CHAPTER I.

A SKETCH of the MENTAL SYSTEM respecting our Perceptions of Taste, &c.


The mind of man, introspecting itself, seems, as it were, (in
conjunction with the inscrutable principles of nature,) placed in the
central point of the creation: from whence, impelled by her energetic
powers and illumined by her light, the intellectual faculties, like
rays, shoot forth in direct tendency to their ultimate point of
perfection; and, as they advance, each individual mind imperceptibly
imbibes the influence and light of each, and is by this imbibition
alone enabled to approach it.

But, though the light of nature and of reason direct the human mind
to perfection, or true good, yet, being in its progress perpetually
impeded by adventitious causes, casual occurrences, &c. &c. which
induce false opinions of good and evil, its progressive powers
generally stop at a middle point between mere uncultivated nature and
perfection, a medium which constitutes what we call common sense, and
which, in degree, seems as distant from the perfection of the mental
faculties as common form is from the perfection of form, _beauty_.


[Illustration:
SUBLIMITY.
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GRACE