A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falfhood there is fomething fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain tefts and ftandards which are allowed on all fides, and are fuppofed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the fame obvious concurrence in any uniform or fettled principles which relate to Tafte. It is even commonly fuppofed that this delicate and aerial faculty, which feems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be perly tried by any teft, nor regulated by any ftandard. There is fo continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and it is fo much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain maxims of right reafon feem to be tacitly fettled amongft the most ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced thofe maxims into a system. If Tafte has not been fo happily cultivated, it was not that the fubject

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fubject was barren, but that the labourers were few or negligent; for to fay the truth, there are not the fame interesting motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the other. And after all, if men differ in their opinion concern⇒ ing fuch matters, their difference is not attended with the fame important confequences, elfe I make no doubt but that the logic of Taste, if I may be allowed the expreffion, might very poffibly be as well digefted, and we might come to difcuss matters of this nature with as much certainty, as those which feem more immediately within the province of mere reason. And indeed it is very neceffary at the entrance into fuch an enquiry, as our prefent, to make this point as clear as poffible; for if Tafte has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to fome invariable and certain laws, our labour is like to be employed to very little purpofe; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd B 2 under

undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to fet up for a legislator of whims and fancies,

The term Taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate: the thing which we understand by it, is far from a fimple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this diforder. For when we define, we seem in danger of circumfcribing nature within the bounds of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard, or embrace on truft, or form out of a limited and partial confideration of the object before us, instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends, according to her manner of combining. We are limited in our enquiry by the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting out.

Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to follow than to precede our enquiry, of which it ought to be confidered as the refult. lt must be acknowledged that the methods of difquifition and teaching may be fometimes different, and on very good reason undoubtedly; but for my part, I am convinced that the method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation, is incomparably the best; fince not content with ferving up a few barren and lifelefs truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends to fet the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in which the author has made his