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Untitled Article
terof the pleasures of imagination associated with an object in nature , or an artificial representation of such , cannot permanently be at variance with the positive character of the object in point of utility . This I conceive to be the key and clue of the whole matter ; it is this principle which , where it does not decide , must have a constant tendency to decide the character of our associations of emotion .
Though the understanding may not distinctly take cognizance of the fitness of an object for its main purpose , still , by our constant exposure practically to the effects of such fitness or unfitness , the impression left upon our minds , the resultant
association of feeling will have a constant tendency to correspond with the actual efficiency . The diversities arising from defective susceptibility of emotion , or insufficient information , are thus subject to a constant rule from which no permanent result can differ . The Grecian sculptors are found to have given to their heads those forms which phrenological observation shows to be most commonly the accompaniments , or rather causes , * of the several modes of character to which they have been respectively assigned . The peculiarity in the width of the head , which is found by phrenologists to favour the poetic temperament , is discovered accurately marked in the antique Apollo—not , there
is reason to suppose , from scientific skill in cranioscopy—but more probably from an insensible association of the mental and material phenomena , arising from their frequent occurrence in synchrony , and favoured by the peculiar sensibility of the Athenian temperament . This peculiarity of form still suggests to us the impression of the same characteristic , and this expressive power will remain so long as men shall be constructed on a similar model .
It is thus that we find the greater latitude of Taste with respect to those objects which have no obvious or prominent end and purpose . Opinion or Taste may be regarded as unanimous On tfae deformity of a wry neck or a crooked leg , or , if there be a controversy , there can be little doubt of the influence which the positive inconvenience of these misfortunes will exercise over the decision . And thus , from the permanence of the constitution of external nature , and of its relation to the universal
similarity of human constitution , in structure of body and Ia , ws of mind , arise the permanent canons of Philosophical Criticism . " Among these the first place in importance is due to the rule pf Tfliste , which immediately follows from the principles I have tus $ stated ;—that no object can possess a permanent or
gene-• Query : External rj / foctt , or developments , of internal organisation ?— #
Untitled Article
92 j& there a Standard of Taste ?
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 1, 1837, page 92, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1828/page/45/
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