vening I find there was nothing
in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I
had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally
inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle,
that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in
similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak
and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
reason of this kind, that Homer and the oriental writers, though very
fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are truly
admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken
with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly, and they take no
notice of the difference which may be found between the things compared.

Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally flatters
the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as far as their
knowledge of the things represented or compared extends. The principle
of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it depends upon experience
and observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any natural
faculty; and it is from this difference in knowledge, that what we
commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference in taste
proceeds. A man to whom sculpture is new, sees a barber's block, or some
ordinary piece of statuary; he is immediately struck and pleased,
because he sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up
with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. No person,
I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did.
Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights upon a more
artificial work of the same nature; he now begins to look with contempt
on what he admired at first; not that he admired it even then for its
unlikeness to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance
which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in
these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his
knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake
was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his
inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in
nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and
that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no more than the
middling performance of a vulgar artist; and