[Note in Baxter's Life of Himself]
1820.
Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder writers Hooker Taylor Baxter in short almost any of the folios composed from Edward VI. to Charles II. I note:
1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole pleasure passively from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of curiosity or of some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your pleasure, an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your own mind. All else is picture sunshine.
2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect how many and how momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men. Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as they now feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in dispute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at all.
3. It will secure you from the narrow idolatry of the present times and fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages; wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither anticipate the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life of reason in the present.
4. In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the medio tutis simus ibis is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all the attempts as those of Baxter, though no more were required than 'I believe in God through Christ,' prove only the mildness of the proposer's temper, but as a rule would be either equal to nothing, at least exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter of religion to declare themselves atheists, or else be just as fruitful a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could be framed by a Spanish Inquisition. For to 'believe' must mean to believe aright and 'God' must mean the true God and 'Christ' the Christ in the sense and with the attributes understood by Christians who are truly Christians. An established church with a liturgy is the sufficient solution of the problem de jure magistratus. Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his Maker! They are therefore, in this sense, merely superfluous; not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done away with; not worth removing now that they exist.
5. The characteristic contra-distinction between the speculative reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this: the former cultivated metaphysics without, or neglecting empirical, psychology: the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect and contempt of metaphysics. Both, therefore, are almost equi-distant from true philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies to prayer, &c. in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also Luther's Table Talk.
6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I. was almost incredibly low.
[Fragment of an Essay on Taste]
1810.
The same arguments that decide the question, whether taste has any fixed principles, may probably lead to a determination of what those principles are. First then, what is taste in its metaphorical sense, or, which will be the easiest mode of arriving at the same solution, what is there in the primary sense of the word, which may give to its metaphorical meaning an import different from that of sight or hearing, on the one hand, and of touch or smell on the other? And this question seems the more natural, because in correct language we confine beauty, the main subject of taste, to objects of sight and combinations of sounds, and never, except sportively or by abuse of words, speak of a beautiful flavour or a beautiful scent.
Now the analysis of our senses in the commonest books of anthropology has drawn our attention to the distinction between the perfectly organic, and the mixed senses; the first presenting objects, as distinct from the perception; the last as blending the perception with the sense of the object. Our eyes and ears (I am not now considering what is or is not the case really, but only that of which we are regularly conscious as appearances,) our eyes most often appear to us perfect organs of the sentient principle, and wholly in action, and our hearing so much more so than the three other senses, and in all the ordinary exertions of that sense, perhaps, equally so with the sight, that all languages place them in one class, and express their different modifications by nearly the same metaphors. The three remaining senses appear in part passive, and combine with the perception of the outward object a distinct sense of our own life. Taste, therefore, as opposed to vision and sound, will teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a certain reference of any given object to our own being, and not merely a distinct notion of the object as in itself, or in its independent properties. From the sense of touch, on the other hand, it is distinguishable by adding to this reference to our vital being some degree of enjoyment, or the contrary, some perceptible impulse from pleasure or pain to complacency or dislike. The sense of smell, indeed, might perhaps have furnished a metaphor of the same import with that of taste; but the latter was naturally chosen by the majority of civilized nations on account of the greater frequency, importance, and dignity of its employment or exertion in human nature.
By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must be supposed to mean an intellectual perception of any object blended with a distinct reference to our own sensibility of pain or pleasure, or, vice versa, a sense of enjoyment or dislike co-instantaneously combined with, and appearing to proceed from, some intellectual perception of the object; intellectual perception, I say; for otherwise it would be a definition of taste in its primary rather than in its metaphorical sense. Briefly, taste is a metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses, and applied to objects of the more purely organic senses, and of our moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of immediate personal dislike or complacency. In this definition of taste, therefore, is involved the definition of fine arts, namely, as being such the chief and discriminative purpose of which it is to gratify the taste, that is, not merely to connect, but to combine and unite, a sense of immediate pleasure in ourselves, with the perception of external arrangement.
The great question, therefore, whether taste in any one of the fine arts has any fixed principle or ideal, will find its solution in the ascertainment of two facts: first, whether in every determination of the taste concerning any work of the fine arts, the individual does not, with or even against the approbation of his general judgment, involuntarily claim that all other minds ought to think and feel the same; whether the common expressions, 'I dare say I may be wrong, but that is my particular taste;' are uttered as an offering of courtesy, as a sacrifice to the undoubted fact of our individual fallibility, or are spoken with perfect sincerity, not only of the reason but of the whole feeling, with the same entireness of mind and heart, with which we concede a right to every person to differ from another in his preference of bodily tastes and flavours. If we should find ourselves compelled to deny this, and to admit that, notwithstanding the consciousness of our liability to error, and in spite of all those many individual experiences which may have strengthened the consciousness, each man does at the moment so far legislate for all men, as to believe of necessity that he is either right or wrong, and that if it be right for him, it is universally right, we must then proceed to ascertain: secondly, whether the source of these phenomena is at all to be found in those parts of our nature, in which each intellect is representative of all, and whether wholly, or partially. No person of common reflection demands even in feeling, that what tastes pleasant to him ought to produce the same effect on all living beings; but every man does and must expect and demand the universal acquiescence of all intelligent beings in every conviction of his understanding. ...