has made us use it frequently; and frequent use,
combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
agreeable. But this does not in the least perplex our reasoning;
because we distinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish.
In describing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that
it had a sweet and pleasant flavor like tobacco, opium, or garlic,
although you spoke to those who were in the constant use of those drugs,
and had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient
remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them
to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to
regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so
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 squills;
there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or honey
to this nauseous morsel, 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 still like the palate of other men
in many things, and only vitiated in some particular points. For in
judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar 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 senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most ambiguous of
the senses, is the same in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.

Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are
presented by the sense; the mind of man possesses a sort of creative
power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of
things in the order and manner in which they were received by the
senses, 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
observed, that this power of the imagination is incapable of producing
anything absolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of those ideas
which it has received from the senses. Now the imagination is the most
extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our
fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with
them; and whatever is calculated to