Mark Hopkins

“ If we succeed in this struggle, we feel in our own breasts a peace which is not only present happiness, but the promise of future reward; and we awaken in the breasts of others the emotions of moral sympathy, of approbation, of sublimity in its highest forms, till they are ready to welcome us with acclaim, and we find that virtue is not only happiness, but is also "glory, and honor, and immortality." ”

“ The beauties and sublimities of nature are like the stars, which the storm shuts out, but when the heavens are serene, they come out, one after another, to the eye that is watching for them, till the firmament glows with their light. He, therefore, and he only, who, in a proper state of mind, will place himself in the presence of beautiful or sublime objects, and will compare the effects produced under different circumstances, will improve his taste, both in its susceptibility to emotion, and in its power of discrimination. ”

“ It is not till rhetoric sends its warm life-blood to mantle on the cold cheek of logic, and clothes its angular form in the garments of taste, that we begin to admire the discourse. And so it is with duty. It is an excellent body to the course of our conduct in life; nothing else will do, but it may be so performed as to appear unamiable and even repulsive. In order to be beautiful, there must be connected with it some manifestation of natural affection or graceful emotion. ”

“ It is therefore still true that, as the beauty of the early morning is produced solely by a reflexion from the sun while he is still below the horizon, so the beauty of matter is wholly a reflexion from that great central orb of mind which has never yet beamed upon the eye of man in its direct effulgence—that, to him who views it aright, the beauty of this world is but the morning twilight of heaven. ”

“ Where will you place a mean action in distinction from a dishonest one? I have heard it disputed whether neatness is a virtue, a matter of moral obligation, or merely a requisition of taste. Is a man under moral obligation to be neat in his person? It is along this dividing line that all those actions lie which relate to the proprieties and courtesies of life—all those smaller attentions to the convenience and comfort of others, and that delicate regard to their feelings, which have been designated by the French as the smaller morals. ”

“ As long, however, as his mind is thus occupied in analyzing, he feels no emotion of beauty or sublimity. But as this is an enticing species of logic, he may follow it till a work of art shall give him pleasure only by its conformity to certain principles, true or false, which he may have established for himself, and till he becomes a cold critic, or perhaps a reviewer by trade. He may become a mere teller in the bank of taste, to pronounce on what is genuine, and hand it over to others to be used and enjoyed. ”

“ We have all seen persons enter upon a course of virtuous activity, and continue it for a time from a sense of duty, sustained by ardent feeling; but after a time the feeling has died away, and there has come in its stead habit, or a regard to consistency, to sustain the sense of duty in keeping up the same course of external action. When this change has taken place, we are all conscious that the beauty of the conduct is greatly diminished;—its spirit has vanished; the dew of its youth is exhaled. ”

“ These two kinds of taste are not always united in the same person; indeed, I am inclined to think that they are united but rarely. The perfection of the one depends much on the degree in which we are able to free the mind from the influence of casual associations; that of the other, on the contrary, depends on a faculty of association which enables us to fall in at once with all the turns of the fashion, and, as Shakspeare expresses it, to catch the tune of the times." Association is the sole foundation of the value which we put upon some articles, and of the beauty which we find in others. ”

“ Wherever human happiness is concerned, there is room for principle to operate, and the constitution of society will never be sound, and its beauty will never be perfect, till the sap of principle circulates to the extremities of human action. The true polish and beauty of society can result only from the principle of benevolence showing itself in a graceful and practical attention to the minor wants and to the feelings of others. But whatever we may decide in regard to their respective limits in this department, it is obvious that taste, so far as it goes, must be favorable to morals. ”

“ A tree clothed in fresh foliage is necessarily seen, and seen to be green by all who turn their eyes upon it. The same tree, when seen, may be pronounced by one individual to be beautiful, by another, from some peculiar association, to be the reverse, and by a third, however beautiful in itself, it may be looked upon without any emotion at all. It is, therefore, a great mistake to suppose, as many do, that those qualities in objects which awaken the emotions of taste, act directly and necessarily upon us, like those which affect the senses. ”

“ No intellectual Alexander ever sat down and wept for the want of more worlds to conquer. As vast as is his imagination, the revelations of astronomy, as sober facts, go beyond any thing that the imagination had conceived. And is it so, that, in the region of taste alone, the faculties of man have no adequate object? But it is only when nature, like the Bible, is seen to be full of God, that she is clothed with her true sublimity. ”

“ And here I may remark, that though we have a right to expect of every man that he will do his duty, yet the display of this beauty is not equally within the power of all, since the existence and manifestation of emotion depend, to some extent, upon the temperament. As there are some who have naturally a meagre intellect, so there are others whose minds seem to be barren of those finer sympathies and affections of our nature which are the verdure of the soul, and upon which the eye always rests with pleasure. ”

“ They come up occasionally from that lower element in which they live, into a region of light and beauty, but no sooner are they a little refreshed than they plunge again into the mud of sensual gratification. It is men like these, who, when their capacity for the lower pleasures is exhausted, drive in their carriages about the cities of the old world (perhaps we are not yet sufficiently corrupt,) and set up to be virtuosi. It is easy to see how such a taste must bear upon morals.
But I remark once more, that the fine arts may be made to pander directly to vice. ”

“ Those also who patronize the arts, as it is significantly termed, often do it from ostentation. What better resource has an ordinary person who has money, and who wishes to be distinguished in the fashionable world, than to become a patron of the fine arts? I knew a person who spent several thousand dollars for pictures, and who, to my certain knowledge, knew and cared nothing about them except as they affected her standing in the fashionable world. But of those who have a good degree of taste, there are few whose motives are not mixed. ”

“ It is nothing to them, if they have not man for their servant, that "all the parts of nature incessantly work into each other's hands for their profit; that the wind sows the seed, the sun evaporates the sea, the wind blows the vapor to the field, the ice on the other side of the planet condenses the rain on this, and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man." ”

“ Such being the nature of the moral sublime, it is obvious that there is much less danger to morals from its perversion than from the perversion of the beautiful. There is here no natural passion to come in as an ally of principle; and which may take the place of it, but it is duty struggling single-handed, and triumphing over all the might of external nature, and all the force of human propensity. Virtue may indeed exist in perfect serenity, and be exercised without an obstacle ”

“ No sight, for example, can be more beautiful than that of a family in which there is mutual attachment, and in which the performance of every duty is sweetened by affection. How beautiful is the assiduity of a child, who bears with every infirmity, and soothes every care, and anticipates every want, of a parent in sickness or in age! It is beautiful, but not sublime. The conduct of that young man, who labors hard and denies himself the ordinary pleasures of the young that he may support an aged mother, or add to her comfort, is highly beautiful ”

“ As, therefore, he who cannot see beyond the stars as they appear to the sense, must lose by far the highest pleasure which they are adapted as objects of taste to give; so he who knows the physical structure of the universe, and who yet does not see in it, and behind it, an infinite and beneficent Intelligence, cannot have connected with his view those conceptions which awaken the highest emotions of beauty and sublimity. ”

“ To talk of an emotion to those who have not felt it, is like talking of colors to the blind. And here I may remark, that these terms, beauty and sublimity, have, in common with those denoting sensations, an ambiguity which has often produced confusion. ”

“ To me, indeed, it seems that beauty in matter is to moral beauty what instinct is to reason, or what the light of the moon is to that of the sun; containing some of the same elements, but destitute of the highest. ”

“ This natural association of beauty and goodness perhaps arises from the fact, that every indication of goodness as expressed in the countenance is pleasing, and may be heightened into beauty. It is surprising how soon we come to regard as pleasing, the most ordinary features, when we have associated with them a fund of good qualities; or rather, the features soon become like the letters of a book, which we regard only for the meaning they convey. As I have said before, no features are so ordinary that they may not come to appear to us beautiful by the expression of good qualities ”

“ I know that the imagination, striking its roots into the hotbed of novel-reading, may overtop the judgment; but, judiciously cultivated, I contend that it is not unfavorable to the judgment. And if, in these cases, a judicious cultivation of one power tends to strengthen the other, much more will the cultivation of taste have a favorable tendency upon the moral nature, since these departments of the mind have never been supposed to be in opposition, but are, as we have seen, closely allied to each other. ”

“ It is as much a part of the disorders of the present state of things, that goodness is ever connected with any thing but beauty, as it is that virtue is depressed while vice triumphs. In a perfect organization and state of things, matter would be entirely flexible to the action of spirit, and, of course, intellectual and moral beauty, as well as their opposites, must stamp their impress perfectly on the features. ”

“ It is only when "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handy work," that they correspond to the highest conceptions either of the taste or of the intellect. Man rests in the Infinite alone, and the universe without a God is not in harmony with his constitution, even when he is considered as endowed with taste only. But if our views on moral subjects thus modify the emotions of taste, it cannot be doubted that those emotions react upon our moral views, tending to elevate and purify them. ”

“ It is not, then, in an egotistical and vain community, who read works of genius, and look at pictures, not to admire and enjoy them, but that they may themselves talk about them and be admired, that any good effect upon the moral character is to be expected from the prevalence of what they are pleased to call taste. How far this comes to be the case with communities in which taste is said to be prevalent, and morals are corrupt, I leave others to judge.
The second distinction which I would make, is that between the cultivation of a taste for the fine arts and for natural objects. ”

“ In order to perform the duties of benevolence and philanthropy, it is indispensable that the sensibilities should be kept alive to the impressions of misery as it actually presents itself in all its squalid accompaniments.
It was this esteem in which mankind hold the sensibilities and impulses, this preference of spontaneousness without its connexion with principle, which gave its popularity to what has been called the sentimental school—the results of which ought to teach society a lesson not soon to be forgotten. ”

“ It would need stability, and would be constantly liable to be led astray by the influence of fashion, or of casual association. We may however do more, we should do more to combine them; to unite taste and principle in the conduct of life; to do, ourselves, and to lead others to do, what is becoming, as well as what is right.
Man is capable of forming to himself an ideal model, of embodying a conception of excellence such as he has never seen, and of acting with reference to it. ”

“ May I not here venture to say to young men, 'Beware how you spend your leisure hours! your character and destiny in life will probably turn upon it.' Among the means, as I have already said, of spending these hours at least innocently, the gratifications of taste are conspicuous. They seem for this very purpose to have been had distinctly in view in the fitting up of this world; and so far as they lure the mind from the lower gratifications of sense, they must be favorable to morals. ”