The Conclusion
I BELIEVED that an attempt to range and methodize some of our most
leading passions would be a good preparative to such an inquiry as
we are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The passions I have
mentioned
are almost the only ones which it can be necessary to consider in our
present design; though the variety of the passions is great, and worthy
in every branch of that variety, of an attentive investigation. The
more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces
we everywhere
find of his wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts
of the body may be considered as an hymn to the Creator; the use of
the passions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of
praise
to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that noble and uncommon union
of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite
wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind: whilst, referring to him
whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves, discovering
his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and imperfection,
honouring
them where we discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where
we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive without impertinence,
and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say
so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a consideration of his works.
The elevation of the mind ought to be the principal end of all our
studies; which if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very
little
service to us. But, beside this great purpose, a consideration of the
rationale of our passions seems to me very necessary for all who would
affect them upon solid and sure principles. It is not enough to know
them in general: to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge
properly of any work designed to affect them, we should know the exact
boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we should pursue them through
all their variety of operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what
might appear inaccessible, parts of our nature,
Quod latet arcand
non enarrabile fibrâ.
Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner,
sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he
can never have
a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make his propositions
sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and painters, and
those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts, have, without
this
critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several provinces, and
will succeed: as among artificers there are many machines made and
even invented
without any exact knowledge of the principles they are governed by.
It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice;
and we are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings,
who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle: but as it is
impossible
to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent
its having some influence on our practice, surely it is worth taking
some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis of sure experience.
We might expect that the artists themselves would have been our surest
guides; but the artists have been too much occupied in the practice:
the philosophers have done little; and what they have done, was mostly
with a view to their own schemes and systems: and as for those called
critics, they have generally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong
place; they sought it among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and
buildings. But art can never give the rules that make an art. This
is, I believe, the reason why artists in general, and poets principally,
have been confined in so narrow a circle: they have been rather imitators
of one another than of nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity,
and to so remote an antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the
first
model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as guides.
I can judge but poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by no other
standard
than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man’s power;
and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest,
things in nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity
and industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark,
or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry
it is almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I
have done but little by these observations considered in themselves;
and I never should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should
I have ever ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing
tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate.
These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A
man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself,
yet he clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors
subservient to the cause of truth. In the following parts I shall inquire
what things they are that cause in us the affections of the sublime and
beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections themselves. I
only desire one favour,—that no part of this discourse may be
judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible
I have
not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy,
but of a sober and even forgiving examination, that they are not armed
at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing
to give a peaceful entrance to truth. |