Our natural powers, which have to do with external objects, are the senses, the imagination and the judgement. As for the senses, since their organs are nearly the same in all men, we must suppose that the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the same, or very nearly the same. Otherwise we should be abandoned to a scepticism which would make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous. Further, it must be allowed that every object excites identical pleasures and pains in all mankind. Thus, all concur in calling sweetness pleasant and bitterness unpleasant, except where the palate is vitiated by habit or by malady.
Light is to all more pleasing than darkness, and summer more agreeable than winter.
It is the chief province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears, hopes and of all our passions. It is addicted to resemblances, and thus develops similitudes, metaphors and analogies, which appeal immediately to all men. But a real disagreement in matters of taste arises in the province of the judgment. Many works of imagination are not confined to the representation of sensible objects, nor to affecting the passions, but extend also to the manners, characters, actions and designs of men, and to their virtues and vices, and thus come within the province of judgement, which is improved by attention and by the habit of reasoning. Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy and to the world for our instruction in these matters.