CHAPTER XI - GENERAL INFERENCES RESPECTING TYPICAL BEAUTY

Summary

The subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions

I have now enumerated and, in some measure, explained those characteristics of mere matter by which I conceive it becomes agreeable to the Theoretic faculty, under whatever form, dead, organized, or animated, it may present itself. It will be our task in the succeeding volume to examine, and illustrate by examples, the mode in which these characteristics appear in every division of creation, in stones, mountains, waves, clouds, and all organic bodies, beginning with vegetables, and then taking instances in the range of animals, from the mollusc to man; examining how one animal form is nobler than another, by the more manifest presence of these attributes, and chiefly endeavouring to show how much there is of admirable and lovely, even in what is commonly despised. At present I have only to mark the conclusions at which we have as yet arrived respecting the rank of the Theoretic faculty, and then to pursue the inquiry farther into the nature of vital beauty.

As I before said, I pretend not to have enumerated all the sources of material beauty, nor the analogies connected with them; it is probable that others may occur to many readers, or to myself, as I proceed into more particular inquiry; but I am not careful to collect all evidence within reach on the subject.