Therefore having observed that their dwellings were most commodious and firm when they were thrown into regular figures, with parts answerable to each other; they transferred these ideas to their gardens; they turned their trees into pillars, pyramids, and obelisks; they formed their hedges into so many green walls, and fashioned their walks into squares, triangles, and other mathematical figures, with exactness and symmetry; and they thought, if they were not imitating, they were at least improving nature, and teaching her to know her business.  But nature has at last escaped from their discipline and their fetters; and our gardens, if nothing else, declare, we begin to feel that mathematical ideas are not the true measures of beauty.  And surely they are full as little so in the animal as the vegetable world.  For is it not extraordinary, that in these fine descriptive pieces, these innumerable odes and elegies which are in the mouths of all the world, and many of which have been the entertainment of ages, that in these pieces which describe love with such a passionate energy, and represent its object in such an infinite variety of lights, not one word is said of proportion, if it be, what some insist it is, the principal component of beauty; whilst, at the same time, several other qualities are very frequently and warmly mentioned?  But if proportion has not this power, it may appear odd how men came originally to be so prepossessed in its favor.  It arose, I imagine, from the fondness I have just mentioned, which men bear so remarkably to their own works and notions; it arose from false reasonings on the effects of the customary figure of animals; it arose from the Platonic theory of fitness and aptitude.  For which reason, in the next section, I shall consider the effects of custom in the figure of animals; and afterwards the idea of fitness:  since if proportion does not operate by a natural power attending some measures, it must be either by custom, or the idea of utility; there is no other way.

SECTION V.

PROPORTION FURTHER CONSIDERED.

If I am not mistaken, a great deal of the prejudice in favor of proportion has arisen, not so much from the observation of any certain measures found in beautiful bodies, as from a wrong idea of the relation which deformity bears to beauty, to which it has been considered as the opposite; on this principle it was concluded that where the causes of deformity were removed, beauty must naturally and necessarily be introduced.  This I believe is a mistake.  For deformity is opposed not to beauty, but to the complete common form.  If one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man; and this has the same effect in natural faults, as maiming and mutilation produce from accidents.  So if the back be humped, the man is deformed; because his back has an unusual figure,