Essay III. "will copy her servilely, that he may be certain of "securing the pleasing effect; and the beauties of "his performances will be encumbered with a num"ber of superfluous or of disagreeable concomitants.

Experience and observation alone can enable him "to make this discrimination: to exhibit the principles of beauty pure and unadulterated, and to "form a creation of his own, more faultless than "ever fell under the examination of his senses."

"This analogy," I have added, " between the na"tural progress of taste, and the natural progress of physical knowledge, proceeds on the supposition, "that as, in the material world, there are general

facts, beyond which philosophy is unable to pro"ceed; so, in the constitution of man, there is an "inexplicable adaptation of the mind to the objects. "with which his faculties are conversant; in consequence of which, these objects are fitted to pro"duce agreeable or disagreeable emotions. In both “cases, reasoning may be employed with propriety "to refer particular phenomena to general prin"ciples; but in both cases, we must at last arrive "at principles of which no account can be given, "but that such is the will of our Maker.".

Notwithstanding, however, the strong analogy between the two cases, there are some important circumstances in which they differ from each other. One of these was already hinted at, when I remarked, in a former part of this discussion, that as, in our experimental researches concerning the laws of Matter, the ultimate appeal is always made to our external senses, so, in our experimental researches con

emotions.

cerning the principles of Beauty, the ultimate appeal is always made to our own pleasant or unpleasant In conducting these last experiments, we cannot, it is evident, avail ourselves of any thing analogous to the instrumental aids which the mechanical arts have furnished to our bodily organs; and are somewhat in the same situation in which the chemist would be placed, if he had nothing to appeal to in his estimates of Heat, but the test of his own sensations. The only expedient we can have recourse to for supplying this defect is to repeat our experiments, under every possible variation of circumstances by which the state and temper of our minds are likely to be effected; and to compare the general result with the experience of others, whose peculiar habits and associations are the most different from our own.

On the other hand, it is important to observe, that if the circumstance just remarked lays us under some inconvenience in our researches concerning the principles of Beauty, we possess, in conducting these, the singular advantage of always carrying about with us the materials of our experiments. In the infancy of Taste, indeed, the first step is to compare object with object;-one scene with another scene; one picture with another picture; one poem with another poem ;-and, at all times, such comparisons are pleasing and instructive. But when the mind has once acquired a certain familiarity with the beauties of Nature and of Art, much may be effected, in the way of experiment, by the power of Imagination alone. Instead of waiting to compare the scene

Essay III. now before me with another scene of the same kind, or of actually trying the effects resulting from the various changes of which its parts are susceptible, I can multiply and vary my ideal trials at will, and can anticipate from my own feelings, in these differ ent cases, the improvement or the injury that would result from carrying them into execution, The fact is still more striking, when the original combination is furnished by Imagination herself, and when she compounds and decompounds it, as fancy or curiosity may happen to dictate. In this last case, the materials of our experiments, the instruments employed in our analysis or synthesis, and the laboratory in which the whole process is carried on, are all alike intellectual. They all exist in the observer's mind; and are all supplied, either immediately by the principles of his nature, or by these principles cultivated and assisted by superinduced habits.

The foregoing comparison is not the less just, that experimental researches concerning the principles of Beauty are seldom or never instituted with the same scientific formality as in chemistry or physics; or, that the mind is, in most cases, wholly unconscious that such experiments have ever been made. When the curiosity is once fairly engaged by this particular class of objects, a series of intellectual experiments is from that moment begun, without any guidance from the rules of philosophizing. Nor is this a singular fact in human nature; for it is by a process perfectly similar (as I remarked in a former Essay), that the use of language is at first acquired, It is by hearing the same word used, on a variety of

different occasions, and by constant attempts to investigate some common meaning which shall tally with them all, that a child comes at last to seize, with precision, the idea which the word is generally employed to convey; and it is in the same manner that a person of mature understanding is forced to proceed, in decyphering the signification of particular phrases, when he studies, without the help of a dictionary, a language of which he possesses but a slight and inaccurate knowledge. There is here carried on, in the mind of the child, a process of natural induction, on the same general principles which are recommended in Bacon's philosophy: and such exactly do I conceive the process to be, by which the power of Taste acquires, insensibly, in the course of a long and varied experience, a perception of the general principles of Beauty.

The account which has now been given of the habits of observation and comparison, by which Taste acquires its powers of discrimination or discernment, explains, at the same time, the promptitude with which its judgments are commonly pronounced. As the experiments subservient to its formation are carried on entirely in the mind itself, they present, every moment, a ready field for the gratification of curiosity; and in those individuals whose thoughts are strongly turned to the pursuit, they furnish matter of habitual employment to the intellectual faculties. These experiments are, at the same time, executed with an ease and celerity unknown in our operations on Matter; insomuch, that the experiment and its result seem both to be comprehended

in the same instant of time. The process, accordingly, vanishes completely from our recollection; nor do we attempt to retrace it to ourselves in thought, far less to express it to others in words, any more than we are disposed, in our common estimates of distance, to analyse the acquired perceptions of vision.

In the experimental proceedings of Taste, another circumstance conspires to prevent such an analysis; I mean the tendency of the pleasurable effect to engross, or at least to distract, the attention. I took notice, in the work last quoted, of "the pe-. "culiar difficulty of arresting and detecting our fleeting ideas, in cases where they lead to any inte"resting conclusion, or excite any pleasant emo"tion ;" and I mentioned, as the obvious reason of this difficulty, that "the mind, when once it has en"joyed the pleasure, has little inclination to retrace "the steps by which it arrived at it." I have added, in the same place, that "this last circumstance "is one great cause of the difficulty attending phi"losophical criticism.” *

In order to illustrate the full import of this remark, it is necessary for me to observe, that when any dispute occurs in which Taste is concerned, the only possible way of bringing the parties to an agreement, is by appealing to an induction similar to that by which the judging powers of Taste are insensibly formed; or by appealing to certain acknowledged principles which critics have already investigated by

Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I. Chap. ii.