THE ANALOGY OF THE SENSIBLE SCIENCES INTRODUCTION. 935. HITHERTO, we have proceeded with an even tide through Disciplines and the Logical forms of science, forms of speech, forms of thought, and forms of things, terminating in Mechanics; which, again, link with the Physiological matter of science, of which we have delivered the physical outline; from which we shall continue, in a direct course, through the Sensible and Moral sciences to the Teleological arts, or efficient ends of science: our process coinciding in these respects with the celebrated order of causes as formal, material, and final; while it illustrates the system of science by its series. 936. The subject of the present outline is, accordingly, the Esthetical Sciences, which are the middle, or sensible division of the series of science, comprehending the second, or intermediate branch VOL. II. H of physiological science, of which the physical sciences, discussed in the preceding outline, constitute the first, as the moral sciences, which follow hereafter, will the third and final branch. 937. As the physical sciences are instrumental to the corporeal wants and well being of man, the esthetical sciences minister to his sensible enjoyments; and as the material and manual arts pertain principally to the former, so do the fine, or refined arts, to the latter, although not exclusively so in either case. 938. It is to these latter arts transcendently that the present branch of science owes its chief importance: it is also of a more intellectual bearing than the former, lying, as it does, between the physical and moral sciences as a mean, and partaking of the nature of both, yet depending in a manner upon principles different from either; principles not to be looked for, like the physical elements, in external nature alone, but to be sought equally as facts of experience in nature, and as uniform impressions of passive intellect or sense internally. 939. And here, if we must admit that the physical sciences and arts are more important for their necessity in the early stages of life and society, it cannot be denied that the esthetical sciences and arts are no less so in the progress of man for their harmonizing powers, their moral influences, and the graces and dignity they confer They upon man and society in their maturity. are the blossoms of the plant of science that engender the salutary fruits of moral intelligence. 940. It is not, however, our business to write panegyrics upon particular sciences, but to exhibit, as well as we are able, the symmetry and connexion of the whole. There is something, nevertheless, in these sciences, peculiarly excitive of enthusiasm and emulous of taste, for they are, in consequence of their middle station, more intimately connected with the imagination than the physical sciences are, which draw more upon memory and induction on the one hand; and more so than the moral sciences are, which depend chiefly upon reason and analogy on the other; yet are they not independent of either faculty. 941. Accordingly, taste belongs to sense in conjunction with judgment; and that exercise of sense with the judging faculty, by which we distinguish the beautiful and harmonious in objects, the agreeable in feeling, or which even determines in us the sentiment of moral approbation, is not altogether improperly named after the lowest of the senses, taste; since this sense is that in which the agreeable is first developed, and that by which the mind is first excited to distinguish and to choose, when animal nature in man is barely raised above the vegetal. 942. Taste is, then, an act of judgment, as much as the computation of numbers is; the difference |