they are, like all others, acquired: the judgment he forms, is founded
upon experience, whether true or false,--this depends upon his
conformation, and upon the habits that have modified him. The infant has
no ideas either of the Divinity or of virtue; it is from those who
instruct him that he receives these ideas; he makes more or less use of
them, according to his natural organization, or as his dispositions have
been more or less exercised. Nature gives man legs, the nurse teaches
him their use, his agility depends upon their natural conformation, and
the manner in which he exercises them.

What is called _taste_, in the fine arts, is to be attributed, in the
same manner, only to the acuteness of man's organs, practised by the
habit of seeing, of comparing, of judging certain objects; from whence
results, to some of his species, the faculty of judging with great
rapidity, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole with its various
relations. It is by the force of seeing, of feeling, of experiencing
objects, that he attains to a knowledge of them; it is in consequence of
reiterating this experience, that he acquires the power, that he gains
the habit of judging with celerity. But this experience is by no means
innate, he did not possess it before he was born; he is neither able to
think, to judge, nor to have ideas, before he has feeling; he is neither
in a capacity to love, nor to hate; to approve, nor to blame, before he
has been moved, either agreeably or disagreeably. Nevertheless, this is
precisely what must be supposed by those who are desirous to make man
admit of innate ideas, of opinions; infused by Nature, whether in
morals, metaphysics, or any other science. That his mind should have the
faculty of thought, that it should occupy itself with an object, it is
requisite it should be acquainted with its qualities; that it may have a
knowledge of these qualities, it is necessary some of his senses should
have been struck by them: those objects, therefore, of which he does not