When we consider the variety of our feelings thus wonderfully produced,--the _pleasures_, and, still more, the inexhaustible _knowledge_, which arise, by this mysterious harmony, from the imperceptible affection of a few particles of nervous matter, it is impossible for us not to be impressed with more than admiration of that Power, which even our ignorance, that is scarcely capable of seeing any thing, is yet, by the greatest of all the bounties of heaven, able to perceive and admire. In the creation of this internal world of thought, the Divine Author of our being has known how to combine _infinity itself_ with that which may almost be considered as the most finite of things; and has repeated, as it were, in every mind, by the almost creative sensibilities with which He has endowed it, that simple but majestic act of omnipotence, by which, originally, He called from the rude elements of chaos, or rather from nothing, all the splendid glories of the universe. FOOTNOTES: [68] Gray de Princip, Cogit. lib. i. v. 48-50. [69] Gray de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 54-63. [70] On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii. [71] On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii. [72] “Then the charm,” &c. to “enchantment,” from the second form of the Poem. The corresponding clause, in the first form, from which all the rest of the quotation is taken, is this, “Then the inexpressive strain Diffuses its enchantment.” [73] Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 109--131. LECTURE XX. PARTICULAR CONSIDERATION OF OUR SENSATIONS.--NAMELESS TRIBES OF SENSATIONS--SENSATIONS OF SMELL--OF TASTE--OF HEARING. A considerable portion of my last Lecture, Gentlemen, was employed in illustrating the _corporeal_ part of the process of perception, which, though less immediately connected with our Science than the _mental_ part of the process, is still, from its intimate connexion with this mental part, not to be altogether neglected by the intellectual inquirer. The importance of clear notions of the mere _organic changes_ is, indeed, most strikingly exemplified in the very false theories of perception which have prevailed, and in some measure still prevail; and which evidently, in part at least, owe their origin to those confused notions, to which I alluded in my last Lecture, of the objects of perception, as supposed to operate at a distance through a medium, and of complicated series of changes supposed to take place in the nerves and brain.