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OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES * . - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 4 Familiar Letters; Miscellaneous Pieces; The Temple of Gnidus; A Defence of the Spirit of Laws [1777]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES* .

Among the faculties of the mind are genius, good sense, discernment, justness, capacity, and taste.

The existence of these faculties consists in having the organs well constituted relatively to the things to which these faculties are applied. If this disposition of mind is very particular, it is named a talent or capacity for any thing; if it has an intimate connection with certain delicate pleasures, it is called taste; if it is a disposition or turn peculiar to a people, it is called their spirit; as the art of war and agriculture among the Romans, hunting among the savages, &c.

[* ]The title of this article is, De l’Esprit, a word which includes not only the mind, but almost all its faculties. Indeed the difference of the two languages renders it perhaps impossible to do justice to our author in translating this essay.