N07809:370
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The…
Two dissertations, I. Concerning the end for which God created the world. II. The nature of true virtue. / by the late Reverend, learned and pious Jonathan Edwards, A.M. president of the College in New-Jersey.
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland, 1765
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
3. IT may be observed (which was hinted before) that not only uniformity and proportion, &c. of different things is requisite in order to this inferior beauty, but some relation or connection of the things thus agreeing one with another. As, the uniformity or likeness of a number of pillars, scattered hither and thither, does not constitute beauty, or at least by no means in an equal degree as uniformity in pillars connected in the same building, in parts that have relation one to another So if we […] ⟨p. 140⟩unlike, and very disproportioned, in distant places, which have no relation to each other, this excites no such idea of deformity, as disagreement and inequality or disproportion in things related and connected: and the nearer the relation and the stricter the connection, so much the greater and more disgustful is the deformity, consisting in their disagreement.
3. IT may be observed (which was hinted before) that not only uniformity and proportion, &c. of different things is requisite in order to this inferior beauty, but some relation or connection of the things thus agreeing one with another. As, the uniformity or likeness of a number of pillars, scattered hither and thither, does not constitute beauty, or at least by no means in an equal degree as uniformity in pillars connected in the same building, in parts that have relation one to another So if we 〈…〉 ⟨p. 140⟩unlike, and very disproportion'd, in distant places, which have no relation to each other, this excites no such idea of deformity, as disagreement and inequality or disproportion in things related and connected: and the nearer the relation and the stricter the connection, so much the greater and more disgustful is the deformity, consisting in their disagreement.
4. THIS secondary kind of beauty, consisting in uniformity and proportion, not only takes place in material and external things, but also in things immaterial; and is, in very many things, plain and sensible in the latter, as well as the former: and when it is so, there is no reason why it should not be grateful to them that behold it, in these, as well as the other, by virtue of the same sense or the same determination of mind to be gratified with uniformity and proportion. If uniformity and proportion be the things that affect, and appear agreeable to, this sense of beauty, then why should not uniformity and proportion affect the same sense in immaterial things, as well as material, if there be equal capacity of discerning it in both? and indeed more in spiritual things (caeteris paribus) as these are more important than things merely external and material?