opinions respecting the real pleasurableness of things either to
themselves, or to others.

Sec. 6. What duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense.

The sense, however, in which they thus use the word "wrong" is merely
that of falseness or inaccuracy in conclusion, not of moral delinquency.
But there is, as I have stated, a duty, more or less imperative,
attached to every power we possess, and therefore to this power over the
lower senses as well as to all others.

And this duty is evidently to bring every sense into that state of
cultivation, in which it shall both form the truest conclusions
respecting all that is submitted to it, and procure us the greatest
amount of pleasure consistent with its due relation to other senses and
functions. Which three constituents of perfection in sense, true
judgment, maximum sensibility, and right relation to others, are
invariably co-existent and involved one by the other, for the true
judgment is the result of the high sensibility, and the high sensibility
of the right relation. Thus, for instance, with respect to pleasures of
taste, it is our duty not to devote such inordinate attention to the
discrimination of them as must be inconsistent with our pursuit, and
destructive of our capacity of higher and preferable pleasures, but to
cultivate the sense of them in that way which is consistent with all
other good, by temperance, namely, and by such attention as the mind at
certain resting moments may fitly pay even to so ignoble a source of
pleasure as this, by which discipline we shall bring the faculty of
taste itself to its real maximum of sensibility; for it may not be
doubted but that health, hunger, and such general refinement of bodily
habits as shall make the body a perfect and fine instrument in all
respects, are better promoters of actual sensual enjoyment of taste,
than the sickened, sluggish, hard-stimulated fastidiousness of
Epicurism.

Sec. 7. How rewarded.

So also it will certainly be found with all the senses, that they
individually receive the greatest and purest pleasure when they are in
right condition and degree of subordination to all the rest; and that by
the over cultivation of any one, (for morbid sources of pleasure and
correspondent temptations to irrational indulgence, confessedly are
attached to all,) we shall add more to their power as instruments of
punishment than of pleasure.

We see then, in this example of the lowest sense