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    proof that . they are habitually and practically assumed and calculated on , and referred to by those who most vehemently deny them when distinctly and abstractedly enunciated . But it will be as well to attempt to vindicate them by arguments more logically conclusive , since proof that a principle has been inconsistently attacked by no means implies , though it is too

    often assumed to do so , that there are no grounds on which it might be successfully challenged . I will therefore briefly present a view of those facts in the natural history of human imagination , from which the principle of a universal standard of taste results , and which operate that common law , for which I contend .

    The existence of fixed principles of taste , then , results from the fixedness and universality of the laws which govern the manifestations , in kind and degree , of those emotions that originate in the imagination . Accordingly , as it is established or not , that all the diversities of these manifestations depend upon fixed laws , and that all variations are subordinate to one

    determinate tendency , the proposition—That the power of an object of imagination to produce these manifestations is susceptible of determinate estimate , and referable to a general Standard of Taste?—must stand or fall , —and with it the whole fabric of philosophical criticism . : The emotions of imagination constitute one of three classes , in which the pleasures and pains of mankind may be on a broad

    principle arranged . In the first of these are the pleasures and pains of sensation—organic gratification and suffering—the emotions resulting immediately from the excitement of our bodily frame , either by surrounding external objects , or by one portion of our system affecting another , as in the cases of a broken limb or the tooth-ache . The second class may be

    called emotions of anticipation , arising immediately from the thought or contemplation of circumstances as the causes of future pleasure or pain . The emotions of imagination , constituting a third , are distinguished by the circumstance of arising independently of any anticipation—of being suggested by objects and ideas not recognized as causes of future enjoyment or distress . *

    The p leasures of imagination , the feelings of beauty , of sublimity , and of all their delightful varieties and inflections , are not distinguished from our anticipative joys—our desires , loves , arid hopes—by any peculiarity in the objects by which they are suggested , and in connection with which they arise . These circumstances , or objects , are of the greatest variety and diver-? We acknowledge the fine distinction between the act of anticipation , and th # origin ; but must not all anticipations originate in imagination ? If no , the latter sh < mtd have been placed second in the above classification ?—Ed #

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    32 Is tfiere a Standard of Taste 9

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1837, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1827/page/34/