simply that of _food_, 'something to eat.' For though fruit
on the tree, or a pheasant in the air, is a portion of nature and
properly belongs to the section, 'Landscape,' a division of art
intellectual enough; yet gather the fruit or bring down the pheasant,
and you presently bring down the poetry with it; and although Sterne
could sentimentalize upon a dead ass; and though a dead pheasant in
the larder, or a dead sheep at a butcher's, may excite feelings akin
to anything but good living; and though they may _there_ be the
excitive causes of poetical, nay, or moral reflexion; yet, see them
on the canvass, and the first and uppermost idea will be that of
'_Food_,' and how, in the name of decency, they ever came there. It
will be vain to argue that gathered fruit is only nature under a
certain phase, and that a dead sheep or a dead pheasant is only a
dead animal like a dead ass--it will be pitiably vain and miserable
sophistry, since we know that the dead pheasant in a picture will
always be as _food_, while the same at he poulterer's will be but a
dead pheasant.

For we have not one only, but numerous general ideas annexed to every
object in nature. Thus one of the series may be that that object is
matter, one that it is individual matter, one that it is animal
matter, one that it is a bird, one that it is a pheasant, one that it
is a dead pheasant, and one that it is food. Now, our general ideas
or notions are not evoked in this order as each new object addresses
the mind; but that general idea is _first_ elicited which accords
with the first or principle destination of the object: thus the first
general idea of a cowry, to the Indian, is that of money, not of a
shell; and our first general idea of a dead pheasant is that of food,
whereas to a zoologist it might have a different effect: but this is
the exception. But it was said, that a dead pheasant in a picture
would always be as food, while the same at the poulterer's would be
but a dead pheasant: what then becomes of the first general idea? It
seems to be disposed of thus: at the first sight of the shop, the
idea is that of food, and next (if you are not hungry, and poets
never are), the mind will be attracted to the species of animal,
and (unless hunger presses) you may be led on to moralize like
Sterne: but, amongst pictures, where there is nothing else to
excite the general ideas of food, this, whenever adverted to,
must over re-excite that idea; and hence it