 Gerard accepts as sound Hutcheson’s argument for the internal sensibility of taste: that the perceptions of taste are simple, that they arise immediately, and that they arise necessarily, show taste to be a sense; that they are separate from and consequent upon those of external sense and reflection show taste to be internal (Gerard 1759, 160–161). But Gerard rejects what Hutcheson regards as a corollary—that taste is an ultimate or irreducible power. Hutcheson may have taken the irreducibility of taste to follow from the simplicity of its perceptions. Or he may have taken the irreducibility of taste to follow, by analogy, from the irreducibility of the external senses. But whether taste is irreducible depends merely on whether its perceptions can be traced to some more basic mental power. Gerard believes that they can be: in fact he believes that they can all be traced to “certain exertions” of the more basic power of the imagination (Gerard 1759, 167). Thus while taste is “itself a species of sensation … in respect of its principles, [it is] justly reduced to imagination” (Gerard 1759, 160).