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quainted with his manner of accomplishing his purposes, and learn, in some measure, the style of the Author of all things. Surely, this habit of mind must be of unspeakable value to a philosopher in the discovery of truth, or to a man of affairs in devising his plans, since these can only succeed as they are in harmony with the designs of infinite wisdom and benevolence.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them as we will."

REFERENCES.

Nature of hypothesis-Reid, Essay 1, chap. 3.
Importance of ideals - Stewart, vol. i., chap. 7, sec. 6.

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CHAPTER VIII.

TASTE.

SECTION I.- - THE NATURE OF TASTE.

We have now considered the most important of those powers of the human mind which may be strictly termed intellectual; that is, which are employed in the acquisition and increase of knowledge. By the use of these we might prosecute our inquiries in every direction, and extend the limits of science, as far as it has been permitted by our Creator. But were this all, we should be deprived of much of the innocent pleasure which accompanies the employment of our faculties, and thus lose an important inducement to mental cultivation. We find that many of the phenomena which we observe, are to us a source of happiness, frequently of an exquisite character. This happiness is bestowed upon us through means of another endowment, which we denominate taste. It is so intimately associated with the faculties purely intellectual, that our view of them would be imperfect did we not bestow upon it at least a brief examination.

Taste is that mental sensibility by which we cognize the beauties and deformities of nature and art, enjoying pleasure from the one, and suffering pain from the other.

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In this definition we speak of taste as a sensibility, rather

than a faculty. A faculty is the power of doing something, of putting forth some act, or accomplishing some change. Such is not the nature of taste. It creates no change. It merely recognizes its appropriate object, and is the seat of the subjective emotion to which the object gives exercise. When an object is presented, taste recognizes its æsthetic quality ; it is sensible of pleasure or pain, and here its office terminates.

It

Of the universality of this endowment there cannot be a question. The consciousness of every man bears testimony to its existence. When we look upon a rainbow, we are sensible of an emotion wholly different from that with which we look upon the dark cloud which it overspreads. The cause of the emotion we call the beauty of the rainbow, and the emotion itself we recognize as one of a peculiar character, unlike any other of which we are conscious. We observe that all men are affected by a multitude of objects in the same manner as ourselves. Young and old, cultivated and uncultivated, observe this quality in many of the same objects, and are affected by them in the same manner. is not asserted, however, that all men recognize the quality of beauty in the same things, or that all men are conscious of the same intensity of æsthetic emotion. These may vary by association and culture. What is here affirmed, is, that all men, in various degrees, are conscious of the pleasure derived from the observation of objects which they term beautiful, and that there are objects, which all men of the same or a similar degree of culture, designate by this epithet. Hence, particular scenes have been, by all observers, denominated beautiful or sublime. Hence, descriptions of localities or events have been transmitted from age to age, from nation to nation, and from language to language, ever awakening the emotions to which they at first owed their celebrity. Anacreon's ode to Spring, Homer's description of a storm in the Egean, Horace's Fountain of Brundu

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sium and the pleasures of a country life, Milton's Garden of Eden, seem beautiful to all men; and every man, when he applies to them this designation, is certain that he uses language which is perfectly well understood by the men whom he addresses.

It may serve to render our notion of taste more definite if we distinguish it from some of the faculties with which it is liable to be confounded.

Taste is sometimes confounded with imagination. Thus figurative language and works of art in general are sometimes said to be addressed to the imagination. This is not strictly true. The conceptions of the fine arts are created. by the imagination of one, and reproduced by the imagination of another. This is, however, only the means to an end. Our ultimate object is to present them to taste, for, unless the taste be gratified, no matter how strongly they may be imagined, the whole object for which they are created, fails.

Imagination is the faculty by which we combine; taste is the sensibility by which we feel. Imagination forms pictures; taste determines whether or not a certain quality exists in them after they are formed. By my imagination, I form a conception of a landscape; by my taste, I decide upon the beauty of the conception which I have created. Imagination creates; taste judges of the creation. Imagination itself is the seat neither of pleasure nor pain; all the pleasure which we enjoy, or the pain which we suffer, from the works of the imagination, is derived from taste.

These endowments may be conferred in very different degree upon the same person. A fertile imagination, as I have before remarked, is sometimes combined with a very imperfect taste. In such cases, an artist will form images in great profusion, but they fail to please, and sometimes disgust us. Such seems to have been the case with Fuseli, a

painter of boundless imagination, but frequently combining in his conceptions the sublime and the ridiculous. This peculiar type of character is not uncommonly found in persons passing into insanity, or in that condition of the intellect, sometimes existing through life, in which the individual dwells habitually within the narrow confine which separates sanity from madness. The late Edward Irving, a man of powerful imagination and withal of commanding eloquence, seems for many of the later years of his life to have exemplified this remark.

It is, however, more common to find men endowed with a correct taste, but deficient in imagination. Such persons, have no power of original creation, while they will decide correctly concerning the creations of others. They are good critics, but bad artists. For a man of so eminent endowments, I think that Addison may be considered much more remarkable for taste than imagination. I think it was the great Lord Chatham who remarked, that few men were endowed with the "prophetic eye of taste," that is, who could create for themselves a conception, and judge correctly concerning its beauty, before it had assumed a visible reality. His remark was made with reference to landscape gardening, but it is of general application. We know that almost every man can determine whether grounds are laid out beautifully, while very few men have the talent for so laying them out as to confer permanent pleasure on the beholder. Distinguished success in the fine arts can only be attained by those, in whom both of these endowments are in an eminent degree united. Homer, Milton, Shakspeare, M. Angelo, Raphael, were all thus preeminently gifted,

Taste and conscience have many points both of similarity and difference. Both of them belong to the class of original suggestions. Both take cognizance of a peculiar quality in an external object, and both derive either pleasure or pain'

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