ment, which is improved by
attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All these make a very
considerable part of what are considered as the objects of taste; and
Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy and the world for our
instruction in them. Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality
and the science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in
what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most
part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place,
and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools
to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of
distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more
refined judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called
taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is
partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the
secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the
reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and
concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is
requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in
the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our
ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain
and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and
therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on
these matters.

Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature and species, we
shall find its principles entirely uniform; but the degree in which
these principles prevail, in the several individuals of mankind, is
altogether as different as the principles themselves are similar. For
sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose what we
commonly call a _taste_, vary exceedingly in various people. From a
defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a
weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some
men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic,
that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of
their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a
faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the
agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the
low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the chase of honors