The Theory of Moral Sentiments

f the influence of custom and fashion upon our notions of beauty and deformity.

There are other principles besides those already

enumerated, which have a considerable influence

upon the moral sentiments of mankind, and are

the chief causes of the many irregular and discordant

opinions which prevail in different ages and nations

concerning what is blameable or praise-worthy.

These principles are custom and faction, principles

which extend their dominion over our judgments

concerning beauty of every kind.

When two objects have frequently been seen together,

the imagination acquires a habit of passing

easily from the one to the other. If the first appear,

we lay our account that the second is to follow. Of

262their own accord they put us in mind of one another,

and the attention glides easily along them. Though,

independent of custom, there should be no real

beauty in their union, yet when custom has thus

connected them together, we feel an impropriety in

their reparation. The one we think is awkward

when it appears without its usual companion. We

miss something which we expected to find, and the

habitual arrangement of our ideas is disturbed by

the disappointment. A suit of clothes, for example,

seems to want something if they are without the most

insignificant ornament which usually accompanies

them, and we find a meanness or awkwardness in the

absence even of a haunch button. When there is

any natural propriety in the union, custom increases

our sense of it, and makes a different arrangement

appear still more disagreeable than it would otherwise

seem to be. Those who have been accustomed to

see things in a good taste, are more disgusted by

whatever is clumsy or awkward. Where the conjunction

is improper, custom either diminishes, or

takes away altogether, our sense of the impropriety.

Those who have been accustomed to slovenly disorder

lose all sense of neatness or elegance. The modes of

furniture or dress which seem ridiculous to strangers,

give no offence to the people who are used to them.

Fashion is different from custom, or rather is a

particular species of it. That is not the fashion which

every body wears, but which those wear who are of

a high rank, or character. The graceful, the easy,

and commanding manners of the great, joined to the

usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give

a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow

263upon it. As long as they continue to use this form,

it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of

something that is genteel and magnificent, and though

in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account

of this relation, to have something about it that is

genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop

it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess

before, and being now used only by the inferior

ranks of people, seems to have something of their

meanness and awkwardness.

Dress and furniture are allowed by all the world

to be entirely under the dominion of custom and

fashion. The influence of those principles, however,

is by no means confined to so narrow a sphere, but

extends itself to whatever is in any respect the object

of taste, to music, to poetry, to architecture. The

modes of dress and furniture are continually changing,

and that fashion appearing ridiculous to-day

which was admired five years ago, we are experimentally

convinced that it owed its vogue chiefly or

entirely to custom and fashion. Clothes and furniture

are not made of very durable materials. A well

fancied coat is done in a twelve-month, and cannot

continue longer to propagate, as the fashion, that

form according to which it was made. The modes

of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress;

because furniture is commonly more durable. In

five or six years, however, it generally undergoes an

entire revolution, and every man in his own time sees

the fashion in this respect change many different ways.

The productions of the other arts are much more lasting,

and, when happily imagined, may continue to

propagate the fashion of their make for a much longer

time. A well contrived building may endure many

264centuries: a beautiful air may be delivered down by

a sort of tradition, through many successive generations:

a well written poem may last as long as the

world; and all of them continue for ages together,

to give the vogue to that particular style, to that particular

taste or manner, according to which each of

them was composed. Few men have an opportunity

of seeing in their own times the fashion in any of

these arts change very considerably. Few men have

so much experience and acquaintance with the different

modes which have obtained in remote ages and

nations, as to be thoroughly reconciled to them, or to

judge with impartiality between them, and what takes

place in their own age and country. Few men therefore

are willing to allow that custom or fashion have

much influence upon their judgments concerning

what is beautiful, or otherwise, in the productions

of any of those arts; but imagine, that all the rules,

which they think ought to be observed in each of

them, are founded upon reason and nature, not upon

habit or prejudice. A very little attention, however,

may convince them of the contrary, and satisfy them,

that the influence of custom and fashion over dress

and furniture, is not more absolute than over architecture,

poetry, and music.

Can any reason, for example, be assigned why the

Doric capital should be appropriated to a pillar,

whose height is equal to eight diameters; the Ionic

volute to one of nine; and the Corinthian foliage to

one of ten? The propriety of each of those appropriations

can be founded upon nothing but habit and

custom. The eye having been used to see a particular

proportion connected with a particular ornament,

would be offended if they were not joined together.

265Each of the five orders has its peculiar ornaments,

which cannot be changed for any other, without

giving offence to all those who know any thing of

the rules of architecture. According to some architects,

indeed, such is the exquisite judgment with

which the ancients have assigned to each order its proper

ornaments, that no others can be found which

are equally suitable. It seems, however, a little difficult

to be conceived that these forms, though, no

doubt, extremely agreeable, should be the only forms

which can suit those proportions, or that there should

not be five hundred others which, antecedent to

established custom, would have fitted them equally

well. When custom, however, has established particular

rules of building, provided they are not absolutely

unreasonable, it is absurd to think of altering

them for others which are only equally good, or

even for others which, in point of elegance and

beauty, have naturally some little advantage over

them. A man would be ridiculous who should appear

in public with a suit of clothes quite different

from those which are commonly worn, though the

new dress should in itself be ever so graceful or convenient.

And there seems to be an absurdity of the

same kind in ornamenting a house after a quite different

manner from that which custom and fashion

have prescribed; though the new ornaments should

in themselves be somewhat superior to the common

ones.

According to the ancient rhetoricians, a certain

measure or verse was by nature appropriated to each

particular species of writing, as being naturally expressive

of that character, sentiment, or passion,

266which ought to predominate in it. One verse, they

said, was fit for grave and another for gay works,

which could not, they thought, be interchanged

without the greatest impropriety. The experience

of modern times, however, seems to contradict this

principle, though in itself it would appear to be

extremely probable. What is the burlesque verse in

English is the heroic verse in French. The tragedies

of Racine and the Henriad of Voltaire, are in

the same verse with,

Thus said to my lady the knight full of care.

The burlesque verse in French, on the contrary, is

pretty much the same with the heroic verse of ten

syllables in English. Custom has made the one nation

associate the ideas of gravity, sublimity, and

seriousness, to that measure which the other has

connected with whatever is gay, flippant, and ludicrous.

Nothing would appear more absurd in English

than a tragedy written in the Alexandrine verses

of the French, or in French, than a work of the

same kind in verses of ten syllables.

An eminent artist will bring about a considerable

change in the established modes of each of those arts,

and introduce a new fashion of writing, music, or

architecture. As the dress of an agreeable man of

high rank recommends itself, and how peculiar and

fantastical soever, comes soon to be admired and

imitated; so the excellencies of an eminent matter

recommend his peculiarities, and his manner becomes

the fashionable style in the art which he practises.

The taste of the Italians in music and architecture,

has, within these fifty years, undergone a considerable

267change, from imitating the peculiarities of some

eminent masters in each of those arts. Seneca is accused

by Quintilian of having corrupted the taste of

the Romans, and of having introduced a frivolous

prettiness in the room of majestic reason and masculine

eloquence. Sallust and Tacitus have by others

been charged with the same accusation, tho’ in a different

manner. They gave reputation, it is pretended,

to a style, which though in the highest degree

concise, elegant, expressive, and even poetical,

wanted, however, ease, simplicity, and nature, and

was evidently the production of the most laboured

and studied affectation. How many great qualities

must that writer possess who can thus render his very

faults agreeable? After the praise of refining the

taste of a nation, the highest eulogy, perhaps, which

can be bestowed upon any author is to say, that he

corrupted it. In our own language, Mr. Pope and

Dr. Swift have each of them introduced a manner

different from what was practised before, into all

works that are written in rhyme, the one in long

verses, the other in short. The quaintness of Butler

has given place to the plainness of Swift. The

rambling freedom of Dryden, and the correct but

often tedious and prosaic languor of Addison, are no

longer the objects of imitation, but all long verses

are now written after the manner of the nervous precision

of Mr. Pope.

Neither is it only over the productions of the arts,

that custom and fashion exert their dominion. They

influence our judgments, in the same manner, with

regard to the beauty of natural objects. What various

and opposite forms are deemed beautiful in different

species of things? The proportions which are

268admired in one animal, are altogether different from

those which are esteemed in another. Every class of

things has its own peculiar conformation, which is

approved of, and has a beauty of its own, distinct

from that of every other species. It is upon this

account that a learned Jesuit, father Buffier, has

determined that the beauty of every object consists in

that form and colour, which is most usual among

things of that particular sort to which it belongs.

Thus, in the human form, the beauty of each

feature lies in a certain middle equally removed

from a variety of other forms that are ugly.

A beautiful nose, for example, is one that is neither

very long, nor very short, neither very straight, nor

very crooked, but a sort of middle among all these

extremes, and less different from any one of them,

than all of them are from one another. It is the

form which Nature seems to have aimed at in them

all, which, however, she deviates from in a great

variety of ways, and very seldom hits exactly; but

to which all those deviations still bear a very strong

resemblance. When a number of drawings are

made after one pattern, though they may all miss it

in some respects, yet they will all resemble it more

than they resemble one another; the general character

of the pattern will run through them all; the most

singular and odd will be those which are most wide

of it; and though very few will copy it exactly, yet

the most accurate delineations will bear a greater resemblance

to the most careless, than the careless

ones will bear to one another. In the same manner,

in each species of creatures, what is most beautiful

bears the strongest characters of the general fabric of

the species, and has the strongest resemblance to the

greater part of the individuals with which it is

269classed. Monsters, on the contrary, or what is perfectly

deformed, are always most singular and odd,

and have the least resemblance to the generality of

that species to which they belong. And thus the

beauty of each species, though in one sense the rarest

of all things, because few individuals hit this middle

form exactly, yet in another, is the most common,

because all the deviations from it resemble it more

than they resemble one another. The most customary

form, therefore, is in each species of things,

according to him, the most beautiful. And hence it

is that a certain practice and experience in contemplating

each species of objects is requisite, before

we can judge of its beauty, or know wherein the

middle and most usual form consists. The nicest

judgment concerning the beauty of the human species,

will not help us to judge of that of flowers, or

horses, or any other species of things. It is for the same

reason that in different climates and where different

customs and ways of living take place, as the generality

of any species receives a different conformation

from those circumstances, so different ideas of its

beauty prevail. The beauty of a Moorish is not exactly

the same with that of an English horse. What

different ideas are formed in different nations concerning

the beauty of the human shape and countenance?

A fair complexion is a shocking deformity

upon the coast of Guinea. Thick lips and a flat

nose are a beauty. In some nations long ears that hang

down upon the shoulders are the objects of universal

admiration. In China if a lady’s foot is so large

as to be fit to walk upon, she is regarded as a monster

of ugliness. Some of the savage nations in

North America tie four boards round the heads of

their children, and thus squeeze them, while the

270bones are tender and gristly, into a form that is almost

perfectly square. Europeans are astonished at

the absurd barbarity of this practice, to which some

missionaries have imputed the singular stupidity of

those nations among whom it prevails. But, when

they condemn those savages, they do not reflect

that the ladies in Europe had, till within these very

few years, been endeavouring, for near a century

past, to squeeze the beautiful roundness of their natural

shape into a square form of the same kind.

And that notwithstanding the many distortions and

diseases which this practice was known to occasion,

custom had rendered it agreeable among some of the

most civilized nations, which, perhaps, the world

ever beheld.

Such is the system of this learned and ingenious

father, concerning the nature of beauty; of which

the whole charm, according to him, would thus

seem to arise from its falling in with the habits which

custom had impressed upon the imagination, with

regard to things of each particular kind. I cannot,

however, be induced to believe that our sense even

of external beauty is founded altogether on custom.

The utility of any form, its fitness for the useful

purposes for which it was intended, evidently recommends

it, and renders it agreeable to us independent

of custom. Certain colours are more agreeable

than others, and give more delight to the eye

the first time it ever beholds them. A smooth surface

is more agreeable than a rough one. Variety is

more pleasing than a tedious undiversified uniformity.

Connected variety, in which each new appearance

seems to be introduced by what went before it, and in

which all the adjoining parts seem to have some natural

271relation to one another, is more agreeable than

a disjointed and disorderly assemblage of unconnected

objects. But though I cannot admit that custom

is the sole principle of beauty, yet I can so far allow

the truth of this ingenious system as to grant, that

there is scarce any one external form so beautiful as

to please, if quite contrary to custom and unlike

whatever we have been used to in that particular species

of things: or so deformed as not to be agreeable,

if custom uniformly supports it, and habituates us

to see it in every single individual of the kind.