Those several living Creatures which are made for our Service or Sustenance, at the same time either fill the Woods with their Musick, furnish us with Game, or raise pleasing Ideas in us by the delightfulness of their Appearance, Fountains, Lakes, and Rivers, are as refreshing to the Imagination, as to the Soil through which they pass.
There are Writers of great Distinction, who have made it an Argument for Providence, that the whole Earth is covered with Green, rather than with any other Colour, as being such a right Mixture of Light and Shade, that it comforts and strengthens the Eye instead of weakning or grieving it. For this reason several Painters have a green Cloth hanging near them, to ease the Eye upon, after too great an Application to their Colouring. A
modern Philosopher
accounts for it in the following manner:
All Colours that are more luminous, overpower and dissipate the animal Spirits which are employd in Sight; on the contrary, those that are more obscure do not give the animal Spirits a sufficient Exercise; whereas the Rays that produce in us the Idea of Green, fall upon the Eye in such a due proportion, that they give the animal Spirits their proper Play, and by keeping up the struggle in a just Ballance, excite a very pleasing and agreeable Sensation
. Let the Cause be what it will, the Effect is certain, for which reason the Poets ascribe to this particular Colour the Epithet of Chearful.
To consider further this double End in the Works of Nature, and how they are at the same time both useful and entertaining, we find that the most important Parts in the vegetable World are those which are the most beautiful. These are the Seeds by which the several Races of Plants are propagated and continued, and which are always lodged in Flowers or Blossoms. Nature seems to hide her principal Design, and to be industrious in making the Earth gay and delightful, while she is carrying on her great Work, and intent upon her own Preservation. The Husbandman after the same manner is employed in laying out the whole Country into a kind of Garden or Landskip, and making every thing smile about him, whilst in reality he thinks of nothing but of the Harvest, and Encrease which is to arise from it.
We may further observe how Providence has taken care to keep up this Chearfulness in the Mind of Man, by having formed it after such a manner, as to make it capable of conceiving Delight from several Objects which seem to have very little use in them; as from the Wildness of Rocks and Desarts, and the like grotesque Parts of Nature. Those who are versed in Philosophy may still carry this Consideration higher, by observing that if Matter had appeared to us endowed only with those real Qualities which it actually possesses, it would have made but a very joyless and uncomfortable Figure; and why has Providence given it a Power of producing in us such imaginary Qualities, as Tastes and Colours, Sounds and Smells, Heat and Cold, but that Man, while he is conversant in the lower Stations of Nature, might have his Mind cheared and delighted with agreeable Sensations? In short, the whole Universe is a kind of Theatre filled with Objects that either raise in us Pleasure, Amusement, or Admiration.