The pleasures derived from odors are only vivid, when they impart to the mind a fleeting and vague exaltation. If the orientals indulge a passion for respiring perfumes, it is not solely to procure pleasurable physical sensations. An embalmed atmosphere exalts the senses, and disposes the mind to pleasant revery, and paints dreams of paradise upon the indolent imagination.
Were I disposed to present the details of a system upon this subject, the sense of hearing would offer me a crowd of examples. The brilliant and varied accents of the nightingale are ravishing. But what a difference between hearing the melody from a cage, and listening to the song at the noon of night, when a cool and pure air refreshes the lassitude of the burning day, and we behold objects by the light of the moon, and hear the strains of the solitary bird poured from her free bower!
A symphony, the sounds of which only delight the ear, would soon become wearying. If it have no other determinate expression, it ought, at least, to inspire revery, and produce an effect not unlike that of perfumes upon the orientals.
Suppose we have been at an opera, got up with all the luxury of art. Emotions of delight and astonishment rapidly succeed each other, and we believe it impossible to experience new sensations of pleasure. In returning home, we chance to hear in the distance, through the stillness of night, a well remembered song of our infancy, that was sung to us by some one dear to our memory. It is at once a music exciting more profound emotion, than all the strains of art which we so recently thought could not be surpassed. The remembrances of infancy and home rush upon the spirit, and efface the pompous spectacle, and the artificial graces of execution.[39a]
Observations to the same effect might be multiplied without end. If you desire pleasures, fertile in happy remembrances, if you wish to preserve elevation of mind and freshness of imagination, choose, among the pleasures of the senses, only those which associate with moral ideas. Feeble, when separated from the alliance of those ideas, they become fatal when they exclude them. To dare to taste them, is to sacrifice happiness to pleasures which are alike ephemeral and degrading. It is to resemble him, who should strip the tree of its flowers, to enjoy their beauty. He loses the fruits which would have followed, and scarcely casts his eye on the flowers before they have faded.
[LETTER XVIII.]
THE PLEASURES OF THE HEART.
The Creator has put forth in his gifts, a magnificence which should impress our hearts. What variety in those affectionate sentiments, of the delights of which our natures are susceptible! Without going out of the family circle, I enumerate filial piety, fraternal affection, friendship, love, and parental tenderness. These different sentiments can all coëxist in our hearts, and, so far from weakening each other, each tends to give vigor and intensity to the other. No doubt, the need of so many affections and props attests our feebleness and dependence. But I can scarcely conceive of the happiness, which a being, impassible to weaknesses and wants, could find in himself. I am ready to bless that infirmity of our natures, which is the source of such pure pleasures, and such tender affections.
Let us avoid confounding that sensibility which exacts the pleasures of the heart, with that which produces impassioned characters. They differ as essentially as the genial, vital warmth, from the burning of a fever. Indolence, objects calculated strongly to strike the imagination, and those maxims which corrupt the understanding, develope a vague and ardent sensibility, which sometimes conducts to crime, and always to misery. The other species is approved by reason and preserved by virtue. We owe to it those pure emotions which impart upon earth an indistinct sentiment of the joys of heaven.