Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/298

 suitable affections, generally feel the exalted pleasures of devotion upon every view and contemplation of His works, either in an explicit and distinct manner, or in a more secret and implicit one. Hence, part of the general indeterminate pleasures, here considered, is deducible from the pleasures of theopathy.

We must not omit in this place to remind the reader of a remark made above, viz. that green, which is the middle colour of the seven primary ones, and consequently the most agreeable to the organ of sight, is also the general colour of the vegetable kingdom, i.e. of external nature.

These may be considered as some of the principal sources of the beauties of nature to mankind in general. Inquisitive and philosophical persons have some others, arising from their peculiar knowledge and study of natural history, astronomy, and philosophy, in general. For the profusion of beauties, uses, fitnesses, elegance in minute things, and magnificence in great ones, exceeds all bounds of conception, surprise, and astonishment; new scenes, and those of unbounded extent, separately considered, ever presenting themselves to view, the more any one studies and contemplates the works of God.

And upon the whole, the reader may see, that there are sufficient sources for all those pleasures of imagination, which the beauties of nature excite in different persons; and that the differences which are found in different persons in this respect, are sufficiently analogous to the differences of their situations in life, and of the consequent associations formed in them.

An attentive person may also, in viewing or contemplating the beauties of nature, lay hold, as it were, of the remainders and miniatures of many of the particular pleasures here enumerated, while they recur in a separate state, and before they coalesce with the general indeterminate aggregate, and thus verify the history now proposed.

It is a confirmation of this history, that an attentive person may also observe great differences in the kind and degree of the relish which he has for the beauties of nature in different periods of his life; especially as the kind and degree may be found to agree in the main with this history.

To the same purpose we may remark, that these pleasures do not cloy very soon, but are of a lasting nature, if compared with the sensible ones; since this follows naturally from the great variety of their sources, and the evanescent nature of their constituent parts.

When a beautiful scene is first presented, there is generally great pleasure from surprise, from being struck with objects and circumstances which we did not expect. This presently declines; but is abundantly compensated afterwards by the gradual alternate exaltation of the several constituent parts of the complex pleasures, which also do probably enhance one another. And thus we may take several reviews of the same scene, before the