deed perceive, as far as we are acquainted with the nature of God,
that we have been so constructed as in a healthy state of mind to derive
pleasure from whatever things are illustrative of that nature."

This point it is necessary now farther to develop.

Our first inquiry must evidently be, how we are authorized to affirm of
any man's mind, respecting impressions of sight, that it is in a healthy
state or otherwise. What canon or test is there by which we may
determine of these impressions that they are or are not _rightly_
esteemed beautiful? To what authority, when men are at variance with
each other on this subject, shall it be deputed to judge which is right?
or is there any such authority or canon at all?

For it does not at first appear easy to prove that men ought to like one
thing rather than another, and although this is granted generally by
men's speaking of bad or good taste, it is frequently denied when we
pass to particulars, by the assertion of each individual that he has a
right to his opinion--a right which is sometimes claimed even in moral
matters, though then palpably without foundation, but which does not
appear altogether irrational in matters aesthetic, wherein little
operation of voluntary choice is supposed possible. It would appear
strange, for instance, to assert, respecting a particular person who
preferred the scent of violets to roses, that he had no right to do so.
And yet, while I have said that the sensation of beauty is intuitive and
necessary, as men derive pleasure from the scent of a rose, I have
assumed that there are some sources from which it is rightly derived,
and others from which it is wrongly derived, in other words that men
have no right to think some things beautiful, and no right to remain
apathetic with regard to others.

Sec. 2. And in what sense may the terms Right and Wrong be attached to its
conclusions?

Hence then arise two questions, according to the sense in which the word
right is taken; the first, in what way an impression of sense may be
deceptive, and therefore a conclusion respecting it untrue; and the
second, in what way an impression of sense, or the preference of one,
may be a subject of will, and therefore of moral duty or delinquency.

To the first of these questions, I answer that we cannot speak of the
immediate impression of sense as false, nor of its preference to others
as mistaken, for no one can be deceived respecting the actual sen