erely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my stock,
gives me some pleasure. In the evening 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, tho very fond
of similitudes, and tho 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, tho 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 tho
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 tho 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 pl