bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding these qualities in those objects, they do not in the leaft differ concerning their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all Concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and fournefs and bitternefs unpleasant. Here there is no diverfity in their fentiments; and that there is not, appears fully from the confent of all men in the metaphors which are taken from the sense of taste. A four temper, bitter expreflions, bitter curfes, a bitter fate, are terms well and ftrongly understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say, a fweet difpofition, a sweet perfon, a sweet condition, and the like. It is confeffed, that custom and fome other causes, have made many deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these several taftes; but then the power of diftinguishing between the natural and the acquired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of fugar, and the flavour of vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confufion in taftes, whilft he is fenfible that the tobacco and vinegar are not fweet, and whilft he knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien pleasures. Even with fuch a person we may speak, and with sufficient precision, concerning taftes. But fhould any man be found who declares, that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and vinegar are fweet, milk bitter, and sugar four; we immediately conclude that the organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a person upon tastes, as from reafoning concerning the relations of quantity with one who Thould deny that all the parts together were equal to the whole. We do not call a man of this kind wrong in his notions, but absolutely mad. Exceptions of this fort, in either VOL. I.

L

way,

way, do not at all impeach our general rule, nor make us conclude that men have various principles concerning the relations of quantity, or the taste of things. So that when it is faid, taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean, that no one can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may find from the taste of some particular thing. This indeed cannot be difputed; but we may difpute, and with fufficient clearness too, concerning the things which are naturally pleasing or difagreeable to the fenfe. But when we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the habits, the prejudices, or the diftempers of this particular man, and we muft draw our conclufion from thofe.

This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste folely. The principle of pleafure derived from fight is the fame in all. Light is more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green, when the heavens are ferene and bright, is more agreeable than winter, when every thing makes a different appearance. I never remember that any thing beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a plant, was ever fhewn, though it were to an hundred people, that they did not all immediately agree that it was beautiful, though some might have thought that it fell fhort of their expectation, or that other things were still finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a fwan, or imagines that what they call a Friezland hen excels a peacock. It must be observed too, that the pleasures of the fight are not near fo complicated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and affociations, as the pleasures of the tafte are; because the pleasures of the fight more commonly acquiefce in themfelelves; and are not fo often altered by confiderations which are independent of the fight itself. But things do not fpontaneously prefent themselves to the palate as they do to the fight; they are generally applied to it,

either as food or as medicine; and from the qualities which they poffefs for nutritive or medicinal purposes, they often form the palate by degrees, and by force of these affociations. Thus opium is pleafing to Turks, on account of the agreeable <lelirium it produces. Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen, as it diffuses a torpor and pleafing ftupefaction. Fermented fpirits please our common people, because they banish care, and all confideration of future or prefent evils. All of these would lie abfolutely neglected if their properties had originally gone no further than the tafte; but all thefe, together with tea and coffee, and fome other things, have passed from the apothecary's fhop to our tables, and were taken for health long before they were thought of for pleasure. The effect of the drug has made us ufe it frequently; and frequent ufe, combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at laft agreeable. But this does not in the leaft perplex our reafoning; because we diftinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish. In defcribing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that it had a sweet and pleasant flavour like tobacco, opium, or garlic, although you fpoke to thofe who were in the constant use of these drugs, and had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a fufficient remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to bring all things offered to their fenfes to that standard, and to regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppofe one who had fo vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of opium than in that of butter or honey, to be presented with a bolus of fquills; there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or honey to this naufeous morfel, or to any other bitter drug to which he had not been accustomed; which proves that his palate was naturally like that of other men in all things, that it is ftill like thè

palate of other men in many things, and only vitiated in fome particular points. For in judging of any new thing, even of a taste fimilar to that which he has been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the natural manner, and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of all the fenfes, of the fight, and even of the tafte, that most ambiguous of the fenfes, is the fame in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.

Befides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are presented by the fenfe; the mind of man poffeffes a fort of creative power of its own; either in reprefenting at pleasure the images of things in the order and manner in which they were received by the fenfes, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to a different order. This power is called imagination; and to this belongs whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and the like. But it must be obferved, that the power of the imagination is incapable of producing any thing abfolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of those ideas which it has received from the fenfes. Now the imagination is the most extenfive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our paffions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with thefe commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impreffion, must have the fame power pretty equally over all men. For fince the imagination is only the representation of the fenfes, it can only be pleafed or displeased with the images, from the fame principle on which the fenfe is pleafed or difpleafed with the realities; and confequently there must be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in the fenfes of men. A little attention will convince us that this must of neceffity be the cafe.

But

But in the imagination, befides the pain or pleasure arifing from the properties of the natural object, a pleasure is perceived from the refemblance, which the imitation has to the original: the imagination, I conceive, can have no pleasure but what refults from one or other of these causes. And these caufes operate pretty uniformly upon all men, because they operate by principles in nature, and which are not derived from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. Locke very justly and finely obferves of wit, that it is chiefly converfant in tracing refemblances: he remarks at the same time, that the business of judgment is rather in finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on this fupposition, that there is no material diftinction between the wit and the judgment, as they both feem to result from different operations of the fame faculty of comparing. But in reality, whether they are or are not dependant on the same power of the mind, they differ fo very materially in many respects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is one of the rareft things in the world. When two distinct objects are unlike to each other, it is only what we expect ; things are in their common way; and therefore they make no impreffion on the imagination: but when two diftinct objects have a refemblance, we are ftruck, we attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far greater alacrity and fatisfaction in tracing refemblances than in searching for differences: because by making resemblances we produce new images; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making diftinctions we offer no food at all to the imagination; the task itself is more severe and irkfome, and what pleasure we derive from it is something of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me in the morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my stock, gives me fome

pleasure.