 But Shaftesbury does not rest with the claim that it is the mind that grasps beauty: he adds the claim that it is by a “mental” or “inward” sense that the mind does so. Though it is difficult to know just what Shaftesbury takes this claim to come to, the general idea is that the faculty by which the mind discerns beauty has enough in common with external sense to warrant the term “sense” and to be regarded as no less natural (or basic) than external sense. In The Moralists he observes that the discernment of beauty has the immediacy of external sensation and so must be regarded as natural as external sensation. No sooner is an object of the right kind placed before the mind