proportion of a tower, another of a house; one proportion of a gallery, another of a hall, another of a chamber.  To judge of the proportions of these, you must be first acquainted with the purposes for which they were designed.  Good sense and experience acting together, find out what is fit to be done in every work of art.  We are rational creatures, and in all our works we ought to regard their end and purpose; the gratification of any passion, how innocent soever, ought only to be of secondary consideration.  Herein is placed the real power of fitness and proportion; they operate on the understanding considering them, which approves the work and acquiesces in it.  The passions, and the imagination which principally raises them, have here very little to do.  When a room appears in its original nakedness, bare walls and a plain ceiling:  let its proportion be ever so excellent, it pleases very little; a cold approbation is the utmost we can reach; a much worse proportioned room with elegant mouldings and fine festoons, glasses, and other merely ornamental furniture, will make the imagination revolt against the reason; it will please much more than the naked proportion of the first room, which the understanding has so much approved, as admirably fitted for its purposes.  What I have here said and before concerning proportion, is by no means to persuade people absurdly to neglect the idea of use in the works of art.  It is only to show that these excellent things, beauty and proportion, are not the same; not that they should either of them be disregarded.

SECTION VIII.

THE RECAPITULATION.

On the whole; if such parts in human bodies as are found proportioned, were likewise constantly found beautiful, as they certainly are not; or if they were so situated, as that a pleasure might flow from the comparison, which they seldom are; or if any assignable proportions were found, either in plants or animals, which were always attended with beauty, which never was the case; or if, where parts were well adapted to their purposes, they were constantly beautiful, and when no use appeared, there was no beauty, which is contrary to all experience; we might conclude that beauty consisted in proportion or utility.  But since, in all respects, the case is quite otherwise; we may be satisfied that beauty does not depend on these, let it owe its origin to what else it will.

SECTION IX.

PERFECTION NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.

There is another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former; that perfection is the constituent cause of beauty.  This opinion has been made to extend much further than to sensible objects.  But in these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection.