TASTE, that power of the mind which is conversant shout the beautiful, both of nature and of art.. In the Latin lan guage, the same metaphor obtained a very wide application, and the term sa pient a, was employed to signify quickness and correctness of jndgment generally. Shaftsbury's nse of the term is nearly as extensive, being applied by him to man ners, morals, and government, and to wit, ingenuity, and beauty. In its modern use it is restricted to those objects which fall within the province of imagination. Now, although imagination derives its objects preeminently from those of the sight and hearing, and although the epi thet beautiful, is, for the most part, con fined to these, yet the mental power which judges of them borrows its name from a third sense. The reason of this is satisfactorily shown by Coleridge. The senses, he observes, are either purely or ganic, or mixed. The former present their objects to the mind distinct from its perception of them, while the latter in variably blend the perception of the ob ject with a certain consciousness of the percipient subject. To the latter class belong the touch, the smell, and the taste. Of these, taste and smell differ from the touch, as adding to that reference to our vital being which is common to the three a degree of enjoyment or otherwise ; while the taste is distinguished from the smell only by its more frequent and dig nified use in human nature. By taste then, as applied to the Fine Arts, we must he supposed to mean an "intellectual per ception of any object, blended with a dis tinct reference to our sensibility of enjoy ment or dislike. In the same essay Cole ridge gives another and a wider definition of taste ; as " a metaphor taken from one of the [nixed senses, and applied to objects the more purely organic, and of our moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of an immediate personal dislike or complacency." Now, by the
constitution of man's nature, every exer tion of human activity, in the pursuit of the good, the beautiful, and the true, combines a sense of pleasure, or the con trary, with the perception of their re spective objects; and this faet 100 u Id justi fy the widest application of the metaphor. While, however, in the case of the true, this co-existent pleasure has not received any distinctive appellation, and while conscience, as comprehending the sense of approbation and disapprobation, is characteristically applied to the tumid energy, that of taste has been confined to the perception of beauty and the accom panying gratification. But taste, like all other metaphorical terms, is extreme ly inaccurate ; and by directing attention exclusively to this element of pleasure, it has led to a very inadequate euneeption of the true nature of the faculty which it designates. Thus Ilutcheson maintains that the facnity is peculiar, and a sense which similarly, to the other senses, pro cures a pleasure totally distinct from a cognition of principle:, or of the re lations, and usages of an object : that beau ty strikes, at first sight, and that knowl edge the most perfect will not increase the pleasure which it gives rise to : and lastly, that all the diversity of sentiments exci ted in. different minds by the beautiful, arise solely from the modifications of the sense by association, custom, example, and education. Among the advocates of the theory of a moral taste we may reckon Hume, Akenside, Blair, Lord Karnes, and Beattie.