 The process by which Alison takes the object of taste to acquire its pleasurability is complicated. It begins with the object’s eliciting some simple emotion, such as, cheerfulness, tenderness, melancholy, solemnity, elevation, terror, delicacy, grace, dignity, or majesty (Alison 1811, 57–58, 66). This simple emotion then awakens a train of associated ideas such that each idea is emotionally charged and each is united to each by a single associative principle, usually the principle of resemblance (Alison 1811, 53–57). The awakening of such a train of ideas is commonly known as “the seizing of the imagination” and is naturally attended with a simple pleasure (Alison 1811, 8, 103). This pleasure combines with the pleasure attending the emotion that awakens the train, and with the pleasures attending the emotions that arise from the ideas constituting the train, to form the complex pleasures attending the complex emotions of taste, namely, the emotions of beauty and of sublimity. The claim that the pleasures of beauty and sublimity are in this way complex is an important one, in that it obviates any need to posit a special internal sense by which the pleasures of taste arise: