In his short article, 'Of the Standard of Taste', David Hume says that we have two commonsense beliefs with regard to judgements of taste: (A) A thousand different sentiments excited by the same objects are all equally right, because no sentiment represents anything which is really in the object. Beauty is no quality in things themselves. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty. (B) There are certain general principles of approbation or blame, and there are genuine judgements of taste. Whoever would assert an equality of genius and elegance between Ogilby and Milton wouldn't be regarded as a man of taste. Hume then goes on to say that (A) opposes (B), while denying neither of them. Is this a slip of the pen, or does he really think (A) opposes (B) while thinking they are both true? Does (A) really oppose (B)? If it does, how? In this paper I would like to show that (A) and (B) are not contradictory (as Hume might have thought they were), and discuss whether beauty, which is subsumed under the class of secondary qualities by Hume, is really a secondary quality.

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