Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/297

 The pleasant tastes, and smells, and the fine colours of fruits and flowers, the melody of birds, and the grateful warmth or coolness of the air, in the proper seasons, transfer miniatures of these pleasures upon rural scenes, which start up instantaneously so mixed with each other, and with such as will be immediately enumerated, as to be separately indiscernible.

If there be a precipice, a cataract, a mountain of snow, &c. in one part of the scene, the nascent ideas of fear and horror magnify and enliven all the other ideas, and by degrees pass into pleasures by suggesting the security from pain.

In like manner the grandeur of some scenes, and the novelty of others, by exciting surprise and wonder, i.e. by making a great difference in the preceding and subsequent states of mind, so as to border upon, or even enter the limits of pain, may greatly enhance the pleasure.

Uniformity and variety in conjunction are also principal sources of the pleasures of beauty, being made so partly by their association with the beauties of nature, partly by that with the works of art, and with the many conveniences which we receive from the uniformity and variety of the works of nature and art. They must therefore transfer part of the lustre borrowed from the works of art, and from the head of convenience, upon the works of nature.

Poetry and painting are much employed in setting forth the beauties of the natural world, at the same time that they afford us a high degree of pleasure from many other sources. Hence the beauties of nature delight poets and painters, and such as are addicted to the study of their works, more than others. Part of this effect is indeed owing to the greater attention of such persons to the other sources; but this comes to the same thing, as far as the general theory of the factitious, associated nature of these pleasures is concerned.

The many sports and pastimes, which are peculiar to the country, and whose ideas and pleasures are revived by the view of rural scenes, in an evanescent state, and so mixed together as to be separately indiscernible, do farther augment the pleasures suggested by the beauties of nature.

To these we may add, the opposition between the offensiveness, dangers, and corruption of populous cities, and the health, tranquillity, and innocence, which the actual view, or the mental contemplation, of rural scenes introduces; also, the pleasures of sociality and mirth, which are often found in the greatest perfection in country retirements, the amorous pleasures, which have many connexions with rural scenes; and those which the opinions and encomiums of others beget in us, in this, as in other cases, by means of the contagiousness observable in mental dispositions, as well as bodily ones.

Those persons who have already formed high ideas of the power, knowledge, and goodness of the Author of nature, with