Not nature, but nature’s infinite analogies, are what quicken the heart and supply it with endless interpretations of its own experiences.
The sombre, the desolate, and the vast in nature appeal most strongly to the educated spirit, because they typify what is measureless, and therefore mournful, in its aspirations.
V. The Pleasures we may Derive from the Intellect.
When I speak about billiards and fishing and opera-going as pleasures, I am sure everybody understands me. But now that I have to refer to the enjoyment derived from study and thinking and scientific research, I fear the majority will prepare to stifle their yawns or skip the chapter.
Yet I have heard of, and even known, men who turned to such occupations for their highest felicity, and counted such joys above gold or lust or glory or love,—because enemies might rob them of these, but never of the treasures of the understanding. The one aim of their lives was the Search for Truth; and to them all truths seemed equally great, equally worthy devotion. One spent years in the study of polyps and fungi, and by them learned to explain the laws which have developed man and mind; another neglected his profession in order to investigate the anatomy of a worm, and made a discovery which restored thousands of his fellow-beings from wretched invalidism to happy health.
Such exceptional beings are not to be set up as the pole stars for all mariners over life’s ocean. A man cannot be
happy beyond the tastes and faculties which he has; and it is as absurd to expect all to enjoy equally the pleasures of the intellect as it would be to look for all to be pleased with the flavor of the same dish. Every man, however, who is not idiotic or insane possesses an intellect, and can derive a great deal of pleasure from its cultivation; and it is always to some degree in his power to cultivate it in the right manner.