The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books.

  • Mark Akenside
Date:
1754
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The pleasures of imagination. A poem / In three books. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/144 (page 36)
    In this dark world : for truth and good are one, And beauty dwells in them, and they in her, 375 With *. ’Truth and good are one, And beauty dwells in them, &c. ] Do you imagine, fays Socrates to Ariflippus, that what is good is not alfo beautiful ? Have you not objerved that theje appearances always coincide ? Virtue, for isiftance, in the fame refpeB as to which we call it good, is ever acknowledg’d to be beautiful alfo. In the characters of men we always*join the two denominations together. cThe beauty of human bodies correfponds, in like manner, with that ceconomy of parts which conf itut.es them good; and in every circumfance of life, the fame object is conflantly accounted both beautiful and good, inafmuch as it anfvsers the purpofes for which it was defgrid. Xenophont. memorab. Socrat. I. 3. c. 8. This excellent obfervation has been ilJuftrated and extended by the noble reftorer of ancient philofophy ; fee the Charatte- rijlicks, vol. 2. p. 339 .& 422. & vol. 3. p. 181. And another ingenious author has particularly ihewn, that it holds in the general laws of nature, in the works of art, and the condudl of the fciences. Inquiry into the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue, Threat. i» §. 8. As to the connexion between beauty and truth, there are two opinions concerning it. Some philo- fophers affert an independent and invariable law in nature, in confequence of which all rational beings mufl alike perceive beauty * This the Athenians did in a peculiar manner by the word kaKqi- K&yttftol & x&AoKcLyctQia.