The Influence of Customs on Beauty

¹ The custom and fashion also have a big influence on our moral sentiments. They are the chief causes of many irregular moral opinions in different ages and nations. They dominate even our judgments concerning beauty.

² When 2 objects have frequently been seen together, the imagination acquires a habit of passing easily from the one to the other. If the first appears, we assume that the second will follow. They naturally put us in mind of one another and our attention glides easily along them.

Even if there is no real beauty in their union independent of habit, we feel an impropriety in their separation after habit has connected them. We feel that the one is awkward without its usual companion.

For example, a suit of clothes would seem incomplete if it is missing its most insignificant ornament. We even find the absence of a haunch button as awkward. When the union is naturally proper, habit increases our sense of it. Habit makes a different arrangement appear more disagreeable than usual. Those who have been used to see things in a good taste are more disgusted by whatever is awkward.

If the union is improper, habit reduces our sense of its impropriety. Those who have been used to mess, lose all sense of neatness. The modes of furniture or dress which seem ridiculous to strangers, does not offend the people who are used to them.

Habit

³ High fashion is a particular kind of habit. This fashion is not the one that everybody wears, but the one worn by people of a high rank or character. The graceful and commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form they bestow on it.

As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something genteel and magnificent.

Because of this relation, it seems to have something about it that is also genteel and magnificent too, even if it is indifferent in itself.

As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace it possessed before.

Now being used only by the inferior ranks of people, it seems to have something of their meanness and awkwardness.

⁴ Everyone allows dress and furniture to be entirely under the dominion of custom and fashion. However, the influence of custom and fashion is not confined just to dress and furniture. It extends itself to whatever is the object of taste, music, poetry, architecture.

The modes of dress and furniture are continually changing. The fashion that appears ridiculous today 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 very durable. A well-fancied coat is worn out in a year. The modes of furniture change less rapidly than those of dress because furniture is more durable. However, it generally undergoes an entire revolution in five or six years. Every man sees fashion change in many ways.

The productions of the other arts are much more lasting. When happily imagined, these may continue to be fashionable for a much longer time.

• A well-contrived building may endure many centuries.
• A beautiful air may be delivered down by tradition through many successive generations.
• A well-written poem may last as long as the world.

All of them may continue for ages to give the vogue to their own style, taste or manner.

• Few people:
  • see the fashion in these arts change very considerably in their lifetime.
  • have much experience with the different modes from remote ages and nations.
  • are thoroughly reconciled to them or can impartially judge between the fashion of=
    • the distant past and of distant countries, and
    • the fashion of their own age and country.

Therefore, few men are willing to allow that custom or fashion to have much influence on their judgments about what is beautiful in the productions of those arts.

They think that all the rules for their beauty are founded on reason and nature, not on habit or prejudice. However, a very little attention may convince them of the contrary. It may satisfy them that the influence of custom and fashion over dress and furniture is not more absolute than over architecture, poetry, and music.

⁵ Only habit and custom is the reason why a pillar gets:

• a Doric capital if its height is 8 diameters
• a Ionic volute if its heignt is 9 diameters
• a Corinthian foliage if its height is 10 diameters

The eye was used to see a particular proportion connected with a particular ornament. Each of the five orders has its peculiar ornaments which cannot be changed for any other, without offending those who know architectural rules.

According to some architects, the ancients:

• had exquisite judgement
• assigned the most suitable ornaments to each order.

However, it seems difficult to believe that:

• these forms should be the only ones suitable, or
• there should not be 500 others which would have fitted them equally well prior to the established custom

However, when custom has established the rules of building, it is absurd to think of altering them for others which are=

• only equally good and
• naturally a little more elegant and beautiful.

A man would be ridiculous if he appears in public with clothes different from those commonly worn, even if they were graceful. It also seems absurd to decorate a house in a way different from the normal custom and fashion, even if the new ornaments were superior.