CHAPTER IV. THE STANDARD OF TASTE. WE have seen that one important particular by which the judgments of taste are distinguished from all others is their universality: their universality in the sense, namely, that all men agree in the same, that they pass without question from one mind to another. Thus they are distinguished, for instance, from judgments of sense, by which we pronounce a thing to be agreeable. Such judgments can lay no claim to universality at all. To say of a rose that it is beautiful, is the same as to say that it has one quality which will be contemplated with the same kind of pleasure by all. Saying that it has a delightful fragrance is asserting no such quality of it; this fragrance may be delightful to one person, painful to another. Again, judgments of taste differ from those of the understanding, although the latter are also universal, in the mode of their universality. In what are termed universal judgments of the understanding, a certain class of objects are simply grouped together on account of their participation in some abstract quality, common to them all, as when we say, "all metals are fusible." But the uni versality of a judgment of taste is not so expressed. We do not say "All statues, all paintings, are beautiful," but, "This particular statue or painting is beautiful," and the universality of the judgment consists, as it exists in our own minds, in the conviction, —as it turns out in experience, in the fact, that the same quality which we find in the object will be found there also by every one who has any capacity of judging at all. In moral judgments we approve or disapprove of an action, we pronounce it right or wrong, as it is seen to conform or not to conform to a universal and righteous law; and we blame those who think or do otherwise than that reasonable law prescribes. But with regard to taste, though we feel entitled to expect the coincidence of that of other men with our own, yet we do not think of blaming them if they do not agree with us, and, still less, of blaming the artist, if his work does not please us. The judgment of taste being in this particular way universal and common, or communicable, the next point to be considered is, whether the pleasure we receive from those objects which we call beautiful, precedes and determines the judgment, or whether the judgment is before the pleasure. This might seem, at first, to be a point of little or no importance. In a practical point of view, we may grant, it is of none whatever: but in investigating the true theory of art, it is a question not to be |
