Duff, William (1732-1815)

An Essay on Original Genius

London

Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly

1767

"In this department, reason reassumes the reins, points out and prescribes the flight of fancy, assigns the office, and determines the authority of taste, which, as we have already observed, must here be contented to act a secondary part."

This internal power of perception, which we distinguish by the name of TASTE, and which we have shewn to be so necessary for enabling us to judge properly concerning works of imagination, does not appear to be requisite, in the same degree, in the researches of Science. In this department, reason reassumes the reins, points out and prescribes the flight of fancy, assigns the office, and determines the authority of taste, which, as we have already observed, must here be contented to act a secondary part. In philosophical speculations a constant appeal is made to the faculty of Reason, not to that of Imagination; principles are laid down, arguments are adduced, phenomena are explained, and their consequences investigated. Hence it follows, that in the whole process judgment is much more exercised than taste. Yet some scope is also afforded for the exercise of the latter faculty; for as all discoveries in Science are the work of imagination, which will be afterwards particularly shewn; so taste may be very properly exerted in the illustration of those discoveries which have obtained the sanction of reason; provided that, in this case, taste and imagination act under the direction, and submit to the controling power of judgment.
(pp. 16-7)

Animals::Reins Animals::Flight

C-H Lion

2 entries in ESTC (1767).

Text from William Duff, An Essay on Original Genius; and its Various Modes of Exertion in Philosophy and the Fine Arts, Particularly in Poetry (London: Printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1767). <Link to ESTC>

07/01/2013