I wish at present to establish, that I was led, many years ago, (in treating of those rapid processes of thought, which it is sometimes of importance to bring to light by patient investigation) to take notice of the peculiar difficulty of arresting and detecting our fleeting ideas, in cases where they lead to any interesting conclusion, or excite any pleasant emotion.

The fact seems to be (as I have observed on the same occasion) that "the mind, when once it has felt the pleasure, has little inclination to retrace the steps by which it arrived at it." It is owing to this, that Taste has been so generally ranked among our original faculties; and that so little attention has hitherto been given to the process by which it is formed. Dr. Gerard and Mr. Alison, indeed, have analyzed, with great ingenuity and success, the most important elements which enter into its composition, as it exists in a well-informed and cultivated mind; and some very valuable observations on the same subject may be collected from Montesquieu, Voltaire, and D'Alembert: but it did not fall under the design of any of these writers to trace the growth of Taste from its first seeds in the constitution of our nature; or to illustrate the analogy which it exhibits, in some of the intellectual processes connected with it, to what takes place in various other acquired endowments of the understanding. It is in this point of view, that I propose to consider it in this essay;-a point of view, in which I am sensible the subject by no means presents the same pleasing and inviting aspect, as when examined in its connexion with the rules of philosophical criticism; but in which it is reasonable to expect, that it may afford some new illustrations of the theory of the human mind. The two inquiries, it is obvious, are widely different from each other; resembling somewhat, in their mutual relation, that which exists between Berkeley's analysis of the process by which children learn to judge of distances and magnitudes, and the researches of the Optician concerning the defects to which vision is liable, and the means by which art is enabled to enlarge the sphere of its perceptions.

Different, however, as these inquiries are in their aim,

they may perhaps be found to reflect light on each other, in the course of our progress; and, indeed, I should distrust the justness of my own opinions, were they to lead me to any conclusions materially different from those which have been sanctioned by so many and so high authorities.

CHAPTER SECOND.

GRADUAL PROGRESS BY WHICH TASTE IS FORMED.

I HAVE already said, that, notwithstanding the attempts which a few philosophers have made to ascertain the nature of Taste, the prevailing notions concerning it are far from being correct or definite. Of this, no doubt can be entertained by those who have observed the manner in which it is classed by some of the latest writers on the human mind, in their analysis of our intellectual faculties; or who recollect the definitions given of it, in our most popular books of criticism. It is sufficient for me to mention that of Dr. Blair, according to which its characteristical quality is said to consist in "a power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and of art." From the following lines, too, it would appear that the idea of it entertained by Akenside was nearly the same:

"What then is Taste, but these internal powers,

Active and strong, and feelingly alive

To each fine impulse?"

It is in consequence of this gift that we are supposed to be susceptible of the pleasures resulting from a poem, a picture, a landscape, a well-proportioned building, a regular set of features; and it is to those individuals who possess it, that Nature is understood to have confined exclusively the right of pronouncing judgment in the fine arts, and even on the beauties of her own productions.

If these ideas be just, it evidently follows, that the degree of our taste is proportioned to the degree of pleasure we are fitted to receive from its appropriate objects. The fact, however, is certainly different. Many, whose taste is indisputably good, contemplate with little interest what they acknowledge to be beautiful; while others, in whom the slightest pretension to taste would be justly treated with ridicule, are affected, on the same occasion, with rapture and enthusiam. Nor are the

words taste and sensibility by any means conceived to be synonymous in the common apprehensions of mankind. On the contrary, a more than ordinary share of the latter quality is apt to be regarded as pretty strong evidence of some deficiency in the former.

That Taste does not consist in sensibility alone, appears farther from this, that it is susceptible of improvement from culture, in a higher degree, perhaps, than any other power of the mind; whereas the acuteness of all our feelings is diminished by a repetition of the impression. The truth of this last remark will be fully established in another part of my work, where I shall have occasion to contrast the opposite effects of habit on our passive impressions and on our active principles.

These general observations are sufficient to show, that the definition of Taste, formerly quoted, is at least incomplete; and that this power must necessarily include other elements in its composition.

In order to ascertain what these elements are, the first step seems to be, to examine that particular class of objects with which taste is conversant. In this part of our inquiry, the conclusions to which we have been led by the foregoing speculations, will, I hope, furnish some useful principles.

From the train of thought which I pursued in a former Essay, it appeared, that, even in those objects of taste which are presented to the mind, by the sense of Seeing alone, an indefinite variety of circumstances, of very different kinds, may conspire in producing that agreeable effect, to the cause of which we give the name of Beauty-colors, forms, motion, proportion, fitness, symmetry, variety, utility, with all the modifications of which they are susceptible;-together with the numberless charms attached to moral expression, or arising from associations established by custom, between the material world and our complicated frame. It appeared farther, that in such instances, the pleasing emotion (heightened, as it frequently is, by the concomitant pleasures of Sound) continues still, as far as our consciousness can judge of it, to be simple and uncompounded, and that all the different sources from which

it proceeds are naturally united, and identified in our conceptions, with the organic impressions on the eye or on the ear.

*

It is scarcely necessary for me to remark, that it is not by reasoning à priori, that we can hope to make any progress in ascertaining and separating the respective effects of the various ingredients which may be thus blended in the composition of Beauty. In analyzing these, we must proceed on the same general principles by which we are guided in investigating the physical and chemical properties of material substances; that is, we must have recourse to a series of observations and experiments on beautiful objects of various kinds; attending diligently to the agreeable or the disagreeable effects we experience, in the case of these diversified combinations. The conclusions we thus form, may, it is obvious, enable us afterwards to recompound the same elements, according to our own fancy, so as to diversify or to increase the pleasure produced; while they furnish an agreeable exercise to the intellectual powers, in tracing the beauties, both of nature and of art, to their general laws.

In all these experiments and observations, it is worth while to add, the result is judged of by attending to our own feelings; as, in our researches concerning heat, we

* Voltaire furnishes an apposite illustration of this remark, in his description of the opera at Paris:

"Il faut se rendre à ce palais magique,

Où les beaux vers, la danse, la musique,
L'art de charmer les yeux par les couleurs ;
L'art plus heureux de séduire les cœurs,
De cent plaisirs font un plaisir unique."

Akenside has remarked this disposition of the mind, to identify the sources of the secondary or accessory pleasures it enjoys, with those perceptions of seeing and hearing which form the physical basis (if I may use the expression) of our idea of the Beautiful. The examples he has selected are equally familiar and striking:

"So, while we taste the fragrance of the rose,
Glows not her blush the fairer? while we view,
Amid the noon-tide walk, a limpid rill

Gush thro' the trickling herbage, to the thirst
Of summer yielding the delicious draught
Of cool refreshment; o'er the mossy brink
Shines not the surface clearer, and the waves
With sweeter music murmur as they flow?"

Another illustration of the same thing may be collected from the wonderful effect on the estimate we form of the beauty of a particular landscape, by the agreeable or disagreeable temperature of the atmosphere at the moment we see it. How very different seems the aspect of the same scene, according as the wind happens to blow from the East, or from the West!