_Proposed Investigation._--As this is a matter of some importance to a correct psychology, and also of much difference of opinion, it seems necessary, for purposes of science, to investigate somewhat carefully the nature of this form of mental activity. It is not a matter to be settled by authority, by arbitrary definition, or dogmatic assertion. We must look at the views and opinions of others, and at the reasons for those opinions. _Definitions._--As preliminary to such investigation, I shall present some of the definitions of taste, given by the more prominent writers, representing each of the leading views already indicated. Blair defines it "a power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and art." Montesquieu, a French author of distinction, defines it "something which attaches us to certain objects by the power of an internal sense or feeling." Gerard, author of an Essay on Taste, makes it consist in the improvement of the internal senses, viz., sense of novelty, sublimity, beauty, imitation, harmony, etc. Accordant with this are the lines of Akenside: "What, then, is taste but those internal powers, Active and strong, and feelingly alive To each fine impulse?" _Nature of these Definitions._--The definitions now given, it will be perceived, make taste a matter of _sensibility_, of mere _feeling_, a sensation or sense, a passive faculty of being pleased with the beauties of nature and art. _Another Class of Definitions._--Differing from this, others have carefully distinguished between the rational and emotional elements, the power of _discriminating_ and the power of _feeling_, and have made taste to consist properly in the former. Of this class is Brown. McDermot also takes the same view. This author, in his critical dissertation on the nature and principles of taste, defines it as the _power of discriminating_ those qualities of sensible and intellectual being, which, from the invisible harmony that exists between them and our nature, excite in us pleasant emotions. The emotion, however, though it may be the parent of taste, he would not regard as a constituent element of it.