blemished and man is impelled to recapture it in the sublime. Yet
instead of analyzing this impulse, Miss Reynolds appears to take it
for granted. Nor does she consider how perfection is to be achieved
in taste, preferring to conclude with a diatribe in the manner of
Rousseau on the depravity of the times and the corrupting effect of
the arts. (For this and many of the following comments I am indebted
to Mr. Ralph Cohen of the College of the City of New York.)

The cause of some of the ambiguities in her discussion may perhaps be
traced to a rather careless use of terms. At one time "instinct"
or "impulsion," the moral force driving man toward perfection, is a
potentiality developed by cultivation, and at another a force that
is created by cultivation. Although the sublime is the apex of her
mathematically-definite program and is a moral quality attained by
the few, every human being has his point of sublimity in the idea of
a Supreme Being. On the one hand, beauty is a preconceived idea in
the human species; on the other it is not preconceived, but developed.
Finally, the rules of art are perceptions of moral virtue, yet art
which exhibits these rules can corrupt.

It is easy to pick flaws in Miss Reynolds' thinking, for the lack of
sustained logic which Johnson early recognized is apparent at every
turn. Yet for students of the history of ideas the _Enquiry_ contains
much of interest. As a painter, Miss Reynolds throughout stresses the
visual, a concentration which leads her to several valuable insights.
She divides form into two categories, masculine and feminine, but
makes a novel use of these Ciceronian divisions. All non-human
objects--flowers, animals, etc.--are seen as exhibiting male or female
attributes. It might almost be said that with this anthropomorphic
approach she is attempting to develop a "philosophical" basis for the