466 OBSERVATIONS ON SCULPTURE. 
principle, or affection of mind, to be the founda- 
tion of all the emotions we receive from the 
objects of taste ; and which resolves therefore all 
the various phenomena, into some more general 
law of our intellectual or moral constitution. Of 
this kind are the hypothesis of M. Diderot, who 
attributes all the emotions of this kind to the per- 
ception of relation: of Mr. Hume, who resolves 
them into our sense of utility: of the venerable 
St. Austin, who, a thousand years ago, resolved 
them into the pleasure which belongs to the per- 
ception of order and design. It is the species of 
hypothesis most natural to retired and philosophic 
minds: to those whose habits have led them to 
attend more to the nature of the emotions they 
feel, than to the causes which produce them. 
But I am not inclined to entangle myself in 
theories, which are plainly founded upon a sim- 
plicity of the emotion of taste ; nor yet to analyze 
them, to shew that this s¢mplicity is very little 
reconcileable with the most common experience 
of human feeling. I shall proceed at once to the 
consideration of the object or design in the mind 
‘of the Sculptor, and the principles of taste, which 
ought to govern us in our judgment of his works. 
