TASTE, according to the definition of Sir Joshua Reynolds, " is that act of the mind by which we like or dislike, whatever be the subject" Discourses before the Royal Academy ; ' Discourse vii.) Taste is frequently spoken of as a gift, as something independent of rules, a kind of instinct, bestowed more liberally in degree upon some men than upon others. It has been treated by some writers as the result of caprice or fashion, as having no uniform or permanent prin ciples for the ground of its decisions. Others have resolved it into different complex elements, whose joint development is determined by certain principles of beauty or sublimity in things external.
Much obscurity has arisen in discussions on the subject of taste from the twofold sense in which the word taste has been employed, as expressive of an emotion, and of something objective in which there exists an aptitude to produce emotion. The term taste strictly applies to the emotion only ; the theory of the different causes by which the emotion is produced belongs to the subject of beauty or sublimity. In what follows we shall confine ourselves to the explanation of taste in its restricted or proper sense.
When any object either of sublimity or beauty is presented to the mind, we are conscious of a train of thought being immediately awakened analogous to the character or expression of the original ob ject The trains of thought which are thue suggested are distinguished iu the nature of the ideas or conception's which compose them, and in the nature or law of their succession. In the case of those trains of thought which are suggested by objects either of sublimity or beauty, they are in all cases composed of ideas capable of exciting some affec tion or emotiou. There is this distinction between the emotions of taste and all our different emotions of simple pleasure, that in the case of these last emotions no additions! train of thought is necessary. The pleasurable feeling follows immediately the presence of the object or quality, and has no dependence upon anything for its perfection but the sound state of the sense by which it is received. The emotions of
envy, pity, benevolence, gratitude, utility, propriety, novelty, &c., might undoubtedly be felt, although we had no such power of mind as that by which we follow out a train of ideas, and certainly are felt in a thousand cases when this faculty is unemployed. In the case of the emotion of taste, on the other hand, it seems evident that this process of mind is necessary, and that unless it is produced these emotions are unfelt. Whatever may be the nature of that simple emotion which any object is fitted to excite, whether that of gaiety, tranquillity, melancholy, &c., if it produce not a train of kindred thought in our minds, we are conscious only of that simple emotion. Whenever, on the contrary, the train of thought which has been mentioned I. produced we arc conscious of a higher and more pleasing emotion ; and which, though it is impossible to describe in language, we yet diatieguieh by the name of the emotion of taste. The emotions of taste may therefore be considered as distinguished from the emotions of simple pleasure, by their being dependent upon the exercise of our imagination.
It is on this principle that Burke remarks that the excellence and force of a composition must always be imperfectly estimated from its effect on the minds of any, except we kuow the temper and character of those minds. C hit. to the Sublime and Beautiful.') The rules by which taste is determined vary with the objects to which its decisions refer; but in respect of all, this general principle holds, that a coin. position is to be judged by its fitness to produce the end designed by it. For a further discussion of the subject, see .EsTurrics; BracTT ; SUBLIMITY.