furs of beafts, the bright scales of fishes, the painted wings of butterflies and beetles, the rich colours and spotted luftre of many tribes. of infects.

There are parts alfo of animals ornamental, and the properties by which they are so, not fubfervient, that we know of, to any other purpose. The irides of most animals are very beautiful, without conducing at all, by their beauty, to the perfection of vifion; and nature could in no part have employed her pencil to fo much advantage, because no part presents itself so conspicuously to the observer, or communicates fo great an effect to the whole aspect.

In plants, especially in the flowers of plants, the principle of beauty holds a still more confiderable place in their composition; is still more confeffed than in animals. Why, for one instance out of a thousand, does the corolla of the tulip, when advanced to its fize and maturity, change its colour? The purposes, fo far as we can fee, of vegetable nutrition, might have been carried on as well by its continuing green. Or, if this could not be, consistently with the progress of vegetable life, why break into fuch a variety of colours? This is no

proper

proper effect of age, or of declenfion in the afcent of the fap; for that, like the autumnal teints, would have produced one colour in one leaf, with marks of fading and withering. It feems a lame account to call it, as it has been called, a disease of the plant. Is it not more probable, that this property, which is independent, as it should seem, of the wants and utilities of the plant, was calculated for beauty, intended for difplay?

A ground, I know, of objection, has been taken against this whole topic of argument, namely, that there is no such thing as beauty at all in other words, that whatever is ufeful and familiar comes of course to be thought beautiful; and that things appear to be fo, only by their alliance with these qualities. Our idea of beauty is capable of being so modified by habit, by fashion, by the experience of advantage or pleasure, and by affociations arifing out of that experience, that a question has been made, whether it be not altogether generated by these causes, or would have any proper existence without them. It feems, however, a carrying of the conclufion too far, to deny the existence of the principle, viz. a native capacity of perceiving beauty, on ac

count of the influence, or the varieties proceeding from that influence, to which it is fubject feeing that principles the most acknowledged, are liable to be affected in the fame manner. I should rather argue thus: The question respects objects of fight. Now every other fenfe hath its diftinction of agreeable and disagreeable. Some taftes offend the palate; others gratify it. In brutes and infects, this diftinction is ftronger, and more regular, than in man. Every horse, ox, sheep, fwine, when at liberty to choose, and when in a natural state, that is, when not vitiated by habits forced upon it, eats and rejects the fame plants. Many infects which feed upon particular plants, will rather die than change their appropriate leaf. All this looks like a determination in the fenfe itself to particular taftes. In like manner, fmells affect the nose with fenfations pleasurable or disgusting. Some founds, or compofitions of found, delight the ear, others torture it. Habit can do much in all these cafes, (and it is well for us that it can; for it is this power which reconciles us to many neceffities,) but has the distinction, in the mean time, of agreeable and disagreeable, no foundation in the sense itself? What is true

of

of the other senses is most probably true of the eye, (the analogy is irresistible,) viz. that there belongs to it an original conftitution, fitted to perceive pleasure from fome impressions, and pain from others.

I do not however know, that the argument which alledges beauty as a final cause, rests upon this conceffion. We possess a sense of beauty, however we come by it. It in fact exifts. Things are not indifferent to this fense: all objects do not fuit it: many, which we fee, are agreeable to it; many others difagreeable. It is certainly not the effect of habit upon the particular object, because the most agreeable objects are often the most rare; many, which are very common, continue to be offenfive. If they be made fupportable by habit, it is all which habit can do ; they never become agreeable. If this fenfe, therefore, be acquired, it is a refult; the produce of nu--merous and complicated actions of external objects upon the fenfes, and of the mind upon its fenfations. With this refult there must be a certain congruity to enable any particular object to please: and that congruity, we contend, is confulted in the afpect which is given to animal and vegetable bodies.

IV. The

IV. The skin and covering of animals is that upon which their appearance chiefly depends, and it is that part which, perhaps, in all animals is moft decorated; and most free from impurities. But were beauty, or agreeableness of afpect, entirely out of the question, there is another purpose answered by this integument, and by the collocation of the parts of the body beneath it, which is of still greater importance; and that purpofe is concealment. Were it poffible to view through the skin the mechanism of our bodies, the fight would frighten us out of our wits. "Durft we make a fingle movement," afks a lively French. writer, or ftir a step from the place we were in, if we faw our blood circulating, the tendons pulling, the lungs blowing, the humours filtrating, and all the incomprehenfible affemblage of fibres, tubes, pumps, valves, currents, pivots, which sustain an existence, at once fo frail, and fo prefumptuous ?"

V. Of animal bodies, confidered as maffes, there is another property, more curious than it is generally thought to be; which is the faculty of flanding: and it is more remarkable in two-legged animals than in quadrupeds, and, most of all, as being the talleft, and reft