[66] [Cf. Critique of Pure Reason, Methodology, c. 1, § 1. “The construction of a concept is the a priori presentation of the corresponding intuition.”]
[67] [Charles Batteux (1713–1780), author of Les Beaux Arts reduits à un même principe.]
[68] [Essay XVIII, The Sceptic. “Critics can reason and dispute more plausibly than cooks or perfumers. We may observe, however, that this uniformity among human kind, hinders not, but that there is a considerable diversity in the sentiments of beauty and worth, and that education, custom, prejudice, caprice, and humour, frequently vary our taste of this kind.... Beauty and worth are merely of a relative nature, and consist in an agreeable sentiment, produced by an object in a particular mind, according to the peculiar structure and constitution of that mind.”]
[69] [For the distinction, an important one in Kant, between judgements of experience and judgements of perception, see his Prolegomena, § 18. Cf. Kant’s Critical Philosophy for English Readers, vol. i. p. 116.]
[70] [First Edition has “limited.”]
[71] In order to be justified in claiming universal assent for an aesthetical judgement that rests merely on subjective grounds, it is sufficient to assume, (1) that the subjective conditions of the Judgement, as regards the relation of the cognitive powers thus put into activity to a cognition in general, are the same in all men. This must be true, because otherwise men would not be able to communicate their representations or even their knowledge. (2) The judgement must merely have reference to this relation (consequently to the formal condition of the Judgement) and be pure, i.e. not mingled either with concepts of the Object or with sensations, as determining grounds. If there has been any mistake as regards this latter condition, then there is only an inaccurate application of the privilege, which a law gives us, to a particular case; but that does not destroy the privilege itself in general.
[72] [Kant lays down these three maxims in his Introduction to Logic, § vii., as “general rules and conditions of the avoidance of error.”]
[73] We soon see that although enlightenment is easy in thesi, yet in hypothesi it is difficult and slow of accomplishment. For not to be passive as regards Reason, but to be always self-legislative, is indeed quite easy for the man who wishes only to be in accordance with his essential purpose, and does not desire to know what is beyond his Understanding. But since we can hardly avoid seeking this, and there are never wanting others who promise with much confidence that they are able to satisfy our curiosity, it must be very hard to maintain in or restore to the mind (especially the mind of the public) that bare negative which properly constitutes enlightenment.
[74] We may designate Taste as sensus communis aestheticus, common Understanding as sensus communis logicus.
[75] [Peter Camper (1722–1789), a celebrated naturalist and comparative anatomist; for some years professor at Groningen.]