 Shaftesbury’s conception of beauty has metaphysical and epistemological components. Metaphysically, beauty consists of “Unity of Design” (C 3.349). Anything that has multiple parts that can be in unity with each other can be beautiful. An artwork can be beautiful, a machine can be beautiful, a natural object can be beautiful, nature as a whole can be beautiful, a human character can be beautiful. Shaftesbury uses various words to describe this property: “harmony,” “proportion,” “regularity,” “order,” “balance,” “symmetry.” His idea that this is what beauty consists of seems deeply indebted to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the fine and the beautiful.