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CHAP. V.

PART I. touch them, would, of course, be its effect. It could not possibly have been, as the author supOf Sight. poses, 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 common pains; but such as render the sensations, to which they belong, sublime, and therefore only capable of being felt 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 sensa

CHAP. V.

tion; though he certainly felt it painful on many PART I. occasions. There are other privations, however, which it is surprising that he has omitted; since Of Sight. 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

CHAP. V.

PART I. ideas previously imprinted in the memory, of the deductions made from them by the underOf Sight. standing; both of which have become, in 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 associa tion.

33. This is peculiarly the case with our per ceptions 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. 34. I am aware, however, that they are

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

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Of Sight.

scarcely ever felt separate and unmixed, ex- PART I. cept in such extraordinary cases as that of the boy couched by Chiselden, or in very young chil dren; 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

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PART I. are delighted with every gay assemblage of colours: but, as the intellect and imagination acOf Sight. quire strength by culture and exercise, they obtain so much influence over the sense, as to make it reject almost every gratification, in which one of them does not participate. But, nevertheless, the sense acquires a similar negative power, in its turn, by the same habit of association; and if there be any thing, in the ob ject of contemplation, to offend or disgust it, effectually mars the gratification of every other faculty. Thus, in the higher class of landscapes, whether in nature or in art, the mere sensual gratification of the eye is comparatively so small, as scarcely to be attended to: but yet, if there occur a single spot, either in the scene or the picture, offensively harsh and glaring-if the landscape gardener, in the one, or the picture cleaner in the other, have exerted their unhappy talents of polishing, all the magic instantly vanishes, and the imagination avenges the injury offered to the sense. The glaring and unharmonious spot, being the most prominent and obtrusive, irresistibly attracts the attention, so as to interrupt the repose of the whole, and leave the mind no place to rest upon. It is in some respects the same with the sense of hearing. The mere sensual gratification, arising from the me

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