240

XXV. Of Color 244

PART V.

I. Of Words 246

II. The Common Effect of Poetry, not by raising Ideas of Things 246

III. General Words before Ideas 249

IV. The Effect of Words 250

V. Examples that Words may affect without raising Images 252

VI. Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art 257

VII. How Words influence the Passions 258

INTRODUCTION.

ON TASTE.

On a superficial view we may seem to differ very widely from each other
in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but, notwithstanding
this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is
probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all
human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment as
well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be
taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain
the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally
acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something
fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain
tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to
be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious
concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste.
It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aerial faculty,
which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition,
cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard.
There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning facility;
and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain
maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most
ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced
those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated,
it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few
or negligent; for, to say the truth, there are not the same interesting
motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the
other. And, after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such
matters, their diff