erence is not attended with the same important
consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may
be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and
we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty,
as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason.
And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry
as our present, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste
has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to
some invariable and certain laws, our labor is likely to be employed to
very little purpose; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd
undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set 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 simple 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 disorder. For, when we define, we
seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own
notions, which we often take up by hazard or embrace on trust, or form
out of a limited and partial consideration 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 inquiry 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 inquiry, of which it ought to be considered
as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition
and teaching may be sometimes 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; since, not content with serving up a few barren
and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends
to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him
into those paths in