs of sense, he continues:--

"Herein, then, we find very sufficient ground for the higher
estimation of these delights: first, in their being eternal
and inexhaustible; and, secondly, in their being evidently
no meaner instrument of life, but an object of life. Now, in
whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely
and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of
divine: for God will not make anything an object of life to his
creatures which does not point to, or partake of himself,"--[a
bold assertion.] "And so, though we were to regard the pleasures
of sight merely as the highest of sensual pleasures, and though
they were of rare occurrence--and, when occurring, isolated and
imperfect--there would still be supernatural character about
them, owing to their self-sufficiency. But when, instead of
being scattered, interrupted, or chance-distributed, they are
gathered together and so arranged to enhance each other, as by
chance they could not be, there is caused by them, not only a
feeling of strong affection towards the object in which they
exist, but a perception of purpose and adaptation of it to our
desires; a perception, therefore, of the immediate operation of
the Intelligence which so formed us and so feeds us.

"Out of what perception arise Joy, Admiration, and Gratitude?

"Now, the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness I call
Æsthesis; but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception
of it I call Theoria. For this, and this only, is the full
comprehension and contemplation of the beautiful as a gift
of God; a gift not necessary to our being, but adding to and
elevating it, and twofold--first, of the desire; and, secondly,
of the thing desired."

We find, then, that in the production of the full sentiment of the beautiful _two_ faculties are employed, or two distinct operations denoted. First, there is the "animal pleasantness which we call Æsthesis,"--which sometimes appears confounded with the mere pleasures of sense, but which the whole current of his speculations obliges us to conclude is some separate intuition of a sensational character; and, secondly, there is "the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it, which we call Theoria," which alone is the truly beautiful, and which it is the function of the Theoretic Faculty to reveal to us. But this new Theoretic Faculty--what can it be but the old faculty of Human Reason, exercised upon the great subject of Divine beneficence?

Mr Ruskin, as we shall see, discovers that external objects are beautiful because they are types of Divine attributes; but he admits, and is solicitous to impress upon our minds, that the "meaning" of these types is "learnt." When, in a subsequent part of his work, he feels himself pressed by the objection that many celebrated artists, who have shown a vivid appreciation and a great passion for the beautiful, have manifested no peculiar piety, have been rather deficient in spiritual-mindedness, he gives them over to that instinctive sense he has called Æsthesis, and says--"It will be remembered that I have, throughout the examination of typical beauty, asserted our instinctive sense of it; the moral _meaning_ of it being only discoverable by reflection," (p. 127.) Now, there is no other conceivable manner in which the meaning of the type can be learnt than by the usual exercise of the human reason, detecting traces of the Divine power, and wisdom, and benevolence, in the external world, and then associating with the various objects of the external world the ideas we have thus acquired of the Divine wisdom and goodness. The rapid and habitual regard of certain facts or appearances in the visible world, as types of the attributes of God, _can_ be nothing else but one great instance (or class of instances) of that law of association of ideas on which the second school of philosophy we have alluded to so largely insist. And thus, whether Mr Ruskin chooses to acquiesce in it or not, his "Theoria" resolves itself into a portion, or fragment, of that theory of association of ideas, to which he declares, and perhaps believes, himself to be violently opposed.

In a very curious manner, therefore, has Mr Ruskin selected his materials from the two rival schools of metaphysics. His _Æsthesis_ is an intuitive perception, but of a mere sensual or animal nature--sometimes almost confounded with the mere pleasure of sense, at other times advanced into considerable importance, as where he has to explain the fact that men of very little piety have a very acute perception of beauty. His _Theoria_ is, and can be, nothing more than the results of human reason in its highest and noblest exercise, rapidly brought before the mind by a habitual association of ideas. For the lowest element of the beautiful he runs to the school of intuitions;--they will not thank him for the compliment;--for the higher to that analytic school, and that theory of association of ideas, to which throughout he is ostensibly opposed.

This _Theoria_ divides itself into two parts. We shall quote Mr Ruskin's own words and take care to quote from them passages where he seems most solicitous to be accurate and explanatory:--

"The first thing, then, we have to do," he says, "is accurately
to discriminate and define those appearances from which we are
about to reason as belonging to beauty, properly so called, and
to clear the ground of all the confused ideas and erroneous
theories with which the misapprehension or metaphorical use of
the term has encumbered it.

"By the term Beauty, then, properly are signified two things:
first, that external quality of bodies, already so often spoken
of, and which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast,
or in man, is absolutely identical--which, as I have already
asserted, may be shown to be in some sort typical of the Divine
attributes, and which, therefore, I shall, for distinction's
sake, call Typical Beauty; and, secondarily, the appearance
of felicitous fulfilment of functions in living things, more
especially of the joyful and right exertion of perfect life in
man--and this kind of beauty I shall call Vital Beauty."--(P.
26.)

The Vital Beauty, as well as the Typical, partakes essentially, as far as we can understand our author, of a religious character. On turning to that part of the volume where it is treated of at length, we find a universal sympathy and spirit of kindliness very properly insisted on, as one great element of the sentiment of beauty; but we are not permitted to dwell upon this element, or rest upon it a moment, without some reference to our relation to God. Even the animals themselves seem to be turned into types for us of our moral feelings or duties. We are expressly told that we cannot have this sympathy with life and enjoyment in other creatures, unless it takes the form of, or comes accompanied with, a sentiment of piety. In all cases where the beautiful is anything higher than a certain "animal pleasantness," we are to understand that it has a religious character. "In all cases," he says, summing up the functions of the Theoretic Faculty, "_it is something Divine_; either the approving voice of God, the glorious symbol of Him, the evidence of His kind presence, or the obedience to His will by Him induced and supported,"--(p. 126.) Now it is a delicate task, when a man errs by the exaggeration of a great truth or a noble sentiment, to combat his error; and yet as much mischief may ultimately arise from an error of this description as from any other. The thoughts and feelings which Mr Ruskin has described, form the noblest part of our sentiment of the beautiful, as they form the noblest phase of the human reason. But they are not the whole of it. The visible object, to adopt his phraseology, does become a type to the contemplative and pious mind of the attribute of God, and is thus exalted to our apprehension. But it is not beautiful solely or originally on this account. To assert this, is simply to falsify our human nature.

Before, however, we enter into these _types_, or this typical beauty, it will be well to notice how Mr Ruskin deals with previous and opposing theories. It will be well also to remind our readers of the outline of that theory of association of ideas which is here presented to us in so very confused a manner. We shall then be better able to understand the very curious position our author has taken up in this domain of speculative philosophy.

Mr Ruskin gives us the following summary of the "errors" which he thinks it necessary in the first place to clear from his path:--

"Those erring or inconsistent positions which I would at once
dismiss are, the first, that the beautiful is the true; the
second, that the beautiful is the useful; the third, that it is
dependent on custom; and the fourth, that it is dependent on the
association of ideas."

The first of these theories, that the beautiful is the true, we leave entirely to the tender mercies of Mr Ruskin; we cannot gather from his refutation to what class of theorists he is alluding. The remaining three are, as we understand the matter, substantially one and the same theory. We believe that no one, in these days, would define beauty as solely resulting either from the apprehension of Utility, (that is, the adjustment of parts to a whole, or the application of the object to an ulterior purpose,) or to Familiarity and the affection which custom engenders; but they would regard both Utility and Familiarity as amongst the sources of those agreeable ideas or impressions, which, by the great law of association, became intimately connected with the visible object. We must listen, however, to Mr Ruskin's refutation of them:--

"That the beautiful is the _useful_ is an assertion evidently
based on that limited and false sense of the latter term which
I have already deprecated. As it is the most degrading and
dangerous supposition which can be advanced on the subject, so,
fortunately, it is the most palpably absurd. It is to confound
admiration with hunger, love with lust, and life with sensation;
it is to assert that the human creature has no ideas and no
feelings, except those ultimately referable to its brutal
appetites. It has not a single fact, nor appearance of fact, to
support it, and needs no combating--at least until its advocates
have obtained the consent of the majority of mankind that the
most beautiful productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of
art, spades and millstones.

"Somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that
the sense of the beautiful arises from _familiarity_ with the
object, though even this could not long be maintained by a
thinking person. For all that can be alleged in defence of such
a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which
at first appeared ugly of much of their repulsiveness; whence
it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of
beauty, as it would be to argue that, because it is possible to
acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of
lusciousness in grapes....

"I pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the
agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of
the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas.

"Frequent has been the support and wide the acceptance of
this supposition, and yet I suppose that no two consecutive
sentences were ever written in defence of it, without involving
either a contradiction or a confusion of terms. Thus Alison,
'There are scenes undoubtedly more beautiful than Runnymede,
yet, to those who recollect the great event that passed
there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on
the imagination,'--where we are wonder-struck at the bold
obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by its
overcoming that very other power (of inherent beauty) whose
existence the arguer desires; for the only logical conclusion
which can possibly be drawn from the above sentence is, that
imagination is _not_ the source of beauty--for, although no
scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are
scenes 'more beautiful than Runnymede.' And though instances
of self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are
rare, yet, if the arguments on the subject be fairly sifted
from the mass of confused language with which they are always
encumbered, they will be found invariably to fall into one of
these two forms: either association gives pleasure, and beauty
gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty; or the power of
association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the
power of association _is_ the power of beauty."

Now this last sentence is sheer nonsense, and only proves that the author had never given himself the trouble to understand the theory he so flippantly discards. No one ever said that "association gives pleasure;" but very many, and Mr Ruskin amongst the rest, have said that associated thought adds its pleasure to an object pleasing in itself, and thus increases the complex sentiment of beauty. That it is a complex sentiment in all its higher forms, Mr Ruskin himself will tell us. As to the manner in which he deals with Alison, it is in the worst possible spirit of controversy. Alison was an elegant, but not a very precise writer; it was the easiest thing in the world to select an unfortunate illustration, and to convict _that_ of absurdity. Yet he might with equal ease have selected many other illustrations from Alison, which would have done justice to the theory he expounds. A hundred such will immediately occur to the reader. If, instead of a historical recollection of this kind, which could hardly make the stream itself of Runnymede look more beautiful, Alison had confined himself to those impressions which the generality of mankind receive from river scenery, he would have had no difficulty in showing (as we believe he has elsewhere done) how, in this case, ideas gathered from different sources flow into one harmonious and apparently simple feeling. That sentiment of beauty which arises as we look upon a river will be acknowledged by most persons to be composed of many associated thoughts, combining with the object before them. Its form and colour, its bright surface and its green banks, are all that the eye immediately gives us; but with these are combined the remembered coolness of the fluent stream, and of the breeze above it, and of the pleasant shade of its banks; and beside all this--as there are few persons who have not escaped with delight from town or village, to wander by the quiet banks of some neighbouring stream, so there are few persons who do not associate with river scenery ideas of peace and serenity. Now many of these thoughts or facts are such as the eye does not take cognisance of, yet they present themselves as instantaneously as the visible form, and so blended as to seem, for the moment, to belong to it.

Why not have selected some such illustration as this, instead of the unfortunate Runnymede, from a work where so many abound as apt as they are elegantly expressed? As to Mr Ruskin's utilitarian philosopher, it is a fabulous creature--no such being exists. Nor need we detain ourselves with the quite departmental subject of Familiarity. But let us endeavour--without desiring to pledge ourselves or our readers to its final adoption--to relieve the theory of association of ideas from the obscurity our author has thrown around it. Our readers will not find that this is altogether a wasted labour.

With Mr Ruskin we are of opinion that, in a discussion of this kind, the term Beauty ought to be limited to the impression derived, mediately or immediately, from the visible object. It would be useless affectation to attempt to restrict the use of the word, in general, to this application. We can have no objection to the term Beautiful being applied to a piece of music, or to an eloquent composition, prose or verse, or even to our moral feelings and heroic actions; the word has received this general application, and there is, at basis, a great deal in common between all these and the sentiment of beauty attendant on the visible object. For music, or sweet sounds, and poetry, and our moral feelings, have much to do (through the law of association) with our sentiment of the Beautiful. It is quite enough if, speaking of the subject of our analysis, we limit it to those impressions, however originated, which attend upon the visible object.

One preliminary word on this association of ideas. It is from its very nature, and the nature of human life, of all degrees of intimacy--from the casual suggestion, or the case where the two ideas are at all times felt to be distinct, to those close combinations where the two ideas have apparently coalesced into one, or require an attentive analysis to separate them. You see a mass of iron; you may be said _to see its weight_, the impression of its weight is so intimately combined with its form. The _light_ of the sun, and the _heat_ of the sun are learnt from different senses, yet we never see the one without thinking of the other, and the reflection of the sunbeam seen upon a bank immediately suggests the idea of _warmth_. But it is not necessary that the combination should be always so perfect as in this instance, in order to produce the effect we speak of under the name of Association of Ideas. It is hardly possible for us to abstract the _glow_ of the sunbeam from its light; but the fertility which follows upon the presence of the sun, though a suggestion which habitually occurs to reflective minds, is an association of a far less intimate nature. It is sufficiently intimate, however, to blend with that feeling of admiration we have when we speak of the beauty of the sun. There is the golden harvest in its summer beams. Again, the contemplative spirit in all ages has formed an association between the sun and the Deity, whether as the fittest symbol of God, or as being His greatest gift to man. Here we have an association still more refined, and of a somewhat less frequent character, but one which will be found to enter, in a very subtle manner, into that impression we receive from the great luminary.

And thus it is that, in different minds, the same materials of thought may be combined in a closer or laxer relationship. This should be borne in mind by the candid inquirer. That in many instances ideas from different sources do coalesce, in the manner we have been describing, he cannot for an instant doubt. He seems _to see_ the coolness of that river; he seems _to see_ the warmth on that sunny bank. In many instances, however, he must make allowance for the different habitudes of life. The same illustration will not always have the same force to all men. Those who have cultivated their minds by different pursuits, or lived amongst scenery of a different character, cannot have formed exactly the same moral association with external nature.

These preliminaries being adjusted, what, we ask, is that first original charm of the _visible object_ which serves as the foundation for this wonderful superstructure of the Beautiful, to which almost every department of feeling and of thought will be found to bring its contribution? What is it so pleasurable that the eye at once receives from the external world, that round _it_ should have gathered all these tributary pleasures? Light--colour--form; but, in reference to our discussion, pre-eminently the exquisite pleasure derived from the sense of light, pure or coloured. Colour, from infancy to old age, is one original, universal, perpetual source of delight, the first and constant element of the Beautiful.

We are far from thinking that the eye does not at once take cognisance of form as well as colour. Some ingenious analysts have supposed that the sensation of colour is, in its origin, a mere mental affection, having no reference to space or external objects, and that it obtains this reference through the contemporaneous acquisition of the sense of touch. But there can be no more reason for supposing that the sense of touch informs us immediately of an external world than that the sense of colour does. If we do not allow to all the senses an intuitive reference to the external world, we shall get it from none of them. Dr Brown, who paid particular attention to this subject, and who was desirous to limit the first intimation of the sense of sight to an abstract sensation of unlocalised colour, failed entirely in his attempt to obtain from any other source the idea of space or _outness_; Kant would have given him certain subjective _forms of the sensitive faculty_, space and time. These he did not like: he saw that, if he denied to the eye an immediate perception of the external world, he must also deny it to the touch; he therefore prayed in aid certain muscular sensations from which the idea of _resistance_ would be obtained. But it seems to us evident that not till _after_ we have acquired a knowledge of the external world can we connect _volition_ with muscular movement, and that, until that connection is made, the muscular sensations stand in the same predicament as other sensations, and could give him no aid in solving his problem. We cannot go further into this matter at present.[6] The mere flash of light which follows the touch upon the optic nerve represents itself as something _without_; nor was colour, we imagine, ever felt, but under some _form_ more or less distinct; although in the human being the eye seems to depend on the touch far more than in other animals, for its further instruction.

[6] It is seldom any action of a limb is performed without the concurrence of several muscles; and, if the action is at all energetic, a number of muscles are brought into play as an equipoise or balance; the infant, therefore, would be sadly puzzled amongst its muscular sensations, supposing that it had them. Besides, it seems clear that those movements we see an infant make with its arms and legs are, in the first instance, as little _voluntary_ as the muscular movements it makes for the purpose of respiration. There is an animal life within us, dependent on its own laws of irritability. Over a portion of this the developed thought or reason gains dominion; over a large portion the will never has any hold; over another portion, as in the organs of respiration, it has an intermittent and divided empire. We learn voluntary movement by doing that instinctively and spontaneously which we afterwards do from forethought. We have moved our arm; we wish to do the like again, (and to our wonder, if we then had intelligence enough to wonder,) we do it.

But although the eye is cognisant of form as well as colour, it is in the sensation of colour that we must seek the primitive pleasure derived from this organ. And probably the first reason why form pleases is this, that the boundaries of form are also the lines of contrast of colour. It is a general law of all sensation that, if it be continued, our susceptibility to it declines. It was necessary that the eye should be always open. Its susceptibility is sustained by the perpetual contrast of colours. Whether the contrast is sudden, or whether one hue shades gradually into another, we see here an original and primary source of pleasure. A constant variety, in some way produced, is essential to the maintenance of the pleasure derived from colour.

It is not incumbent on us to inquire how far the beauty of form may be traceable to the sensation of touch;--a very small portion of it we suspect. In the human countenance, and in sculpture, the beauty of form is almost resolvable into expression; though possibly the soft and rounded outline may in some measure be associated with the sense of smoothness to the touch. All that we are concerned to show is, that there is here in colour, diffused as it is over the whole world, and perpetually varied, a _beauty_ at once showered upon the visible object. We hear it said, if you resolve all into association, where will you begin? You have but a circle of feelings. If moral sentiment, for instance, be not itself the beautiful, why should it become so by association. There must be something else that is _the beautiful_, by association with which it passes for such. We answer, that we do not resolve _all_ into association; that we have in this one gift of colour, shed so bountifully over the whole world, an original beauty, a delight which makes the external object pleasant and beloved; for how can we fail, in some sort, to love what produces so much pleasure?

We are at a loss to understand how any one can speak with disparagement of colour as a source of the beautiful. The sculptor may, perhaps, by his peculiar education, grow comparatively indifferent to it: we know not how this may be; but let any man, of the most refined taste imaginable, think what he owes to this source, when he walks out at evening, and sees the sun set amongst the hills. The same concave sky, the same scene, so far as its form is concerned, was there a few hours before, and saddened him with its gloom; one leaden hue prevailed over all; and now in a clear sky the sun is setting, and the hills are purple, and the clouds are radiant with every colour that can be extracted from the sunbeam. He can hardly believe that it is the same scene, or he the same man. Here the grown-up man and the child stand always on the same level. As to the infant, note how its eye feeds upon a brilliant colour, or the living flame. If it had wings, it would assuredly do as the moth does. And take the most untutored rustic, let him be old, and dull, and stupid, yet, as long as the eye has vitality in it, will he look up with long untiring gaze at this blue vault of the sky, traversed by its glittering clouds, and pierced by the tall green trees around him.

Is it any marvel now that round the _visible object_ should associate tributary feelings of pleasure? How many pleasing and tender sentiments gather round the rose! Yet the rose is beautiful in itself. It was beautiful to the child by its colour, its texture, its softly-shaded leaf, and the contrast between the flower and the foliage. Love, and poetry, and the tender regrets of advanced life, have contributed a second dower of beauty. The rose is more to the youth and to the old man than it was to the child; but still to the last they both feel the pleasure of the child.

The more commonplace the illustration, the more suited it is to our purpose. If any one will reflect on the many ideas that cluster round this beautiful flower, he will not fail to see how numerous and subtle may be the association formed with the visible object. Even an idea painful in itself may, by way of contrast, serve to heighten the pleasure of others with which it is associated. Here the thought of decay and fragility, like a discord amongst harmonies, increases our sentiment of tenderness. We express, we believe, the prevailing taste when we say that there is nothing, in the shape of art, so disagreeable and repulsive as artificial flowers. The waxen flower may be an admirable imitation, but it is a detestable thing. This partly results from the nature of the imitation; a vulgar deception is often practised upon us: what is not a flower is intended to pass for one. But it is owing still more, we think, to the contradiction that is immediately afterwards felt between this preserved and imperishable waxen flower, and the transitory and perishable rose. It is the nature of the rose to bud, and blossom, and decay; it gives its beauty to the breeze and to the shower; it is mortal; it is _ours_; it bears our hopes, our loves, our regrets. This waxen substitute, that cannot change or decay, is a contradiction and a disgust.

Amongst objects of man's contrivance, the sail seen upon the calm waters of a lake or a river is universally felt to be beautiful. The form is graceful, and the movement gentle, and its colour contrasts well either with the shore or the water. But perhaps the chief element of our pleasure is all association with human life, with peaceful enjoyment--

"This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing,
To waft me from distraction."

Or take one of the noblest objects in nature--the mountain. There is no object except the sea and the sky that reflects to the sight colours so beautiful, and in such masses. But colour, and form, and magnitude, constitute but a part of the beauty or the sublimity of the mountain. Not only do the clouds encircle or rest upon it, but men have laid on it their grandest thoughts: we have associated with it our moral fortitude, and all we understand of greatness or elevation of mind; our phraseology seems half reflected from the mountain. Still more, we have made it holy ground. Has not God himself descended on the mountain? Are not the hills, once and for ever, "the unwalled temples of our earth?" And still there is another circumstance attendant upon mountain scenery, which adds a solemnity of its own, and is a condition of the enjoyment of other sources of the sublime--solitude. It seems to us that the feeling of solitude almost always associates itself with mountain scenery. Mrs Somerville, in the description which she gives or quotes, in her _Physical Geography_, of the Himalayas, says--

"The loftiest peaks being bare of snow gives great variety of
colour and beauty to the scenery, which in these passes is at
all times magnificent. During the day, the stupendous size of
the mountains, their interminable extent, the variety and the
sharpness of their forms, and, above all, the tender clearness
of their distant outline melting into the pale blue sky,
contrasted with the deep azure above, is described as a scene of
wild and wonderful beauty. At midnight, when myriads of stars
sparkle in the black sky, and the pure blue of the mountains
looks deeper still below the pale white gleam of the earth and
snow-light, the effect is of unparalleled sublimity, and no
language can describe the splendour of the sunbeams at daybreak,
streaming between the high peaks, and throwing their gigantic
shadows on the mountains below. There, far above the habitation
of man, no living thing exists, no sound is heard; the very
echo of the traveller's footsteps startles him in the awful
_solitude and silence_ that reigns in those august dwellings of
everlasting snow."

No one can fail to recognise the effect of the last circumstance mentioned. Let those mountains be the scene of a gathering of any human multitude, and they would be more desecrated than if their peaks had been levelled to the ground. We have also quoted this description to show how large a share _colour_ takes in beautifying such a scene. Colour, either in large fields of it, or in sharp contrasts, or in gradual shading--the play of light, in short, upon this world--is the first element of beauty.