SECTION IV. On the Pleasures and Enjoyments connected with the MAN is a compound being; his nature consists of two essential parts, body and mind. Each of these parts of the human constitution has its peculiar uses, and is susceptible of peculiar gratifications. The body is furnished with external senses, which are both the sources of pleasure and the inlets of knowledge, and the Creator has furnished the universe with objects fitted for their exercise and gratification. While these pleasures are directed by the dictates of reason, and confined within the limits prescribed by the Divine law, they are so far from being unlawful, that in the enjoyment of them we fulfil one of the purposes for which our Creator brought us into existence. But the pursuit of sensitive pleasures is not the ultimate end of our being; we enjoy such gratifications in common with the inferior animals; and in so far as we rest in them as our chief good, we pour contempt on our intellectual nature, and degrade ourselves nearly to the level of the beasts that perish. Man is endowed with intellectual powers, as well as with organs of sensation,-with faculties of a higher order, and which admit of more varied and sublime gratifications than those which the senses can produce. By these faculties we are chiefly distinguished from the lower orders of animated existence; in the proper exercise and direction of them, we experience the highest and most refined enjoyments of which our nature is susceptible, and are gradually prepared for the employments of that immortal existence to which we are destined. The corporeal senses were bestowed chiefly in subserviency to the powers of intellect, and to supply materials for thought and contemplation; and the pleasures peculiar to our intellectual nature, rise as high above mere sensitive enjoyments, as the rank of man stands in the scale of existence, above that of the fowls of the air, or the beasts of the forest. Such pleasures are pure and refined; they are congenial to the character of a rational being; they are more permanent than mere sensitive enjoyments; they can be enjoyed when worldly comforts are withdrawn, and when sensual gratifications can afford no delight; they afford solace in the hours of retirement from the bustle of business, and consolation amidst the calamities and afflictions to which humanity is exposed; and the more we acquire a relish for such pleasures, the better shall we be prepared for associating with intelligences of a higher order in the future world. Before proceeding to the more particular illustration of this topic, let us consider the state and the enjoyments of the man whose mind is shrouded in ignorance. He grows up to manhood like a vegetable, or like one of the lower animals that are fed and nourished for the slaughter. He exerts his physical powers, because such exertion is necessary for his subsistence; were it otherwise, we should most frequently find him dozing over the fire, or basking in the sun, with a gaze as dull and stupid as his ox, regardless of every thing but the gratification of his appetites. He has perhaps been taught the art of reading, but has never applied it to the acquisition of knowledge. His views are chiefly con fined to the objects immediately around him, and to the daily avocations in which he is employed. His knowledge of society is circumscribed within the limits of his parish, and his views of the world in which he dwells are confined within the range of the country in which he resides, or of the blue hills which skirt his horizon. Of the aspects of the globe in other countries-of the various tribes with which they are peopled-of the seas and rivers, continents and islands which diversify the landscape of the earth of the numerous orders of animated beings which people the ocean, the atmosphere and the land, -of the revolutions of nations, and the events which have taken place in the history of the world, he has almost as little conception as the animals that range the forest, or bound through the lawns. In regard to the boundless regions that lie beyond him in the firmament, and the bodies that roll there in magnificent grandeur, he has the most confused and inaccurate ideas; and he seldom troubles himself with inquiries in relation to such subjects. Whether the stars be great or small, whether they be near us or at a distance, or whether they move or stand still, is to him a matter of trivial importance. If the sun give him light by day, and the moon by night, and the clouds distil their watery treasures upon his parched fields, he is contented, and leaves all such inquiries and investigations to those who have little else to engage their attention. He views the canopy of heaven as merely a ceiling to our earthly habitation, and the starry orbs as only so many luminous studs or tapers to diversify its aspect, and to afford a glimmering light to the benighted traveller, Of the discoveries which have been made in the physical sciences in ages past, of the wonders of creation which they have unfolded to view, of the instruments which have been invented for exploring the universe, and of the improvements which are now going forward in every department of science and art, and the prospects they are opening to our view, he is almost as entirely ignorant as if he had been fixed under the frozen pole, or chained to the surface of a distant planet. He considers learning as consisting chiefly in the knowledge of grammar, Greek and Latin; and philosophy and astronomy, as the arts of telling fortunes and predicting the state of the weather; and experimental chemistry, as allied to the arts of magic and necromancy. He has no idea of the manner in which the understanding may be enlightened and expanded, he has no relish for intellectual pursuits, and no conception of the pleasures they afford, and he sets no value on knowledge but in so far as it may tend to increase his riches and his sensual gratifications. He has no desire for making improvements in his trade or domestic arrangements, and gives no countenance to those useful inventions and public improvements which are devised by others. He sets himself against every innovation, whether religious, political, mechanical, or agricultural, and is determined to abide by the "good old customs" of his forefathers, however irrational and absurd. Were it dependent upon him, the moral world would stand still as the material world was supposed to do in former times; all useful inventions and improvements would cease, existing evils would never be remedied, ignorance and superstition would universally prevail, the human mind would be arrested in its progress to perfection, and man would never arrive at the true dignity of his intellectual nature. It is evident that such an individual, (and the world contains thousands and millions of such characters) can never have his mind elevated to those sublime objects and contemplations which enrapture the man of science, nor feel those pure and exquisite pleasures which cultivated minds so frequently experience; nor can he form those lofty and expansive ideas of the Deity which the grandeur and magnificence of his works are calculated to inspire. He is left as a prey to all those foolish notions and vain alarms which are engendered by ignorance and superstition; and he swallows, without the least hesitation, all the absurdities and childish tales respecting witches, hobgoblins, spectres and apparitions, which have been handed down to him by his forefathers in former generations. And while he thus gorges his mind with fooleries and absurdities, he spurns at the discoveries of science as impositions on the credulity of mankind, and contrary to reason and common sense. That the sun is a million of times larger than the earth, that light flies from his body at the rate of two hundred thousand miles in a moment of time, and that the earth is whirling round its axis from day to day, with a velocity of a thousand miles every hour, are regarded by him as notions far more improbable and extravagant than the story of the "Wonderful Lamp and all the other tales of the "Arabian Night's Entertainments." In his hours of leisure from his daily avocations, his thoughts either run wild among the most grovelling objects, or sink into sensuality or inanity, and solitude and retirement present no charms to his vacant mind. While human beings are thus immersed in ignorance, destitute of rational ideas, and of a solid substratum of thought, they can never experience those pleasures and enjoyments which flow from the exercise of the understanding, and which |