To return to the objection, that we often receive pleasure from many
things in Nature which seem to us fragmentary, we observe, that nothing in
Nature can be fragmentary, except in the seeming, and then, too, to the
understanding only,--to the feelings never; for a grain of sand, no less
than a planet, being an essential part of that mighty whole which we call
the universe, cannot be separated from the Idea of the world without a
positive act of the reflective faculties, an act of volition; but until
then even a grain of sand cannot cease to imply it. To the mere
understanding, indeed, even the greatest extent of actual objects which
the finite creature can possibly imagine must ever fall short of the vast
works of the Creator. Yet we nevertheless can, and do, apprehend the
existence of the universe. Now we would ask here, whether the influence of
a _real_,--and the epithet here is not unimportant,--whether the influence
of a real Whole is at no time felt without an act of consciousness, that
is, without thinking of a whole. Is this impossible? Is it altogether out
of experience? We have already shown (as we think) that no _unmodified
copy_ of actual objects, whether single or multifarious, ever satisfies
the imagination,--which imperatively demands a something more, or at least
different. And yet we often find that the very objects from which these
copies are made _do_ satisfy us. How and why is this? A question more
easily put than answered. We may suggest, however, what appears to us a
clew, that in abler hands may possibly lead to its solution; namely, the
fact, that, among the innumerable emotions of a pleasurable kind derived
from the actual, there is not one, perhaps, which is strictly confined to
the objects before us, and which we do not, either directly or indirectly,
refer to something beyond and not present. Now have we at all times a
distinct consciousness of the things referred to? Are they not rather more
often vague, and only indicated in some _undefined_ feeling? Nay, is its
source more intelligible where the feeling is more definite, when taking
the form of a sense of harmony, as from something that diffuses, yet
deepens, unbroken in its progress through endless variations, the melody
as it were of the pleasurable object? Who has never felt, under certain
circumstances, an expansion of the heart, an elevation of mind, nay, a
striving of the whole being to pass its limited bounds, for which he could
find no adequate solution in the objects around him,--the apparent cause?
Or who can account for every mood that thralls him,--at times like one
entranced in a dream by airs from Paradise,--at other times steeped in
darkness, when the spirit of discord seems to marshal his every thought,
one against another?
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