Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/237

 any of them, would represent a state of great mental happiness, ultimately deduced from all the sensible pleasures, and in which, notwithstanding, the person himself distinguishes no traces of any of these. And, agreeably to this, light, brightness, and whiteness, are often put for perfection, purity, and happiness, as obscurity, blackness, and darkness, are for imperfection and misery. Besides white, there are other compound colours, which bear little or no resemblance to any of the primary ones, as well as many in which some primary colour is evidently predominant. These represent the several kinds and degrees of inferior compound pleasures, some of which are, according to common estimation, quite foreign to the senses, whilst others are manifestly tinged with pleasant sensations, and their miniatures.

If the moderate agitations which light causes in bodies, when it is by them reflected back upon, or transmitted to, other bodies, be supposed to correspond to pleasant vibrations in the nervous system, and the greater agitations, which it excites in those that absorb it, to the violent vibrations in which pain consists; then the colours of natural bodies, some of which incline to light, and some to darkness, and that with all the possible varieties and mixtures of the primary colours, may be considered as the language by which they express that mixture of pleasures and pains in human life, to which their agitations are supposed to correspond. And here again we may observe, that though there are some natural bodies, which absorb and stifle within themselves almost all the light which they receive, and which accordingly are dark, black, and unpleasant to the beholders, yet the greatest part of natural bodies either reflect lively colours, or reflect some, and transmit others, or transmit all the colours freely. And this type is also, in part, the thing typified, inasmuch as agreeable and disagreeable colours make part of the original pleasures and pains of human life.

Compound tastes may likewise illustrate association, as above noted under the 12th proposition: for where the number of ingredients is very great, as in Venice treacle, no one can be tasted distinctly; whence the compound appears to bear no relation to its component parts. It is to be observed farther, that ingredients which are separately disagreeable, often enter compounds, whose tastes are highly agreeable. Now in these cases either the opposite tastes must coalesce into one, which pleases from the prepollence of agreeable tastes upon the whole, as soon as the association is cemented sufficiently, or else the disagreeable tastes must, by frequent repetition, fall within the limits of pleasure at last; which seems rather to be the truth.

The similarity of the three instances of this scholium arises from the analogy of our senses to each other, and to our frame in general; which is the sum total of all our senses. And, conversely, they confirm this analogy.