The authority of a father, so useful to our well-being, and so justly venerable upon all accounts, hinders us from having that entire love for him that we have for our mothers, where the parental authority is almost melted down into the mother's fondness and indulgence.

But we generally have a great love for our grandfathers, in whom this authority is removed a degree from us, and where the weakness of age mellows it into something of a feminine partiality.
SECTION XI.
HOW FAR THE IDEA OF BEAUTY MAY BE APPLIED TO VIRTUE.
From what has been said in the foregoing section, we may easily see how far the application of beauty to virtue may be made with propriety.

The general application of this quality to virtue has a strong tendency to confound our ideas of things, and it has given rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory; as the affixing the name of beauty to proportion, congruity, and perfection, as well as to qualities of things yet more remote from our natural ideas of it, and from one another, has tended to confound our ideas of beauty, and left us no standard or rule to judge by, that was not even more uncertain and fallacious than our own fancies.

This loose and inaccurate manner of speaking has therefore misled us both in the theory of taste and of morals; and induced us to remove the science of our duties from their proper basis (our reason, our relations, and our necessities), to rest it upon, foundations altogether visionary and unsubstantial.
SECTION XII.
THE REAL CAUSE OF BEAUTY.
Having endeavored to show what beauty is not, it remains that we should examine, at least with equal attention, in what it really consists.
Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive qualities.

And since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes us without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be discerned, since the order and method of nature is generally very different from our measures and proportions, we must conclude that beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses.