ocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities
shows why similar sights, feelings, and sounds, are so contrary to
beauty: and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its
effect, or very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand
along the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body
is moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home to
the eye; if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface,
that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible
deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in
a surface gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar in its effects
on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates directly, on the
other indirectly. And this body will be beautiful if the lines which
compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that
may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be
continually varied.

SECTION XXIV.

CONCERNING SMALLNESS.

To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repetition of
the same reasonings, and of illustrations of the same nature, I will not
enter very minutely into every particular that regards beauty, as it is
founded on the disposition of its quantity, or its quantity itself. In
speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty, because
the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely relative to the
species of the objects, which are infinite. It is true, that having once
fixed the species of any object, and the dimensions common in the
individuals of that species, we may observe some that exceed, and some
that fall short of, the ordinary standard: those which greatly exceed
are, by that excess, provided the species itself be not very small,
rather great and terrible than beautiful; but as in the animal world,
and in a good measure in the vegetable world likewise, the qualities
that constitute beauty may possibly be united to things of greater
dimensions; when they are so united, they constitute a species something
different both from the sublime and beautiful, which I have before
called _fine_; but this kind, I imagine, has not such a power on the
passions, either as vast bodies have which are endued with the
correspondent qualities of the sublime; or as the qualities of beauty
have when united in a small object. The affection produced by large
bodies adorned with the