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PART II.

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

CHAPTER I.

OF KNOWLEDGE OR IMPROVED PERCEPTION.

1. THE faculty of improved or artificial perception, being acquired in the manner stated in the concluding sections of the last Chapter of the first Part, continues to improve through the subsequent stages of our lives as long as our minds retain their vigour; and becomes so far independent of the organs of sense, from which it is derived, and through which it continues to be exercised, that it often exists in its highest state of perfection, when those organs are enfeebled by age, and verging to decay. A musician can tune an instrument, after his hearing has become defective, more accurately than a person with the nicest ear, who has not been used to discriminate sounds; and a vintner, who has been in the constant habit of tasting wine, and attending to its flavour, though his organs be blunted by age and vitiated by intemperance, will distinguish the genuine juice of the grape, or point out the modes and de

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Of improved
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Perception.

grees of its adulteration, with more certainty and precision than an unexperienced person, Of improved who enjoys the utmost sensibility of palate; but who never having accustomed himself to discriminate the impressions upon his organs and observe them separately; nor having any analogous ideas pre-existing in his mind, by which to measure and examine them, considers every compound sensation collectively and alone; and consequently, if the irritation be not very harsh and discordant, finds it pleasant, whatever may have been the causes, which excited it.

2. All refinement of taste, therefore, in the liberal arts, arises, in the first instance, from this faculty of improved perception: for painting, sculpture, music, and poetry are all in their principles, as Aristotle has observed, imitative arts*; whence the only pleasures, which the ignorant and unexperienced receive from them, except those of sensation and mental sympathy before explained, are derived from mere imitation.

3. Man, as the same great philosopher observes, is by nature an imitative animal † ; and, as those faculties of his mind, by which he has risen so much above the rest of the creation, are owing in a great degree, to one individual

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imitating another, and still adding something to what he had acquired, imitation is both naturally and habitually pleasing to him*. Hence there is no effort of painting or sculpture so rude, no composition in music or poetry so artless, as not to delight those, who have known no better; and, perhaps, the pleasures, which the ignorant feel from mere imitation, when it has arrived at any degree of exactitude, are more keen and vivid, though less exquisite and exalted than those which the learned in art receive from its noblest productions: at least, I have seen more delight expressed at a piece of wax-work, or a painting of a mackarel upon a deal board, or a pheasant on a table, than I ever observed to be produced by the Apollo of the Belvidere, or the Transfiguration of Raphael. It is true that the vulgar express their feelings more boisterously and 'impetuously than the learned; but it is also true that the feelings of nature have universally more of rapture in them than those which are excited through the medium of science.

4. These feelings of nature, however, are of short duration: for when the novelty of the first impression is over, and the interest of curiosity and surprise has subsided, mere imitation of common objects begins to appear trifling

* Ibid. c. vi.

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and insipid; and men look for, in imitative art, something of character and expression, which Perception. may awaken sympathy, excite new ideas, or expand and elevate those already formed.

Of improved

5. To produce this requires a knowledge of mind, as well as of body; and of the interior, as well as exterior construction of the human frame, or of whatever else be the object of imitation; whence art becomes engrafted upon science; and as all the exertions of human skill and ingenuity are indefinitely progressive, and never stop at the point, which they originally aimed at, this art of science or science of art has been extended, particularly in painting and music, to the production of excellencies, which are neither of imitation nor expression; but which peculiarly belong to technical skill, and which can only be relished or perceived by those, who have acquired a certain degree of knowledge in those arts. Such are, in general, the compositions of Bravura, as they are called, in music; and such, in painting, are the works of the great Venetian painters; whose style of imitation is any thing but exact; whose expression is never either dignified or forcible; and whose tone of colouring is too much below that of nature to please the mere organs of sense; but whose productions have, nevertheless, always held the highest rank in the art; and, as far as the mere art and science of painting are

concerned, are unquestionably among its most

perfect productions.

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Of improved 6. The taste for them, however, is, as Sir Perception. Joshua Reynolds has observed, entirely acquired*; and acquired by the association of ideas: for, as great skill and power, and a masterly facility of execution, in any liberal art, raise our admiration, and consequently excite pleasing and exalted ideas; we, by a natural and imperceptible process of the mind, associate these ideas with those excited by the productions of these arts; and thus transfer the merit of the workman to the work. There is, however, another reason why we value facility of execution in works of this kind, which shall be explained hereafter.

7. It is upon the same principle that we prefer an original to a copy: for a copy may be equally exact in imitation, equally correct and dignified in expression, and display a tone of colouring and distribution of light and shade equally pleasing to the sense; whence none but the most acute and experienced judges of the art can distinguish the one from the other: but the copy' will never have that masterly intelli gence in the execution-that union between the conceptions of the mind and the operations of the hand, which constitute the superior merit

* Discourses.

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