and what carries with it the idea of some disease or misfortune; So if a man’s neck be considerably longer or shorter than usual, we say he is deformed in that part, because men are not commonly made in that manner.  But surely every hour’s experience may convince us that a man may have his legs of an equal length, and resembling each other in all respects, and his neck of a just size, and his back quite straight, without having at the same time the least perceivable beauty.  Indeed beauty is so far from belonging to the idea of custom, that in reality what affects us in that manner is extremely rare and uncommon.  The beautiful strikes us as much by its novelty as the deformed itself.  It is thus in those species of animals with which we are acquainted; and if one of a new species were represented, we should by no means wait until custom had settled an idea of proportion, before we decided concerning its beauty or ugliness:  which shows that the general idea of beauty can be no more owing to customary than to natural proportion.  Deformity arises from the want of the common proportions; but the necessary result of their existence in any object is not beauty.  If we suppose proportion in natural things to be relative to custom and use, the nature of use and custom will show that beauty, which is a positive and powerful quality, cannot result from it.  We are so wonderfully formed, that, whilst we are creatures vehemently desirous of novelty, we are as strongly attached to habit and custom.  But it is the nature of things which hold us by custom, to affect us very little whilst we are in possession of them, but strongly when they are absent.  I remember to have frequented a certain place, every day for a long time together; and I may truly say that, so far from finding pleasure in it, I was affected with a sort of weariness and disgust; I came, I went, I returned, without pleasure; yet if by any means I passed by the usual time of my going thither, I was remarkably uneasy, and was not quiet till I had got into my old track.  They who use snuff, take it almost without being sensible that they take it, and the acute sense of smell is deadened, so as to feel hardly anything from so sharp a stimulus; yet deprive the snuff-taker of his box, and he is the most uneasy mortal in the world.  Indeed so far are use and habit from being causes of pleasure merely as such, that the effect of constant use is to make all things of whatever kind entirely unaffecting.  For as use at last takes off the painful effect of many things, it reduces the pleasurable effect in others in the same manner, and brings both to a sort of mediocrity and indifference.  Very justly is use called a second nature; and our natural and common state is one of absolute indifference, equally prepared for pain or pleasure.  But when we are thrown out of this state, or deprived of anything requisite to maintain us in it; when this chance does not happen by pleasure from some mechanical cause, we are always