les, and were taken for health long before
they were thought of for pleasure. The effect of the drug 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, altho you spoke to those who
were in the constant use of these 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 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 the 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
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