_Not always pleasing._--Jouffroy even denies that novelty is always pleasing. Some things, he contends, _displease_ us, simply because they are new. We become accustomed to them, and our dislike ceases. Thus it is, to some extent, with difference of color in the races.
_Theory of the Useful._--Is, then, the _useful_ the beautiful? This theory next claims our attention. The foundation of the emotions awakened in us by the beautiful in nature or art, is the perception of utility. We perceive in the object a fitness to conduce, in some way, to our welfare, to serve, in some way, our purposes, and for this reason, we are pleased. The utility is the beauty.
_The most useful not the most beautiful._--That the beauty of an object may, in our perception, be heightened by the discovery of its fitness to produce some desirable end, or rather, that this may add somewhat to the pleasure we feel in view of the object, is quite possible; that this is the main element and grand secret, either of that emotion on our part, or of the beauty which gives rise to it, is not possible. It is sufficient to say, that, if this were so, the most useful things ought, of course, to be the most beautiful. Is this the case? A stream of water conducted along a ship canal is more useful than the same stream tumbling over the rapids, or plunging over a perpendicular precipice. Is it also more beautiful? A swine's snout, to use a homely but forcible illustration of Burke, is admirably fitted to serve the purpose for which it was intended; useful exceedingly for rooting and grubbing, but not, on the whole, very beautiful.
_Dissimilarity of the two._--Indeed, few things can be more unlike, in their effect upon the mind, in the nature of the emotions they excite, than the useful and the beautiful. This has been well shown by Jouffroy in his analysis of the beautiful. Kant has also clearly pointed out the same thing. Both please us, but not in the same way, not for the same reason. We love the one for its advantage to us, the other _for its own sake_. The one is a purely selfish, the other a purely disinterested love, a noble, elevated emotion. The two are heaven-wide asunder. The glorious sunset is of no earthly use to us, otherwise than mere beauty and pleasure are in themselves of use. The gorgeous spectacle becomes at once degraded in our own estimation by the very question of its possible utility. We love it not for the benefit it confers, the use we can make of it, but for its own sake, its own sweet beauty, because it is what it is. There it lies, pencilled on the clouds, evanescent, momentarily changing. There it is, afar off. You cannot reach it, cannot command its stay, have no wish to appropriate it to yourself, no desire to turn it to your own account, or reap any benefit from it, other than the mere enjoyment; still you admire it, still it is beautiful to you. Of what use to the beholder is the ruddy glow and flash of sunrise on the Alpine summits as seen from the Rhigi or Mount Blanc? Of what use, in fact, is beauty in any case, other than as it may be the means of refining the taste, and elevating the mind? That it has this advantage we are free to admit; and it is certainly one of the noblest uses to which any thing can be made subservient; but surely this cannot be what is meant when we are told that beauty _consists_ in utility, for this would be simply affirming that the cause consists in the effect produced. Beauty refines and elevates the mind, is a means of æsthetic and moral culture; as such it is of use, and in that use lies the secret and the subtle essence of beauty itself. In other words, a given cause produces a given effect, and that effect _constitutes_ the cause!