Many of the sections, again, are little more than expanded definitions from the dictionary.
Any tyro may now be shocked at such a proposition as that beauty acts by relaxing the solids of the whole system.

But at least one signal merit remains to the _Inquiry_.

It was a vigorous enlargement of the principle, which Addison had not long before timidly illustrated, that critics of art seek its principles in the wrong place, so long as they limit their search to poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings, instead of first arranging the sentiments and faculties in man to which art makes its appeal.

Addison's treatment was slight and merely literary; Burke dealt boldly with his subject on the base of the most scientific psychology that was then within his reach.

To approach it on the psychological side at all was to make a distinct and remarkable advance in the method of the inquiry which he had taken in hand..