religious principle. Indeed, some objects (the highest in the scale of
our perceptions of excellence) bring with them an immediate conviction
of the truth of this assertion; witness the devotional sentiment which
the view of the main ocean inspires; the rising and setting sun; the
contemplation of the celestial orbs, &c. witness the noblest object
of the creation, when viewed in his highest character. Does not the
perception of human excellence immediately relate to the source of all
excellence?

The general diffusion of intellectual light, throughout mankind,
constitutes rationality; and the aggregated excellence, or light of
rationality, constitutes morality. It is, I imagine, in this second
or purified light, that taste begins to exist. It is at this period of
cultivation that the mind begins to perceive its true good; that the
natural affections rectify, methodize, and refine, in a word, become
moral affections, through whose medium, i.e. the _moral sense_, the
soul perceives every object of taste.

Taste is intellectual pleasure, an approving sense of truth, of good,
and of beauty. The latter seems the visible or ostensible principle
of the two former, and is that in which the universal idea of taste is
comprised. All are pleased with the sight of beauty; but all are by
no means sensible that the principles that make it pleasing, that
constitute a form beautiful, are those, or, to be more intelligible,
relate to those, that constitute man's highest excellence, his first
interest, his chief good. Few, indeed, even among those who possess
taste, if they have not accustomed themselves to investigate its
principles, will readily conceive that they are thus deeply rooted
in the mental frame. Indeed, the generality of mankind seem rather to
think that taste has no principles at all, or, if any, that they begin
and end with the prevailing mode, fashion, &c. of the times; a notion
which, though in the highest degree absurd, corroborates my opinion,
that the universal perception of taste (the true and the false) exists
in the idea of honour.

The compound word, or phrase, _le vrai ideal_, universally adopted to
denote an object of taste, is the most exact and literal definition of
its sentiment that can be conceived; for it implies the union of
the judgement and the imagination, without which there could be no
sentiment of taste. The judgement, as I observed, perceives the truth
of the object, the imagination its beauty;