## 1. Internal-Sense Theories


### 1.1 Shaftesbury



Shaftesbury takes up aesthetic questions from time to time across his
*Characteristics* *of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times*
(first published in 1711), particularly within its third, fourth, and
fifth Treatises. But it is perhaps only within this last
treatise--the dialogue *The Moralists, a Philosophical
Rhapsody*--that he can be said to develop a theory of taste.
Near the beginning of the dialogue's climactic section (Section
II of Book III) Shaftesbury's spokesman, Theocles, issues a pair
of imperatives: one ought "never to admire the
*Representative*-Beauty, except for the sake of the
*Original*; nor aim at other *Enjoyment* than of the
*rational* kind" (Cooper 1711 [2001, 221]). It is largely
in the subsequent explication of these imperatives that
Shaftesbury's highly influential theory of taste emerges.



Shaftesbury does not intend the force of these imperatives to be
negative merely. He clearly thinks that one ought to admire the
original beauty referred to in the first imperative; indeed he later
identifies it with the beauty of the divine mind. Moreover, the
admiration of beauty referred to in the first imperative just is the
enjoyment of the rational kind referred to in the second. Hence the
two imperatives, reversing their order, might be paraphrased as
follows: one ought to seek the enjoyment of beauty as opposed to the
rival enjoyments that one might mistake for the enjoyment of beauty;
and the enjoyment of beauty that one ought to seek ought always to be
for the sake of the original as opposed to the sake of the
representative merely. To say that the rival enjoyments that one might
take for the enjoyment of beauty are not "of the
*rational* kind" is to say that they are merely sensory
or bodily in nature. Such non-rational enjoyments, moreover, are
"interested" in the sense that they depend on the thought
of, and beget a desire for, the use or possession of their objects.
Theocles illustrates this point with a series of examples culminating
in that of sexual pleasure taken at the sight of a human body.
"I ... was apprehensive," says his interlocutor,
Philocles, that



> 
> you wou'd force me at last to think of certain powerful FORMS in
> *human* Kind, which draw after 'em a Set of eager
> *Desires*, *Wishes*, and *Hopes*; no way
> suitable, I must confess, to your rational and refin'd
> Contemplation of *Beauty*. The Proportions of this *living
> Architecture*, as wonderful as they are, inspire nothing of a
> *studious* or *contemplative* kind. The more they are
> view'd , the further they are from satisfying by mere View.
> (Cooper 1711 [2001, 222])
> 



An example surfacing a bit later serves both to reinforce the
distinction between such non-rational enjoyments and the rational
enjoyment of beauty and to introduce the distinction between the
admiration of representative beauty for its own sake and that for the
sake of the original. Enjoyment taken in the sight of a coin is
enjoyment taken in its beauty only if it arises not from any thought
of what the coin may buy, but merely from the contemplation of the
design or form of the coin's inscription. Whether in addition
this is admiration of the coin's representative beauty for the
sake of the original depends on whether one recognizes the
representative nature of the coin's beauty. Because the coin is
beautiful in virtue of its design or form, it is beautiful not in
virtue of its material properties but in virtue of the effect that
some mind has had upon it. But if the coin is beautiful in virtue of
the effect of some mind upon it, this can only be because that mind is
itself beautiful, the beauty of the coin being representative merely
of the original beauty of that mind. Hence to admire the beauty of the
coin (or the beauty of any material object) without acknowledging that
its beauty merely shadows the beauty of the mind that designed it is
to fail to admire representative beauty for the sake of the original
(Cooper 1711 [2001, 225-226]).



But there is a complication. If the mind that formed the coin is a
human mind, then, while its beauty is original relative to the coin,
it is representative relative to the beauty of the mind that formed
it. Hence there are "*Three* Degrees or Orders of
Beauty":



> 
> first, the *dead Forms* ... which bear a Fashion, and are
> form'd, whether by Man, or Nature; but have no forming Power, no
> Action, or Intelligence ... the second kind, *the Forms which
> form*; that is, which have Intelligence, Action, and Operation
> ... [and] that *third* Order of Beauty, which forms not
> only such as we call mere Forms, but even *the Forms which
> form*. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 227-228])
> 



Hence all beauty ultimately "resolves it-self" (Cooper
1711 [2001, 228]) into the beauty of the divine mind:



> 
> whatever Beauty appears in our *second* Order of Forms, or
> whatever is deriv'd or produc'd from thence, all this is
> eminently, principally, and originally in this *last* Order of
> *Supreme* and *Sovereign Beauty*. (Cooper 1711 [2001,
> 228])
> 



Thus admiring the representative beauty of the coin for the sake of
the original requires tracing its beauty not merely to the mind that
designed it, but also to the mind that designed that mind.



A consequence of the view that the divine mind is the source of all
beauty is that beauty is not relative to human nature merely, but is
absolute and real. Indeed, given Shaftesbury's pantheistic
leanings, things turn out, on his view, to be beautiful quite
literally from the point of view of the universe. A further
consequence is that beauty, inhering only in mind or in its
reflection, cannot be grasped by any bodily sense, but only by the
mind itself:



> 
> there is nothing so divine as BEAUTY: which belonging not to
> *Body*, nor having any Principle or Existence except in MIND
> and REASON, is alone discover'd and acquir'd by this
> diviner Part, when it inspects it-self, the only object worthy of
> it-self. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 238])
> 



But Shaftesbury does not rest with the claim that it is the mind that
grasps beauty: he adds the claim that it is by a "mental"
or "inward" sense that the mind does so. Though it is
difficult to know just what Shaftesbury takes this claim to come to,
the general idea is that the faculty by which the mind discerns beauty
has enough in common with external sense to warrant the term
"sense" and to be regarded as no less natural (or basic)
than external sense. In *The Moralists* he observes that the
discernment of beauty has the immediacy of external sensation and so
must be regarded as natural as external sensation. No sooner is an
object of the right kind placed before the mind



> 
> than straight *an inward* EYE distinguishes, and sees *the
> Fair* and *Shapely*, the *Amiable* and
> *Admirable*, apart from the *Deform'd*, the
> *Foul*, the *Odious*, or the *Despicable*. How is
> it possible therefore not to own "That these
> *Distinctions* have their Foundation *in Nature*, the
> Discernment it-self is *natural*, and from Nature
> *alone*?" (Cooper 1711 [2001, 231])
> 



And, in a famous passage from *An Inquiry concerning Virtue and
Merit* (Treatise IV), Shaftesbury observes that the discernment of
beauty has the necessity or will-independence of external sensation
and so again must be regarded as natural on a par with external
sensation. Once an object of the right kind is placed before the mind,
a verdict as to its beauty cannot be withheld:



> 
> The Mind, which is Spectator or Auditor of *other Minds*,
> cannot be without its *Eye* and *Ear*; so as to discern
> Proportion, distinguish Sound, and scan each Sentiment or Thought
> which comes before it .... It ... finds a *Foul* and
> *Fair*, a *Harmonious* and a *Dissonant*, as
> really and truly here, as in any musical Numbers, or in the outward
> Forms or Representations of sensible Things. Nor can it with-hold its
> *Admiration* and *Extasy*, its *Aversion* and
> *Scorn*, any more in what relates to one than to the other of
> these Subjects. So that to deny the common and natural Sense of a
> SUBLIME and BEAUTIFUL in Things, will appear an Affectation merely, to
> any-one who considers duly of this Affair. (Cooper 1711 [2001, 17])
> 



Shaftesbury, it bears mentioning, did not originate
the idea that it is by an inward sense that we lay hold of
the sublime and the beautiful. That idea is an element
of the neoplatonic tradition which Shaftesbury's work
extends, and can be traced back to St. Augustine
(2005/389-391, *De vera religione* SS59)
and Plotinus (250 [1991, 1.6.7-9]), if not to Plato himself (1989,
210a-211d). 


### 1.2 Hutcheson



On the title page of the first edition of his *An Inquiry into the
Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue* (1725), Francis
Hutcheson acknowledges a deep debt to Shaftesbury, announcing that
"The Principles of the late Earl of Shaftsbury" would be
explained and defended therein. But it is open to question whether
Hutcheson overstates his debt. The debt is deepest with regard to the
notion of internal sense, but Hutcheson can fairly be said to make
this notion his own. That is certainly the judgment of history: anyone
undertaking to explain, defend, or refute the notion of internal sense
after 1725 took himself to be explaining, defending, or refuting the
principles of Dr. Hutcheson.



Hutcheson gives one argument for the sensibility, and another for the
internality, of the power by which we discern beauty. His argument for
its sensibility is largely a systematization and amplification of
Shaftesbury's. That the discernment of beauty is sensible
follows from the immediacy, necessity, and disinterestedness of the
arising of the pleasure by which beauty is discerned:



> 
> This superior Power of Perception is justly called a Sense, because of
> its Affinity to the other Senses in this, that the Pleasure does not
> arise from any Knowledge of Principles, Proportions, Causes, or the
> Usefulness of the Object; but strikes us at first with the Idea of
> Beauty .... And further, the ideas of Beauty and Harmony, like
> other sensible Ideas, are necessarily pleasant to us, as well as
> immediately so; neither can any Resolution of our own, nor any
> Prospect of Advantage or Disadvantage, vary the Beauty or Deformity of
> an Object. (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 25])
> 



It is in arguing for the internality of the power of discerning beauty
that Hutcheson's departure from Shaftesbury begins to show.
Shaftesbury, it will be recalled, argues that the discernment of
beauty is internal (or mental) on the grounds that the objects of
beauty necessarily are: mind alone can discern beauty because mind
alone is beautiful, external objects managing a degree of beauty only
by having a bit of mind imprinted on them. But Hutcheson cannot make
this argument because he does not think that objects of beauty are
necessarily internal. Hutcheson *does* follow Shaftesbury in
maintaining that things are beautiful in virtue of their proportion or
order (Hutcheson's preferred and more precise term is
"uniformity amidst variety") and he *may* follow
Shaftesbury in thinking all proportion or order to be the effect of
mind. But he importantly *does not* follow Shaftesbury in
inferring from the premise that things are beautiful owing to the
effect of mind to the conclusion that mind alone is beautiful.



Hutcheson begins his argument for the internality of the power of
discerning beauty by observing that the five external senses are
insufficient for that discernment--one could have all five in
perfect working order and yet be insensible to beauty (Hutcheson
1726 [2004, 23]). This observation, however, does not seem to show the
discernment of beauty to be internal. It seems to show merely that
such discernment cannot be identified with any known external power.
But Hutcheson continues:



> 
> There will appear another Reason perhaps ... for calling this
> Power of perceiving Ideas an Internal Sense, from this, that in some
> other Affairs, where our External Senses are not much concern'd,
> we discern a sort of Beauty, very like, in many respects, to that
> observ'd in sensible Objects, and accompany'd with like
> Pleasure. Such is the Beauty perceiv'd in Theorems, or universal
> Truths, in general Causes .... (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 24])
> 



Here the reasoning is that the power of discerning beauty must be
internal because *some* objects of beauty are. But given that
Hutcheson concedes that many objects of beauty are not internal, the
proper conclusion seems to be that the power of discerning beauty is
neither exclusively internal nor exclusively external. In any case,
the power of discerning beauty cannot be internal after
Shaftesbury's manner.



But after what manner is it internal then? Hutcheson simply never says
in *An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue*, though he wastes no time supplying this deficiency in the
immediately subsequent *An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the
Passions and Affections* (first published in 1727). An internal
sense, he there clarifies, is one whose ideas arise only if certain
other ideas have already arisen. Sight is not an internal sense since
the arising of the idea of blue, for example, does not depend upon the
previous arising of any other idea. But the sense of beauty is
internal because the arising of the pleasurable idea of beauty depends
"upon the previous Reception and Comparison of various sensible
Perceptions ... or intellectual ideas, when we find Uniformity
... among them" (Hutcheson 1742 [2002, 16]). Another way of
putting the point is to say that internal senses depend for their
objects on the operation of other powers while external senses do not.
Hence in point of internality internal senses are apparently on a par
with the powers of reason and memory, for example: unless some other
power or powers has operated to place an object before the mind, there
is nothing about which to reason, nothing to remember, and nothing
internally to sense. This use of "internal" and
"external" may be thought misleading, given that it allows
both external and internal powers to operate on objects both bodily
and intellectual, both from within and from without. Hutcheson came to
agree with this criticism apparently. In later works, he replaces
"internal" with "reflex" or
"subsequent" to refer to powers that depend on others for
their objects, and "external" with "direct" or
"antecedent" to refer to powers that do not. (Hutcheson
1747, 12-13 and 1744, 48).



This transformation of Shaftesbury's notion of an internal sense
is not the only consequence of Hutcheson's rejection of the view
that mind alone is beautiful. It will be recalled that it is this
view--or, more particularly, the view that all beauty reduces to
the beauty of the divine mind--that undergirds
Shaftesbury's aesthetic realism and hence his absolutism. But
Hutcheson has neither this nor any substitute view by which to prop up
an alternative version of realism, and settles hesitantly on a version
of idealism, and hence relativism, that understands the idea of beauty
on the model of an idea of a Lockean secondary quality:



> 
> Beauty, like other Names of sensible Ideas, properly denotes the
> Perception of some Mind; so Cold, Hot, Sweet, Bitter, denote
> Sensations in our Minds, to which perhaps there is no resemblance in
> the Objects, which excite these ideas in us, however we generally
> imagine that there is something in the Object just like our Perception
> .... were there no Mind with a Sense of Beauty to contemplate
> Objects, I see not how they could be call'd beautiful.
> (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 27])
> 



Moreover there seems to be no necessity that the idea of beauty should
arise, as it does, in response to objects having uniformity amidst
variety. Had it pleased him to do so, God might have given us a sense
of beauty responsive to irregularity amidst simplicity (Hutcheson
1726 [2004, 80]).



But that God might not have given us a sense of beauty responsive to
uniformity amidst variety raises the question why he did. Though it is
a question that never arises for Shaftesbury, Hutcheson gives it an
answer that narrows the distance between the two. As Shaftesbury had
famously stressed, the universe is highly ordered--at least
"Uniformity, Proportion, and Similitude [are diffused] thro all
the Parts of Nature which we can observe" (Hutcheson 1726 [2004,
81]). In such a universe, "[t]he manner of Knowledge by universal
Theorems ... must be most convenient for Beings of limited
Understanding and Power" (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 79]). But if such
is the manner of knowledge most convenient for beings such as us, a
benevolent God may be expected to provide some immediate
motive--a motive, that is, that does not require that we reflect
on what is most convenient for us--to our pursuit of it. Because
a theorem by nature possesses uniformity amidst variety--a
theorem simply is the unification of various particulars under a
single principle (Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 36])--it stands to reason
that



> 
> the Author of Nature has determin'd us ... to receive from
> uniform Objects the Pleasures of Beauty and Harmony, to excite us to
> the Pursuit of Knowledge, and to reward us for it. (Hutcheson
> 1726 [2004, 99])
> 



So it is in the perception of objects of intellect--theorems,
namely--that the internal sense of beauty has its *raison
d'etre*, and it is by resembling theorems in point of
uniformity that other objects, including material objects, are
beautiful. In this way Hutcheson recovers an element of
Shaftesbury's theory that had apparently been lost in his
transformation of Shaftesbury's notion of internal
sense--he recovers a priority of the intellectual over the
material as object of beauty. This is not to say, however, that
Hutcheson recovers Shaftesbury's priority exactly.
Shaftesbury's priority is reductive, having its ground in the
distinction he draws between representative and original beauty.
Hutcheson draws no corresponding distinction and so allows
material objects to be beautiful in their own right.
That difference is consequential. If material objects can be
beautiful, then the sense by which we find them so must be
capable of training outward. If the notion of internal
sense that Hutcheson took over from Shaftesbury is
essentially the one we find in Augustine, Plotinus, and Plato,
the notion of aesthetic perception that Hutcheson left to us is
essentially the one we find in Frank Sibley (Sibley
2001). 


### 1.3 Hume



Hume takes his notion of taste over from Hutcheson. He regards taste
as an "internal sense" which depends on the operation of
other mental faculties to "pave the way" for its
pronouncements by supplying it with an object upon which to pronounce
(Hume 1751 [1986, 173]). Which mental faculties must operate, and which
operations those faculties must perform, varies from object to
object:



> 
> ... in order to ... give a proper discernment of [an object
> of taste], it is often necessary, we find, that much reasoning should
> precede, that nice distinctions be made, just conclusions drawn,
> distant comparisons formed, complicated relations examined, and
> general facts fixed and ascertained. Some species of beauty,
> especially the natural kinds, on their first appearance, command our
> affection and approbation ... . But in many orders of beauty,
> particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much
> reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment. (Hume 1751 [1986,
> 173]).
> 



Hume shows less interest than Hutcheson does in determining which
feature or features of objects result in our finding them beautiful.
Hutcheson, it will be recalled, argues that we take the pleasure of
beauty in response to all and only objects in which we find uniformity
amidst variety. Hume resists any such tidy formula, speaking of
multiple principles of taste. The only time he elaborates on any
particular principle is in The Treatise, where he holds, contra
Hutcheson, that the beauty we find in many objects owes, at least in
part, to their usefulness. Hutcheson had denied that the usefulness of
an object could play any role in our finding it beautiful, on the
grounds that judgments of taste are necessarily disinterested whereas
judgments of usefulness are necessarily interested. Against this Hume
observes that judgments of taste are necessarily disinterested only in
the sense that they are necessarily non-self-interested, and that I
might therefore judge a chair to be beautiful on the basis of its
being useful to someone, though not on the basis that it is useful to
me (Hume 1739-40 [1987, 363-365]).



Hume follows Hutcheson in regarding the idea of beauty as analogous to
a Lockean secondary quality, and so follows Hutcheson in holding
beauty to be subjective, having no existence outside of the mind that
contemplates it (Hume 1757 [1987, 230]). But Hume reckons more directly
than Hutcheson does with the price such a subjectivism exacts, namely,
its apparent inconsistency with our practice of counting some
judgments of beauty as correct and others as incorrect. This reckoning
starts with the observation that the subjectivity of colors is no
barrier to our counting some color judgments correct and some
incorrect. Anyone who has the idea of redness can recognize the
conditions under which we count an object as veridically manifesting
redness, namely, "its appearance in day-light to the eye of a
man in health" (Hume 1757 [1987, 233-234]). Similarly, Hume holds
that anyone with the idea of beauty can recognize the conditions under
which we count an object as veridically manifesting beauty (Hume
1757 [1987, 233-234]). These conditions are the appearance of beauty to
those (1) whose taste is delicate (Hume 1757 [1987, 234-237]), (2) who
have practiced (Hume 1757 [1987, 237-238]), (3) who have made certain
comparisons (Hume 1757 [1987, 238]), (4) who lack prejudice (Hume
1757 [1987, 239-240]), and (5) whose understanding is sound (Hume
1757 [1987, 240-241]). Conditions (1), (2), and (5) are evidently
supposed to guarantee that the object is grasped as having all and
only the aesthetically relevant properties it has, whereas conditions
(3) and (4) are evidently supposed to guarantee that a properly
calibrated sentiment arises from the object as grasped. In sum, we
take an object's beauty to appear as it is, according to Hume,
when and only when the right sentiment arises from the object rightly
grasped.


### 1.4 Reid



Thomas Reid's theory of taste, as developed in the final essay
of his *Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man* (first
published in 1785), makes use of a range of theoretical resources that
had become available by the last decades of the Eighteenth Century.
Its account of sublimity owes to Burke; its treatment of novelty owes
to Addison and to Gerard; the use it makes of association may owe to
Gerard as well. But as an internal-sense theory its debt is
principally to Hutcheson and to Shaftesbury.



Reid adheres to Hutcheson's notion of internal sense rather than
to Shaftesbury's. Indeed Reid's account of
Hutcheson's notion is arguably sharper than any Hutcheson ever
gives:



> 
> Beauty or deformity in an object, results from its nature or
> structure. To perceive the beauty therefore, we must perceive the
> nature or structure from which it results. In this the internal sense
> differs from the external. Our external senses may discover qualities
> which do not depend upon any antecedent perception .... But it is
> impossible to perceive the beauty of an object, without perceiving the
> object, or at least conceiving it. On this account, Dr. Hutcheson
> called the senses of beauty and harmony reflex or secondary senses;
> because the beauty cannot be perceived unless the object be perceived
> by some other power of the mind. (Reid 1785 [1969, 760-761])
> 



But while Reid agrees with Hutcheson about what makes the sense of
beauty internal, he disagrees with Hutcheson about what is
"ingredient" to that sense (Reid 1785 [1969, 782]).
Hutcheson, as Reid understands him, posits but one ingredient: an
agreeable feeling or emotion resembling nothing in the object. But it
is in restricting himself to this single affective ingredient, Reid
thinks, that Hutcheson puts himself on the path to Lockean
anti-realism with respect to beauty, since it may be thought that if
the sensation of beauty consists merely in such a feeling it refers to
nothing in the object, and if it refers to nothing in the object then
it must refer merely to "the perception of some Mind"
(Hutcheson 1726 [2004, 27]).



Reid takes this position to be "not so much an error in
judgment, as an abuse of words" (Reid 1785 [1969, 782]). There are
words by which one may say of Virgil's *Georgics* that it
is the cause of a feeling, but these are not the words *The*
Georgics *is beautiful*; there is no reason to think they say
anything of *The Georgics* other than that it has the property
of beauty (Reid 1785 [1969, 759]). Hence a theory of taste that does not
contradict "the universal sense of mankind, as expressed by
their language" (Reid 1785 [1969, 760]) must allow the internal
sense of beauty to have, in addition to its affective ingredient, a
cognitive one--a judgment ascribing a property to the object.



Reid appears to acknowledge that allowing the sense of beauty this
cognitive dimension does not commit one to realism regarding beauty:
he appears to acknowledge that it is one thing to allow that the
deliverances of internal sense comprise judgments and yet another to
allow that the positive judgments they sometimes comprise are
sometimes true (Reid 1785 [1969, 783]). The case Reid makes for realism
regarding beauty (and sublimity) is complex. He makes a
straightforward appeal to common sense (Reid 1785 [1969, 770]). He
argues, after Descartes, that our possession of an inherently
fallacious sense would make a deceiver of God (Reid 1785 [1969, 783]).
But his deepest and most complicated reason for thinking beauty real
has to do with the nature of the properties that he takes to ground
beauty. Following Burke, Reid identifies the affect properly inspired
by beautiful objects as love (this contrasts with the affect properly
inspired by sublime objects, which he identifies as admiration). Since
we properly love only what is good, the properties that properly
inspire love must be perfections or excellences of some kind. It
follows that the beauty of an object has its ground in whatever
perfections properly inspire our love for it, and so has whatever
reality those perfections have.



Reid concedes that we are only sometimes able to specify the
perfections in virtue of which we judge things beautiful. He refers to
judgments in which the perfection cannot be specified as
"instinctive" and judgments in which it can be as
"rational" (Reid 1785 [1969, 785-787]). Hence it is
necessarily from an incomplete set of data that his enquiry into
beauty-grounding perfections proceeds. That enquiry begins with a
consideration of those perfections in virtue of which we judge minds
beautiful, that is, the perfections that inspire love for the minds
that possess them. Reid finds that these perfections divide into three
classes: first, the amiable moral virtues, which include
"[i]nnocence, gentleness, condescension, humanity, natural
affection, public spirit"; second, the amiable intellectual
talents, which include, "knowledge, good sense, wit, humour,
cheerfulness, good taste, excellence in any of the fine arts";
and, third, certain perfections pertaining to the mind's active
powers--perfections that "render the body a fit instrument
for the mind"--including "health, strength, and
agility" (Reid 1785 [1969, 792]). Reid finds further that these
perfections are not relative to human nature but absolute:



> 
> Is not power in its nature more excellent that weakness; knowledge
> than ignorance; wisdom than folly; fortitude than pusillanimity?
> ... Let us suppose, if possible, a being so constituted, as to
> have a high respect for ignorance, weakness, and folly; to venerate
> cowardice, malice, and envy, and to hold the contrary qualities in
> contempt .... Could we believe such a constitution to be anything
> else than madness and delirium? ... We can as easily conceive a
> constitution, by which one should perceive two and three to make
> fifteen, or a part to be greater than a whole. (Reid 1785 [1969, 770])
> 



Thus Reid concludes that "[t]here is therefore a real intrinsic
excellence in some qualities of mind, as in power, knowledge, wisdom,
virtue, magnanimity," and that a mind in possession of such
qualities is therein really beautiful (Reid 1785 [1969, 771]).



When Reid enquires next after the perfections in virtue of which we
ascribe beauty to material objects, his account takes a Shaftesburian
turn. Reid revives Shaftesbury's distinction between original
and representative beauty (though he prefers the term
"derived" to "representative") and also
Shaftesbury's claim that the beauty of material objects derives
from the original beauty of minds. This allows him to maintain that
the perfections in virtue of which we attribute beauty to material
objects just are the perfections in virtue of which we attribute
beauty to minds. But whereas Shaftesbury simply infers without further
argument the reduction of material to mental beauty from the premise
that material beauty is the effect of mind, Reid takes up instance
after instance of material beauty, arguing with respect to each that
it is best understood as a "sign" of some instance of
mental beauty. The beauty we attribute to inanimate nature signifies
the wisdom and goodness of the mind that fashioned it for our use
(Reid 1785 [1969, 799-800]); the beauty we attribute to animals,
insofar as we regard them as minded, signifies "their instincts,
their appetites, their affections, their sagacity" (Reid
1785 [1969, 794]); the beauty we attribute to the human form signifies
either "some perfection of the body, as a part of the man, and
an instrument of the mind" or "some amiable quality or
attribute of the mind itself" (Reid 1785 [1969, 806]).



It may be objected that such a reduction of material to mental beauty
cannot serve Reid's case for realism, at least as it applies to
material objects. For it may seem that the beauty we attribute to
material objects can never be real, by Reid's lights, given that
no material object ever can have any of the mental perfections capable
of grounding beauty. But such an objection misses a subtlety of
Reid's position. Strictly speaking, material objects never are
beautiful. But this does not imply that the beauty that we attribute
to them never is real. It is real, at least generally, though strictly
speaking it belongs only to the minds that the material objects in
question signify. If it seems to us that these objects themselves
possess beauty, this is because beauty is prone to be
"transferred" or "communicated" from the minds
that really have it to the material objects that merely signify it
(Reid 1785 [1969, 788]). Reid never uses the term
"association" to refer to the mechanism by which beauty is
thus communicated from mental signified to material sign. But that he
does not distance himself from association--the mechanism by then
at the center of a great deal of theorizing about taste--makes it
hard to deny that it has found a positive role in his own theory.


## 2. Imagination Theories


### 2.1 Addison



Joseph Addison's theory of taste resides principally in the work
Addison refers to as his "essay on the pleasures of the
imagination" (Addison and Steele 1879, nos. 409 and 421). It
comprises eleven papers--nos. 411 through 421--appearing in
the journal *The Spectator* on successive days during the
summer of 1712. The timing of the essay's publication raises
questions about its relation to Shaftesbury's
*Characteristics*, which had appeared one year earlier. But it
is difficult to detect even a hint of Shaftesbury's theory of
taste in Addison's. That the two theories deeply oppose one
another might suggest that Addison's is a reaction against
Shaftesbury's. But Addison does not engage Shaftesbury: rather
he tends simply to assume what Shaftesbury simply denies and
vice-versa. Moreover Addison understood himself to be undertaking
something "entirely new" in advancing a theory of taste
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). It seems best to conclude,
therefore, that there are two original British theories of taste.
While it would be hard to say which was more influential, it is easy
to say that each was greatly so: every subsequent British theory of
taste, at least until the close of the Eighteenth Century, shows the
strong influence of one, the other, or both.



Addison's fundamental idea is that the pleasures of taste are
pleasures of the imagination. This should not be taken to imply that
Addison identifies taste with the imagination. Taste is a faculty of
judgment: it discerns the perfections of an author with pleasure
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 409). Imagination is a faculty of
representation: it represents things in images; it is the faculty of
visual representation (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 411). Hence
Addison's fundamental idea comes to this, apparently: taste
judges what the imagination represents; the perfections that taste
discerns with pleasure are perfections that things have as objects of
visual representation. But if objects of taste are objects of visual
representation, then objects of taste are first and foremost material
objects: mountain ranges, waterfalls, sexually attractive bodies are
among the paradigms Addison offers (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412).
It is here that the contrast with Shaftesbury becomes plain. It will
be recalled that Shaftesbury holds objects of taste to be first and
foremost objects of intellect, and that the fundamental difficulty
that his theory must overcome is to explain our intuition that
material objects are also capable of beauty. With Addison it is just
the reverse.



Addison distinguishes two classes of pleasures of the imagination:
primary pleasures, which derive from images of objects currently
present to sight; and secondary pleasures, which derive from images of
objects currently absent from sight and so called up before the mind
in some other way. He then divides primary pleasures into three
classes: those proceeding from the sight of what is great (or
sublime); those proceeding from the sight of what is novel; and those
proceeding from the sight of what is beautiful. A great object is one
so large as to strain the imagination's capacity to render it:
its apprehension flings the mind into a "pleasing
astonishment" and a "delightful stillness and
amazement" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A novel object is
one new or strange to their viewer; its apprehension "fills the
soul with an agreeable surprise" and "gratifies its
curiosity" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). A beautiful
object is either an object of sexual attraction or one possessing a
"gaiety or variety of colors" or "a symmetry or
proportion of parts" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412); the
apprehension of beautiful objects strikes the mind with a
"secret [i.e., inexplicable] satisfaction and complacency"
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412).



Addison's chief interest in secondary pleasures owes to their
comprising the pleasures of artistic representation: representational
artworks, he maintains, function centrally to call up mental images of
objects that are great, novel, or beautiful. So Homer excels in the
representation of great things, Virgil in the representation of
beautiful things, Ovid in the representation of novel things, and
Milton in the representation of all three (Addison and Steele 1879,
no. 417). But Addison acknowledges that this account of the pleasures
of artistic representation is so far incomplete; indeed he devotes a
good portion the latter part of the essay to its supplementation.



It seems clear, for starters, that our interest in artistic
representations is not exhausted by our interest in what they
represent: we take pleasure in the representations themselves as
representations. To supply this deficiency Addison proposes a "a
new principle of pleasure, which is nothing else but the action of the
mind, which compares the ideas that arise from [the representation],
with the ideas that arise from the objects themselves" (Addison
and Steele 1879, no. 418). The description of a beautiful scene
pleases us, according to this proposal, both for the beauty of the
scene and for "the aptness of the description to excite its
image" (Addison and Steele 1879, no 418). But Addison himself
seems less than fully convinced by this proposal, since there is no
reason to think of a pleasure arising from an act of comparison as a
pleasure of the imagination; such a pleasure, he concedes, "may
be more properly called the pleasure of the understanding"
(Addison and Steele 1879, no. 418).



A second deficiency concerns our interest in the artistic
representations of things positively disagreeable, such as our
interest in the performances of tragedies. The difficulty is that it
seems we ought always to prefer representations of the agreeable,
since they alone are capable of pleasing according to both principles
so far advanced. Hence Addison recruits a third principle of pleasure:
representations of the disagreeable please us by the contrast they
present between the disagreeable scene they represent and the
comparatively agreeable situation in which we find ourselves:



> 
> When we look on such hideous objects, we are not a little pleased to
> think that we are in no danger of them. We consider them at the same
> time, as dreadful and harmless; so that the more frightful appearance
> they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of
> our own safety. (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 418)
> 



A third perceived deficiency derives from the common intuition that
some pleasures of artistic representation derive from the
representation of purely intellectual objects, such as abstract moral,
critical, or scientific truths. Addison concedes the truth of this
intuition, but maintains that pleasures derived from the
representation of such intellectual objects are pleasures of taste
only insofar as the objects are represented metaphorically as having
material form:



> 
> a truth in the understanding is as it were reflected by the
> imagination; we are able to see something like color and shape in a
> notion, and to discover a scheme of thoughts traced upon matter.
> (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 421)
> 



The materialist basis of Addison's theory disposes it to a
relativism and so to an anti-realism with respect to the perfections
of taste, much as the intellectualist basis of the theories of
Shaftesbury and Reid disposes them to an absolutism and so to a
realism. Because the pleasures of taste are pleasures taken merely in
the visual representation of material objects, there is no reason to
think any creature capable of visual representation incapable of such
pleasures. But there is also no reason to think all creatures capable
of such pleasures capable of all the same pleasures from all the same
objects. Indeed there is every reason to think that



> 
> every different species of sensible creatures has its different
> notions of beauty, and ... each of them is most affected with the
> beauties of its own kind. (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412)
> 



Hence Addison concludes that "[t]here is not perhaps any real
beauty ... more in one piece of matter than another" and
that beauty--and also greatness and novelty,
presumably--exists in the mind merely merely (Addison and Steele
1879, nos. 412 and 413).


### 2.2 Burke



The conception of imagination at work in Edmund Burke's *A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
the Beautiful* (published in 1757 [1759]) is a successor to
Addison's, though it has undergone expansion along one dimension
and contraction along another.



The expansion presumably responds to a problem arising from the
application Addison's fundamental idea--the idea that the
pleasures of taste are pleasures of visual representation--to
objects that do not present themselves visually, such as literary and
musical works. With respect to such objects Addison is forced to
maintain either that they function mainly to prompt mental images of
objects that do present themselves visually, or that the pleasures
they afford are not mainly pleasures of taste (he takes the former
line with respect to literary works and the latter, apparently, with
respect to music (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 416)). It is presumably
to mitigate this difficulty that Burke adopts a conception of the
imagination that encompasses all five sense modalities. Thus whereas
for Addison one can imagine merely how things look, for Burke one can
also imagine how they sound, taste, smell, and feel. Though this
broadened conception is not unique to Burke, it is unlikely that any
other theorist of taste so fully exploits its breadth: each sense
modality has its moment in *A* *Philosophical Enquiry*,
from a section on the beauty of surfaces as revealed by touch (Burke
1757 [1990, 110-111]) to one on the sublimity of "Bitters and
Stenches" (Burke 1757 [1990, 78-79]).



The contraction also presumably responds to problem in Addison, this
time to an apparent inconsistency in the conception of imagination
itself. Addison opposes the pleasures of the imagination to the
pleasures of sense, on one hand, and to the pleasures of the
understanding, on the other (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 411). But he
also defines the pleasures of the imagination as those arising from
the visual representation of things, and allows that some of those
pleasures--those he calls "the primary pleasures of the
imagination"--arise from things present to vision (Addison
and Steele 1879, no. 411). Thus it becomes hard to say what the
opposition between the pleasures of sense and the pleasures of the
imagination can amount to. It is presumably to relieve this tension
that Burke recasts Addison's distinction between primary and
secondary pleasures of the imagination as a distinction between
"the primary pleasures of sense" and "the secondary
pleasures of the imagination" (Burke 1757 [1990, 22]).



It is a complicated question whether Burke takes the primary pleasures
of sense and the secondary pleasures of the imagination jointly to
exhaust the pleasures of taste. In the 1759 addition to *A
Philosophical Enquiry* (the "Introduction on Taste")
Burke allows that objects of the understanding constitute "a
very considerable part of what are considered objects of Taste"
(Burke 1757 [1990, 22]). But that objects of the understanding cannot be
objects of taste seems a guiding assumption of much of the rest of the
*Enquiry*: consider, for example, Burke's claim that it
is only as an object of the imagination, and specifically not as an
object of the understanding, that God can be found sublime (Burke
1757 [1990, 62]). It is worth noting, moreover, that in other respects
Burke's theory is more thoroughly materialist than
Addison's. Although Addison maintains that the pleasures of
taste are pleasures of the imagination, his explanations as to why
certain objects of imagination please are not particularly
materialist. He traces the pleasure we take in "an unbounded
view," for example, to our regarding it as "an image of
liberty" (Addison and Steele 1879, no. 412). Burke's
tendency, by contrast, is to explain the pleasures of sense and
imagination by appeal merely to our physical constitution. He holds
the delight we take in the viewing very large objects, for example, to
be a consequence of the retina's being struck, all at once or in
quick succession, by the relatively many light rays that very large
objects reflect (Burke 1757 [1990, 124-125]).



But Burke's chief innovation consists neither in his conception
of the imagination, nor in the extent of his materialism, but in his
theory of the perfections of taste. It will be recalled that Addison
posits three such perfections--sublimity (or greatness), novelty,
and beauty--though he offers no explanation as to why there
should be just these three. Burke argues, briefly, that novelty is too
superficial and ubiquitous to keep rightful company with sublimity and
beauty (Burke 1757 [1990, 29]). And he argues, at length, that sublimity
keeps rightful and exclusive company with beauty on the grounds that
it stands to one great class of human passions as beauty stands to the
other (Burke 1757 [1990, 30-50]). According to Burke's account of
the passions--which owes much to Hume's--most all
passions answer either to the ends of society or to the ends of
self-preservation (Burke 1757 [1990, 35-36]). Moreover, all societal passions
"turn" on pleasure, that is, each has either pleasure or
its felt absence as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 37]). The societal
passion of love has pleasure as a constituent, for example, while the
societal passion of grief has the felt absence of pleasure as a
constituent (Burke 1757 [1990, 34-35, 39]). All self-preservative
passions, by contrast, "turn" on pain, that is, each has
either pain or its felt absence of pain as a constituent (Burke 1757 [1990,
37]). The self-preservative passion of simple terror has pain as a
constituent, for example, while the self-preservative passion of
astonishment--a passion which arises when pain threatens though
from a relatively safe distance, and which combines feelings of
sobriety, awe, and "tranquility shadowed with
horror"--has the felt absence of pain as a constituent
(Burke 1757 [1990, 32, 36-37, 53]). Thus there are both desirable and
undesirable societal passions and desirable and undesirable
self-preservative passions. The beautiful is that which excites the
desirable societal passion of love, the sublime that which excites the
desirable self-preservative passion of astonishment (Burke 1757 [1990,
36-37, 39, 53]). The objective foundations of beauty and sublimity turn
out to be largely opposing: whereas the beautiful tends to the small,
the smooth, the various, the delicate, the clear, and the bright, the
sublime tends to the great, the uniform, the powerful, the obscure,
and the somber. Hence Burke concludes that:



> 
> [t]he ideas of the sublime and the beautiful stand on foundations so
> different, that it is hard ... to think of reconciling them in
> the same subject, without considerably lessening the effect of the one
> or the other upon the passions. (Burke 1757 [1990, 103])
> 



The impact of Burke's aesthetic dualism was immediate. Before
its appearance, the sublime could be ignored: there is almost no
mention of it in Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, or Hume. Afterward it could
not be: indeed the major theorists of the second half of the
century--Reid, Alison, and Kant--all advance substantial
theories of the sublime. But toward the century's end
Burke's dualism began to come under pressure, not from those who
thought two perfections too many, but from those who thought it too
few. Uvedale Price, following suggestions in the writings of William
Gilpin, argued that there are objects--landscapes,
paradigmatically--which please the eye, but which can be
considered neither beautiful nor sublime. These objects cannot be
considered sublime because they need not be grand (Price 1796,
106-107); they cannot be considered beautiful because they are
not smooth, their pleasure depending on "sudden protuberance,
and lines that cross each other in a sudden and broken manner"
(Price 1796, 61-62). Because the play of form, color, light, and
shadow afforded by such objects renders them ideal subjects for
painting and drawing, Gilpin referred to them as
"picturesque" (Gilpin 1794, 3-5). By the end of the
century, the picturesque came to be regarded widely as occupying the
position vacated by the novel, i.e., that of a third perfection of
taste.


## 3. Association Theories


### 3.1 Gerard



Alexander Gerard's theory of taste, advanced in his 1759
*Essay on Taste*, is an attempt to mediate, or perhaps to
transcend, the dispute between internal-sense and imagination
theorists.



Gerard accepts as sound Hutcheson's argument for the internal
sensibility of taste: that the perceptions of taste are simple, that
they arise immediately, and that they arise necessarily, show taste to
be a sense; that they are separate from and consequent upon those of
external sense and reflection show taste to be internal (Gerard 1759,
160-161). But Gerard rejects what Hutcheson regards as a
corollary--that taste is an ultimate or irreducible power.
Hutcheson may have taken the irreducibility of taste to follow from
the simplicity of its perceptions. Or he may have taken the
irreducibility of taste to follow, by analogy, from the irreducibility
of the external senses. But whether taste is irreducible depends
merely on whether its perceptions can be traced to some more basic
mental power. Gerard believes that they can be: in fact he believes
that they can all be traced to "certain exertions" of the
more basic power of the imagination (Gerard 1759, 167). Thus while
taste is "itself a species of sensation ... in respect of
its principles, [it is] justly reduced to imagination" (Gerard
1759, 160).



But what Gerard means by "imagination" is not what either
Addison or Burke means, though it is not wholly unrelated either.
Officially at least, Gerard follows Addison and Burke in regarding
imagination as a representational power and in opposing imagination to
sense. But Gerard breaks from Addison and Burke crucially in also
opposing imagination to memory. This allows him to group sense and
memory together as representational powers that purport to present
ideas in correspondence with reality and to isolate imagination as the
representational power that does not. That imagination is thus
untethered from reality does not, however, imply its utter
lawlessness. It is governed by roughly Humean laws of association,
according to which it



> 
> associat[es] chiefly ideas which *resemble*, or are
> *contrary*, or those that are conjoined, either merely by
> *custom*, or by the connection of their objects in
> *vicinity*, *coexistence*, or *causation*. (p.
> 168)
> 



Hence another way of putting the contrast between sense and memory, on
the one hand, and imagination, on the other, is to say that the former
present ideas according to "real bonds of union" whereas
the latter presents ideas according to laws of association (Gerard
1759, 167). In this way association becomes an essential element of
imagination. Indeed on Gerard's view there seems, unofficially
at least, to be no real difference between association and
imagination--at most imagination is the locus of association.



So when Gerard claims that the perceptions of taste can be traced to
"certain exertions of *imagination*," the exertions
he has in mind are acts of association. The idea, roughly, is this.
The reducibility of taste implies that the perceptions of taste, which
are pleasures, are not natural to their objects in the way Hutcheson,
for example, supposed. Objects of taste must, in other words, acquire
their pleasurability, and association is the mechanism by which they
do so. Just how they do so varies, and the variations are too numerous
for cataloguing here. There is, however, a basic mechanism to which
Gerard recurs often in his explanations. It seems that the mind forges
very strong associations between its own processes and their objects,
such that any pleasure natural to a mental process will transfer to
its object. It also seems that any process that requires the mind
"to exert its activity, and put forth its strength, in order to
surmount any difficulty," is naturally pleasurable, as is the
mind's consciousness of its success in surmounting any
difficulty (Gerard 1759, 3). Hence any object whose processing is
difficult enough to require the relevant exertion, but not so
difficult as to prevent its success, will give pleasure (Gerard 1759,
3-4). Novel objects give pleasure because their unfamiliarity
renders their conception just difficult enough (Gerard 1759,
5-6). Sublime objects give pleasure because their sheer scale
renders their conception just difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 14).
Imitations give pleasure because marking resemblances between them and
their originals is just difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 49-51).
And ridiculous (that is, humorous) objects give pleasure because
marking dissonance or inconsistency amongst their elements is just
difficult enough (Gerard 1759, 66-69).



In these and similar ways Gerard reduces internal sense to
imagination. An important consequence of the reduction is that it
allows Gerard to be neutral on the question of the primacy of the
intellectual or the material with respect to objects of taste, over
which internal-sense theorists and imagination theorists had divided.
Gerard, unique among the major British theorists of his century, shows
no inclination to make one sort of object prior to the other. Indeed,
within the essay's first pages he offers a rural prospect, a
scientific discovery, a philosophical theory, a poem, and a painting,
all as equally uncontroversial examples of objects of taste (Gerard
1759, 6).


### 3.2 Alison



Archibald Alison, whose *Essays on the Nature and Principles of
Taste* first appeared in 1790, follows after Gerard in several
respects. He follows after Gerard in holding that objects of taste are
not naturally pleasurable, as Hutcheson had supposed, and so follows
after Gerard in holding that objects of taste must acquire their
pleasurability from something else that is naturally pleasurable. He
follows after Gerard, moreover, in holding that this acquisition
depends centrally on association, and follows after Gerard, finally,
in holding that the naturally pleasurable something else is--at
least typically and at least in part--a mental operation of some
sort. But he departs from Gerard regarding both the role of
association and the identity of the naturally pleasurable mental
operation. Whereas Gerard holds association merely to be a vehicle by
which pleasurability is transmitted from the naturally pleasurable
mental operation to the object of taste, Alison holds association also
to be the central mental operation from which pleasurability is
transmitted to the object taste.



The process by which Alison takes the object of taste to acquire its
pleasurability is complicated. It begins with the object's
eliciting some simple emotion, such as, cheerfulness, tenderness,
melancholy, solemnity, elevation, terror, delicacy, grace, dignity, or
majesty (Alison 1811, 57-58, 66). This simple emotion then
awakens a train of associated ideas such that each idea is emotionally
charged and each is united to each by a single associative principle,
usually the principle of resemblance (Alison 1811, 53-57). The
awakening of such a train of ideas is commonly known as "the
seizing of the imagination" and is naturally attended with a
simple pleasure (Alison 1811, 8, 103). This pleasure combines with the
pleasure attending the emotion that awakens the train, and with the
pleasures attending the emotions that arise from the ideas
constituting the train, to form the complex pleasures attending the
complex emotions of taste, namely, the emotions of beauty and of
sublimity. The claim that the pleasures of beauty and sublimity are in
this way complex is an important one, in that it obviates any need to
posit a special internal sense by which the pleasures of taste
arise:



> 
> The pleasure ... which accompanies the emotions of taste, may be
> considered not as a simple, but as a complex pleasure; and as arising
> not from any separate and peculiar sense, but from the union of the
> pleasure of SIMPLE EMOTION, with that which is annexed, by the
> constitution of the human mind, to the exercise of IMAGINATION.
> (Alison 1811, 103)
> 



When the object of taste is a material object the process by which it
becomes pleasurable is more complicated still. The complication is
that material objects are not naturally productive of any emotion;
they are often naturally productive of simple pleasures and pains, but
these are sensations merely. Yet it cannot be doubted that material
objects often do produce the complex emotions of beauty and sublimity,
and so must also produce the simple emotions that initiate unified
trains of ideas of emotion. Hence, material objects, in order to
acquire the capacity to produce the complex pleasures of taste, must
first acquire the capacity to produce simple emotions. They do so,
according to Alison, by coming to signify, through association,
qualities of mind that are naturally productive of emotion (Alison
1811, 105-107). These include both active and passive qualities
of mind,



> 
> [both] its powers or capacities, as beneficence, wisdom, fortitude,
> invention, fancy, &c. [and] its feelings and affections, as love,
> joy, hope, gratitude, purity, fidelity, innocence, &c. In the
> observation or belief of these qualities of mind, we are formed, by
> the original and moral constitution of our nature, to experience
> various and powerful emotions. (Alison 1811, 418)
> 



Just how material qualities come to be associated, and hence to
signify, such qualities of mind is a topic Alison considers in great
detail, devoting separate and sometimes lengthy chapters to the
sublimity and beauty of sounds (Alison 1811, 113-163), of colors
(Alison 1811, 163-176), of forms (Alison 1811, 176-310),
of motion (Alison 1811, 310-315), and of the human countenance
and form (Alison 1811, 315-417).



Of course the doctrine that the beauty of matter derives from the
beauty of mind is not new to Alison, who acknowledges a particular
debt to Reid:



> 
> The opinion I have now stated coincides, in a great degree, with a
> DOCTRINE that appears very early to have been distinguished the
> PLATONIC school; ... which has been maintained in this country,
> by several writers of eminence--by Lord Shaftesbury, Dr.
> Hutcheson, Dr. Akenside, and Dr. Spence, but which has no where so
> firmly and so philosophically been maintained as by Dr. Reid in his
> invaluable work ON THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS OF MAN. The doctrine to
> which I allude, is, that matter is not beautiful in itself, but
> derives its beauty from the expression of MIND. (Alison 1811, 418)
> 



What is perhaps new, at least to eighteenth-century Britain, is
Alison's thorough uncoupling of this Platonic doctrine from that
of internal sense.



Alison's theory of taste, perhaps more than any other here
considered, is apt to strike the present-day aesthetician as alien to
her concerns. But it is perhaps not so alien. Alison differs from his
present-day counterpart by defining the qualities she now terms
"aesthetic" according to the distinctive emotions he takes
each to produce. Hence many of Alison's claims about the
emotions of beauty and sublimity and about the simple emotions on
which these depend can be translated into claims about aesthetic
qualities. Consider, for example, the claim--central and
distinctive to Alison's theory--that the emotions of beauty
and sublimity depend on simple emotions such as delicacy, grace,
dignity, and majesty. Surely it is a precursor to present-day claims
about the dependence--e.g., the supervenience--of
comparatively evaluative aesthetic qualities on comparatively
descriptive aesthetic qualities.