Page:Selected Orations Swedish Academy 1792.djvu/39

  ON TASTE AND POLITE LITERATURE, BY  .

the opinions of mankind are unstable, wavering, and contradictory; if two persons, whose manner of thinking perfectly coincides, are as difficult to be found, as two whose features have a perfect resemblance, there seems at first view to be no subject, to which this observation is more apposite, than to Taste and the Belles Lettres. There are sciences, which, founded on the clearest evidence of our senses, are certain not only in their principles, but in their consequences. There are others, in which experience has rendered at least some truths indisputable. History, which rests