hurt.  It is so with the second nature, custom, in all things which relate to it.  Thus the want of the usual proportions in men and other animals is sure to disgust, though their presence is by no means any cause of real pleasure.  It is true that the proportions laid down as causes of beauty in the human body, are frequently found in beautiful ones, because they are generally found in all mankind; but if it can be shown too that they are found without beauty, and that beauty frequently exists without them, and that this beauty, where it exists, always can be assigned to other less equivocal causes, it will naturally lead us to conclude that proportion and beauty are not ideas of the same nature.  The true opposite to beauty is not disproportion or deformity, but ugliness:  and as it proceeds from causes opposite to those of positive beauty, we cannot consider it until we come to treat of that.  Between beauty and ugliness there is a sort of mediocrity, in which the assigned proportions are most commonly found; but this has no effect upon the passions.

SECTION VI.

FITNESS NOT THE CAUSE OF BEAUTY.

It is said that the idea of utility, or of a part’s being well adapted to answer its end, is the cause of beauty, or indeed beauty itself.  If it were not for this opinion, it had been impossible for the doctrine of proportion to have held its ground very long; the world would be soon weary of hearing of measures which related to nothing, either of a natural principle, or of a fitness to answer some end; the idea which mankind most commonly conceive of proportion, is the suitableness of means to certain ends, and, where this is not the question, very seldom trouble themselves about the effect of different measures of things.  Therefore it was necessary for this theory to insist that not only artificial, but natural objects took their beauty from the fitness of the parts for their several purposes.  But in framing this theory, I am apprehensive that experience was not sufficiently consulted.  For, on that principle, the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its offices of digging and rooting, would be extremely beautiful.  The great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would be likewise as beautiful in our eyes.  The hedge-hog, so well secured against all assaults by his prickly hide, and the porcupine with his missile quills, would be then considered as creatures of no small elegance.  There are few animals whose parts are better contrived than those of a monkey:  he has the hands of a man, joined to the springy limbs of a beast; he is admirably calculated for running, leaping, grappling, and climbing; and yet there are few animals which seem to have less beauty in the eyes of all mankind.  I need say little on the trunk of the elephant, of such various