Page:Observations on Man 1834.djvu/299

 pleasure, which it affords, comes to its maximum. After this the pleasure must decline, if we review it often: but if at considerable intervals, so as that many foreign states of mind intervene, also so as that new sources of the pleasures of this kind be broken up, the pleasure may recur for many successions of nearly the same magnitude.

The same observations hold in respect of the pleasures from the beauties of nature in general, and indeed from all the other sources, works of art, liberal arts, sciences, &c. These all strike and surprise the young mind at first, but require a considerable time before they come to their maximum; after which some or other will always be at its maximum for a considerable time. However, the pleasures of imagination in general, as well as each particular set and individual, must decline at last from the nature of our frame. In what manner they ought to decline, so as to be consistent with our summum bonum, by yielding, in due time, to more exalted and pure pleasures, whose composition they enter, I will endeavour to show hereafter.

These pleasures are a principal source of those which are annexed to the view of uniformity with variety, as above noted, i.e. of analogies of various orders; and consequently are a principal incitement to our tracing out real analogies, and forming artificial ones.

The novel, the grand, and the marvellous, are also most conspicuous in the works of nature; and the last strikes us particularly in many of the phænomena of nature, by seeming to exceed all bounds of credibility, at the same time that we are certified by irrefragable evidences of the truth of the facts. The satiety which every pleasure begets in us, after some continuance, makes us thirst perpetually after the grand and novel; and, as it were, grasp at infinity in number and extent; there being a kind of tacit expectation, that the pleasure will be in in proportion to the magnitude and variety of the causes, in the same manner as we observe, in other cases, the effects to be in some degree proportional to their causes.

The pleasures of novelty decline not only in this class, but also in all the others, sensible and intellectual, partly from our bodily frame, partly from the intermixture, and consequent association, of neutral circumstances (i.e. such as afford neither pleasure nor pain) in their successive recurrences.

A disposition to a pleasurable state is a general attendant upon health, and the integrity of our bodily faculties; and that in such a degree, as that actual pleasure will spring up from moderate incitements, from the transient introduction of the associated circumstances of former pleasurable states. If the body be indisposed in some degree, it is, however, possible to force it into a state of pleasure by the vivid introduction of various and powerful circumstances: but this unnatural state cannot last long; and, if the indisposition to pleasure be great,