 Hume’s contrast of vulgar and refined taste parallels his general treatment of the doxastic positions of the vulgar and the wise (T, 150; EHU, 110). Vulgar thinking is dominated by “the first influence of general rules” upon the mind. Such rules are instinctively but “rashly formed” to regulate the imagination. If these rules are allowed to govern thought in the absence of further reflection and refinement, the result is prejudice instead of wisdom. (T, 146,150) The wise, in contrast, take care to survey the broadest possible range of experience, allowing a “second influence of general rules” to supplant the first. In this manner, the “capricious and uncertain” ideas of the vulgar give way to “the more general and authentic operations of the understanding” and the superior judgments of the wise (T, 150). As for the normative question of why the refined judgments of the wise are preferable to the rash prejudices of the vulgar, Hume is content that moral sense assigns approbation to the “original instincts” underlying moral and aesthetic taste (T, 619).