"Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

But perhaps I have gone too far in saying, that a cultivated
taste for the polite arts extinguishes the passions, and
renders us indifferent to those objects, which are so fondly
pursued by the rest of mankind. On farther reflection, I find,
that it rather improves our sensibility for all the tender and
agreeable passions; at the same time that it renders the mind
incapable of the rougher and more boisterous emotions.

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes,

Emollit mores, nec sinit isse feros.

For this, I think there may be assigned two very natural
reasons. In the first place, nothing is so improving to the
temper as the study of the beauties, either of poetry,
eloquence, music, or painting. They give a certain elegance of
sentiment to which the rest of mankind are strangers. The
emotions which they excite are soft and tender. They draw off
the mind from the hurry of business and interest; cherish
reflection; dispose to tranquillity; and produce an agreeable
melancholy, which, of all dispositions of the mind, is the
best suited to love and friendship.

In the second place, a delicacy of taste is favourable to love
and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and
making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the
greater part of men. You will seldom find, that mere men of
the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are
very nice in distinguishing characters, or in marking those
insensible differences and gradations, which make one man
preferable to another. Any one, that has competent sense, is
sufficient for their entertainment: They talk to him, of their
pleasure and affairs, with the same frankness that they would
to another; and finding many, who are fit to supply his place,
they never feel any vacancy or want in his absence. But to
make use of the allusion of a celebrated French[2] author, the
judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most
ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours; but the most
elaborate alone can point out the minutes and seconds, and
distinguish the smallest differences of time. One that has
well digested his knowledge both of books and men, has little
enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He
feels too sensibly, how much all the rest of mankind fall
short of the notions which he has entertained. And, his
affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no
wonder he carries them further, than if they were more general
and undistinguished. The gaiety and frolic of a bottle
companion improves with him into a solid friendship: And the
ardours of a youthful appetite become an elegant passion.