knowledge of the relation of feelings to each other, as uniformly successive, we are said to make the prediction by the power of reasoning. When a statesman, for example, meditates on the probable effects of a particular law which is about to be enacted, and, from his knowledge of the interests, and passions, and prejudices,-the wisdom and the very ignorance of man,-calculates the relative amount of good and evil, which it may possibly produce to those frail half-stubborn, half-yielding multitudes, whom he must often benefit against their will, and save from the long evil, of which they see only the momentary good, there is no one who hesitates in ascribing this political foresight to the sagacity of his power of reasoning, or of drawing accurate conclusions, as to future sequences of events, from his observations of the past. In the calculation of the motives which may operate in the general mind, however, nothing more is implied than a knowledge of the relation of certain feelings to other feelings, reciprocally antecedent and consequent. But, if the states of mind, the relation of which, as successive to other states of mind, is felt by us, be of a different order,-if, instead of a legislator, feeling accurately the relation of certain feelings to certain attendant emotions in the mind of the people, we imagine a critic feeling, with equal precision, the relation of certain perceptions of form, or colour, or sound, to certain emotions of admiration or disgust that are to arise in the mind of him who has those perceptions, though all which is felt, in both cases, is a certain relation of customary antecedence, we are instantly said to speak of a different power of the mind. The power which we consider, is said to be the power of Taste.

This distinction, of the power of taste,-in appreciating the excellence of the fine arts, and the beauties of nature from that general capacity of feeling the aptitudes of certain feelings to be followed by certain other feelings, of which it is only a modification, has arisen, there can be very little doubt, from the complexity of the term taste, in our common phraseology, -as involving two classes of feelings, that admit of being separated in our thought by a very easy analysis,-emotions and judgments of the objects that are fit or unfit to excite those emotions. Certain objects are not merely perceived by us, as forms, or colours, or sounds; the perception of these forms, and colours, and sounds, is followed by an emotion which is of various nature, according to the nature of the object. What we call beauty, is, in our mind, an emotion,--as, in external things, it is the aptitude to produce this emotion. To feel this emotion is one state of mind;-to know the relation which other previous feelings bear to it--what forms, or sounds, or

colours, separately or together, have a fitness of producing the emotion, is another state of mind, as distinct from it, as the political sagacity of the statesman, in anticipating the violence of popular feeling, on any particular occasion, is distinct from those passions and prejudices of the vulgar, which he foresees, as the certain effects of certain necessary measures, and which he strives accordingly, by some of the expedients of his mighty art, to disarm or dissipate. If the judgments of taste had been as clearly distinguished from the emotions which it measures in their relation to the objects that are likely or unlikely to produce them, as the wisdom of the politician, from the passions which that wisdom contemplates, in their relation to the circumstance which may tend to inflame them, we should as little have thought of ranking it as a peculiar power, as we think, at present, of inventing new names of faculties corresponding with all the variety of events corporeal or mental, in which we are capable of inferring the future from the past, by our knowledge of the reciprocal tendencies of objects,-of ranking, for example, as a peculiar intellectual power, distinct from the general power of reason, the skill with which the legislator adapts his regulations to the varying circumstances of society, or, as in the physics of matter, we think of ascribing to different intellectual powers, the reasonings of the chemist and of the mechanician. Chemistry, mechanics, politics, taste,-that is to say, the critical part of taste, of course imply previous observation of the successions of those different phenomena, material and mental, which are the subject of these respective sciences,--an experience of the past that is different in each particular case; but when the successions of the different phenomena have been observed, it is the same faculty, which, in all these sciences alike, predicting the future from the past, feels the relation of antecedence of each phenomenon to its successive phenomena, distinguishing the particular antecedents that are more or less likely to be followed by particular consequents. To call taste a science, like chemistry, or mechanics, or even politics, may seem at first a bold, and perhaps even an unwarrantable use of the term; but I have no hesitation in calling it a science, because it is truly a science, as much as any other knowledge of the successions of phenomena to which we give that name, --the science of certain effects which may be anticipated as the consequents of certain antecedents. It is a science, indeed, which is not capable of the universality of some other sciences, because it is a science of emotions, that must, in some measure, at least, have been felt by him who judges of the fitness of certain objects to produce these emotions; and all have not

this sensibility. But the sensibility relates to the existence of the emotions only, which, as I have already stated, are mental phenomena of a different class, from the subsequent judgments, which estimate the fitness of objects, to excite the emotions. The feeling of these emotions is unquestionably not a science, more than the feelings of security and patriotism, or discontent and selfish ambition, which the statesman must have in view, are sciences. But the knowledge of those objects which will excite the most general emotions of beauty and admiration, is a science, as the political knowledge of the means that will have most general influence in producing the emotions of civil happiness, and contentment, or the fury of popular indignation, is a science. Both are nothing more than the experience of the feelings which follow certain other feelings, and the consequent feeling of the relation of their future aptitudes. We may deny the name of a science to both, but, if we allow it to the one, I cannot see any reason which should lead us to deny it to the other.

Of the emotions,—of the aptitudes of producing which taste is the science, it is not at present my intention to speak. As emotions, they come under our consideration afterwards; and even the few remarks, which I may have to offer on taste itself, as the knowledge of the fitness of certain objects to excite the emotion of beauty, and other kindred emotions, I shall defer, till I have treated of the emotions, which are its subjects. My only object at present, is to point out to you, the proper systematic place, in our arrangement, of those mere feelings of the aptitudes of certain objects for exciting certain emotions,— which constitute the judgments distinguished by the name of taste. It is peculiarly important for me to point this out to you at present; since, but for the analysis, which I have made of the emotion itself, as one state of mind, and the knowledge of what is fitted to excite it, as a very different state of mind, you might conceive, that my classification of our intellectual phenomena, as referable to the two mental susceptibilities, under which I have arranged them, was defective, from the omission of one very important faculty. You now, I trust, see my reason for dividing what is commonly denominated taste, into its two distinct elements,-one of which is as much an emotion, as any of our other emotions,-the other,-which is only the knowledge of the particular forms, colours, sounds, or conceptions, that are most likely to be followed by this emotion,-is as much a feeling of the relation of fitness, as any of the other suggestions of fitness, on which every science, that has regard to the mere successions of phenomena, as reciprocally antecedent and consequent is founded.

VOL. II.-H h

I am aware that many authors have concurred, in not regard. ing taste as a simple faculty of the mind; but the taste, of which they speak, is chiefly the very emotion of pleasure, to the production of which they conceive various circumstances to be essential. The two great elements, as it appears to me, which it is of most importance to distinguish, are the emotion itself, in whatever way it may arise, and however complex it may be, and the feeling of the relation of certain forms, sounds, colours, conceptions, or various combinations of these, to this emotion as their effect,-the feeling of the relation of the one, as successive in time to the other, and of the corresponding aptitude of that other for producing it. Whatever additional analyses may be formed by philosophers of the emotion itself, this analysis, at least, seems to me obvious and indisputable. I proceed upon it, therefore, with confidence, and flatter myself, that you will have no difficulty, in forming in your own mind the same analysis, referring the one element to our susceptibility of the relative suggestions of fitness, that are necessarily as various, as the phenomena which precede and follow them,-the other primary element to our susceptibility of emotion.

In concluding my view of the phenomena of Simple suggestion, or, as it is more commonly termed, Association, I considered those various modifications of it, which philosophers, from a defective analysis of the phenomena, had converted into separate intellectual powers. In concluding my view of the phenomena of Relative Suggestion, it may be necessary in like manner, to take such a view, though the field over which we have to move, is, in this case, a more narrow one.

The tendency of the mind, which I have distinguished by the name of relative suggestion, is that by which, on perceiving or conceiving objects together, we are instantly impressed with certain feelings of their mutual relation. These suggested feelings are feelings of a particular kind, and require, therefore, to be classed separately from the perceptions or conceptions, which suggest them, but do not involve them.

Our relative suggestions, then, as you have seen, are those feelings of relation, which arise from the perception or conception of two or more objects, or two or more affections of our mind,-feelings which are of considerable variety, and which I classed under two heads, as the relations of coexistence and the relations of succession. It is easy for us in every case, to separate this feeling of relation from the perceptions or conceptions themselves. We perceive or conceive objects;we feel them to be variously related; and the feeling of the

.elation itself is not more mysterious, than the perception or simple suggestion, which may have given rise to it. The law of mind, by which on considering four and eight, I feel a certain relation of proportion,-the same precise relation, which I feel, on considering together five and ten, fifty and a hundred, -is as clear and intelligible a law of our mental constitution, as that by which I am able to form the separate notion, either of four or eight, five or ten, fifty or a hundred.

With this susceptibility of relative suggestion, the faculty of judgment, as that term is commonly employed, may be considered as nearly synonymous; and I have accordingly often. used it as synonymous, in treating of the different relations that have come under our review.

But those who ascribe judgment to man, ascribe to him also another faculty, which they distinguish by the name of reason, though reasoning itself is found, when analysed, to be nothing more than a series of judgments. The whole is thus represented as something different from all the parts which compose it. Whether we reason syllogistically with the schoolmen, or according to those simpler processes of thought, which nature teaches, our reasoning is divisible into a number of consecutive judgments, or feelings of relation; and if we take away these consecutive judgments, we have nothing behind, which can be called a ratiocination. In a simple proposition, we take one step, or feel one relation,-in an enthymeme, we take two steps, or feel two relations,-in a syllogism, we take three steps, or feel three relations; but we never think, when we speak of the motion of our limbs, that the power of taking three steps differs essentially from the power of taking one; and that we must, therefore, invent new names of bodily faculties for every slight variety, or even every simple repetition of movement. If this amplification of faculties would be absurd in treating of the mere motion of our limbs, it is surely not more philosophic, in the case of the intellectual exercise. Whatever is affirmed, in any stage of our reasoning, is a relation of some sort,-of which, as felt by us, the proposition that affirms the relation is only a verbal statement,—is a series of such judgments, or feelings of relation, and nothing distinct. from them, though the mutual relations of the series which together form the reasoning, have led us falsely to suppose, as I have said, that the whole is something more than all the parts which constitute the whole.

The circumstance, which led to the distinction of reason from judgment, was perhaps, however, not the mere length and mutual connexion of the series, so much as that mistake with respect to the power falsely ascribed to the mind, of find