The sleeping fragrance from the ground,”[75]
It is by this delightful quality that the tribes of vegetable life seem to hold a sort of social and spiritual communion with us. It is, as it were, the voice with which they address us, and a voice which speaks only of happiness. To him who walks among the flowers which he has tended,
“Each odoriferous leaf,
Each opening blossom, freely breathes abroad
Its gratitude, and thanks him with its sweets.”
The pleasures of the sense of taste, in the moderate enjoyment of which there is nothing reprehensible, are, in a peculiar manner, associated with family happiness. To have met frequently at the same board, is no small part of many of the delightful remembrances of friendship; and to meet again at the same board, after years of absence, is a pleasure that almost makes atonement for the long and dreary interval between. In some half-civilized countries, in which the influence of simple feelings of this kind is at once more forcible in itself, and less obscured in the confusion of ever varying frivolities and passions, this hospitable bond forms, as you well know, one of the strongest ties of mutual obligation, sufficient often to check the impetuosity of vindictive passions which no other remembrance could, in the moment of fury, restrain. Had there been no pleasure attached to a repast, independent of the mere relief from the pain of hunger, the coarse and equal food would probably have been taken by each individual apart, and might even, like our other animal necessities, have been associated with feelings which would have rendered solitude a duty of external decorum. It would not be easy, even for those who have been accustomed to trace a simple cause through all its remotest operations, to say, how much of happiness, and how much even of the warm tenderness of virtue, would be destroyed, by the change of manners, which should simply put an end to the social meal; that meal which now calls all the members of a family to suspend their cares for a while, and to enjoy that cheerfulness, which is best reflected from others, and which can be permanent only when it is so reflected, from soul to soul, and from eye to eye.
One very important advantage, more directly obvious than this, and of a kind which every one may be disposed more readily to admit, is afforded by our senses of smell and taste, in guiding our selection of the substances which we take as alimentary. To the other animals, whose senses of this order are so much quicker, and whose instincts, in accommodation to their want of general language, and consequent difficulty of acquiring knowledge by mutual communication, are providentially allotted to them, in a degree, and of a kind, far surpassing the instincts of the slow but noble reflector man, these senses seem to furnish immediate instruction as, to the substances proper for nourishment, to the exclusion of those which would be noxious. To man, however, who is under the guardianship of affections more beneficial to him than any instinct of his own could be, there is no reason to believe, that they do this primarily, and of themselves, though, in the state in which he is brought up, instructed with respect to every thing noxious or salutary, by those who watch constantly over him in the early period of his life, and having, therefore, no necessity to appeal to the mere discrimination of his own independent organs, and, still more, as in the artificial state of things, in which he lives, his senses are at once perplexed and palled, by the variety and confusion of luxurious preparation, it is not easy to say, how far his primary instincts,—if it had not been the high and inevitable dignity of his nature to rise above these,—might, of themselves, have operated as directors. But, whatever their primary influence may be, the secondary influence of his organs of taste and smell is not the less important. When we have once completely learned what substances are noxious, and what are salutary, we then, however similar they may be in their other sensible qualities, discriminate these as often as they are again presented to us, by that taste or smell, which they affect with different sensations; and our acquired knowledge has thus ultimately, in guiding our choice, the force and the vivacity of an original instinct.
HEARING.
In considering the phenomena of the sense of hearing, to which I now proceed, I may apply to them the same remark, which has been already applied to the phenomena of the senses before considered. They are classed by us, as sensations, merely in consequence of our previous belief in the existence of those external bodies, the motion of which we have known to be followed by similar feelings. Our mind begins suddenly to exist in a certain state; and we call this state joy or sorrow, without supposing that it depends on the immediate presence of any external object. It begins again to exist, in a different state, and we say, that we hear a flute, referring the feeling immediately to an external cause. But there can be no doubt, that, in making this reference, in the one case, and not in the other, we are influenced by experience, and by experience alone. If we suppose ourselves endowed with the single sense of hearing, and incapable therefore of having previously seen or felt the flute, which is breathed before us, or any other extended and resisting object whatever, we may imagine the mere sound to recur, innumerable times, without discovering any mode by which it can give us more knowledge, than we should receive from a similar recurrence of any internal joy or sorrow. That we should be able to refer it to a body, such as we now mean, when we speak of a flute, is manifestly impossible; since this implies knowledge of solidity, and form, and colour, which could not be acquired without touch and sight. But there seems even no reason to think, that we should refer it to any external cause whatever, unless, indeed, such a reference necessarily accompanied every feeling, which we know is far from being the case, since we have many internal pleasures, not more like to each other, than they are to the sound of a flute, which we do not refer to any thing, separate or separable, from the constitution of our own mind. In hearing, therefore, as in taste and smell, we do not derive from its sensations our knowledge of things external, but, in consequence of our knowledge of things external, we regard these feelings, as sensations, in the common philosophic meaning of that term.