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that it be from tension to relaxation, and from irritation to repose, may nevertheless, in the first sensation of it, be unpleasant to some organs, though I could never feel it so. But to imagine that darkness is painful to the sight, because we sometimes strain our eyelids to such a degree as to produce pain, in the efforts which we make to see in the dark*, is one of the most unaccountable fancies that ever arose in the mind of any man: for if darkness be in itself painful, a person with his eyes shut in a dark room must be in an agony; and yet so widely does the practice of mankind differ from the theories of philosophers, that this is the state, in which we all usually go to sleep; and is probably that, in which this great philosopher and statesman slept as well as the meanest of the swinish multitude. It is to darkness, likewise, that men fly for relief, when their eyes, through weakness or inflammation, cannot bear the irritation of light: but I never yet heard of any one, whose eyes were so heterogeneously organized, or so strangely morbid, that they could not bear the effect of darkness, whatever

it

may be for as to the uneasiness, which the boy, couched by Cheselden, felt at the first sight of a black object, it arose either from the harshness of its outline, or from its appearing

*Part IV. f. xv. &c.

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to act as a partial extinguisher applied to his eyes; which, as every object, that he saw, seemed to touch them, would, of course, be its effect. It could not possibly have been, as the author supposes, on account of his finding darkness painful; as it was not till long after the operation that he could bear to have his eyes exposed to the light, or endure any thing but darkness for any considerable time together. All very sharp, broken, or angular objects were disagreeable to him, as they are to all eyes of very nice sensibility.

31. But it will be said, perhaps, that the painful sensations, of which this author speaks, are no cominon pains; but such as render the sensations, to which they belong, sublime, and therefore only capable of being telt by minds capable of exaltation to sublimity. Such his unquestionably was, in the highest degree; and if ever man had a just claim to the privilege of being visited by sublime visions, whether sleeping or waking, he was undoubtedly the man: but, if we admit this privation to be a source of the sublime, I do not know how we shall be able to exclude silence, which is a privation of sound, as darkness is of light; and, for its being sublime upon his own principles, we have the high authority of Virgil-" simul ipsa silentia terrent:" but, nevertheless, even his ingenuity would have found some difficulty in proving

silence a sensation; though he certainly felt it painful on many occasions. There are other privations, however, which it is surprising that he has omitted; since they make themselves most sensibly, and in some instances, most painfully felt throughout all the animal creation; and when personified as powers, and described in poetry, are as truly sublime, as any of the other powers, which he mistook for sensations.

Close by the regal chair,

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Yet no one, I believe, ever found either hunger or thirst to be a sublime sensation; or found his mind elevated or expanded by suffering them. On the contrary, they have been generally esteemed to be most debasing and. humiliating to the pride of human nature; as they not only level the highest with the lowest -the prince with the beggar, and the philosopher with the idiot, but man with the brute.

32. The example of this great author proves how difficult it is to keep the operations of the different faculties of the mind distinct from each other; so as to consider sensation singly and alone, unmixed with, and uninfluenced by the ideas previously imprinted in the memory, or the deductions made from them by the understanding; both of which have become, in

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almost all adult persons, habitual perceptions, constantly confounded with those immediately resulting from the impressions on the same organs of sense; with which, perhaps, they are no otherwise connected than by continued association.

33. This is peculiarly the case with our perceptions of all objects of sight; the visible appearance of which, as an acute and accurate investigator has observed, is scarcely ever regarded by us, or made a subject of reflection, but serves only as a sign to introduce to the mind something, which may be as distinctly conceived by those, who never saw*. But, nevertheless, the mere sensual pleasures of vision, which are at present exclusively the subject of inquiry, depend entirely on the primary impressions, unimproved and undisguised by the intermixture of other notions and ideas, acquired by means of the other senses: for as they consist in different modes and degrees of organic irritation, they are of a totally distinct class from those which result from the operations of mind.

$4. I am aware, however, that they are scarcely ever felt separate and unmixed, except in such extraordinary cases as that of the boy couched by Cheselden, or in very young

* Reid on the Mind, c. vi. f. xi.

children; who, of course, do not retain, in their maturer age, any remembrance of the progress of these perceptions; by which the means of exercising both memory and understanding were acquired, and, consequently, the consciousness of their possessing any such faculties. We may, nevertheless, observe the process, by which these artificial and improved perceptions are formed out of simple sensations, in the manner, in which they handle and turn about all objects which they can lay hold of; now putting them to their mouths, and now placing them at different distances from their eyes; by all which they are rectifying, correcting, and improving the testimony of one sense by that of another; and acquiring the habit of associating their ideas, as they receive them; from which habit the best and principal part of their subsequent knowledge is to be derived.

35. The habit, which we at the same time acquire, of spontaneously mixing associated ideas with organic perceptions in contemplating objects of vision, is the principal reason why the merely sensual pleasures of this organ are, in adult persons, very limited and feeble. Children are delighted with every gay assemblage of colours: but, as the intellect and imagination acquire strength by culture and exercise, they obtain so much influence

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