The feeling of resistance,—to begin with this,—is, I conceive, to be ascribed, not to our organ of touch, but to our muscular frame, to which I have already more than once directed your attention, as forming a distinct organ of sense; the affections of which, particularly as existing in combination with other feelings, and modifying our judgments concerning these, (as in the case of distant vision, for example,) are not less important than those of our other sensitive organs. The sensations of this class, are, indeed, in common circumstances, so obscure, as to be scarcely heeded or remembered by us; but there is probably no contraction, even of a single muscle, which is not attended with some faint degree of sensation, that distinguishes it from the contractions of other muscles, or from other degrees of contraction of the same muscle. I must not be understood, however, as meaning that we are able, in this manner, by a sort of instinctive anatomy, to perceive and number our own muscles, and when many of them are acting together, as they usually do, to distinguish each from each; for, till we study the internal structure of our frame, we scarcely know more, than that we have limbs which move at our will, and we are altogether ignorant of the complicated machinery which is subservient to the volition. But each motion of the visible limb, whether produced by one or more of the invisible muscles, is accompanied with a certain feeling, that may be complex, indeed, as arising from various muscles, but which is considered by the mind as one; and it is this particular feeling, accompanying the particular visible motion,—whether the feeling and the invisible parts contracted be truly simple or compound,—which we distinguish from every other feeling accompanying every other quantity of contraction. It is as if a man, born blind, were to walk, for the first time, in a flower garden. He would distinguish the fragrance of one parterre from the fragrance of another, though he might be altogether ignorant of the separate odours united in each; and might even consider as one simple perfume, what was, in truth, the mingled product of a thousand.
Obscure as our muscular sensations are in common circumstances, there are other circumstances,—which I pointed out to you in treating before of this subject,—in which they make themselves abundantly manifest. I need not refer to the diseased state of the muscles, in which they become painfully sensible; and I will admit, that the reference to such a morbid state, in which the structure may be supposed to be altered by the disease, would perhaps scarcely be a fair one. It is sufficient to refer to phenomena of which every one must have been conscious innumerable times, and which imply no disease nor lasting difference of state. What is the feeling of fatigue, for example, but a muscular feeling? that is to say, a feeling of which our muscles are as truly the organ, as our eye or ear is the organ of sight or hearing. When a limb has been long exercised, without sufficient intervals of rest, the repetition of the contraction of its muscles is accompanied, not with a slight and obscure sensation, but with one which amounts, if it be gradually increased, to severe pain, and which before it arrives at this, has passed progressively through various stages of uneasiness. Even when there has been no previous fatigue, we cannot make a single powerful effort at any time, without being sensible of the muscular feeling connected with this effort. Of the pleasure which attends more moderate exercise, every one must have been conscious in himself, even in his years of maturity, when he seldom has recourse to it for the pleasure alone; and must remember, still more the happiness which it afforded him in other years, when happiness was of less costly and laborious production than at present. By that admirable provision, with which nature accommodates the blessings which she gives, to the wants that stand in need of them, she has, in that early period,—when the pleasure of mental freedom, and the ambitions of busy life, are necessarily excluded,—made ample amends to the little slave of affection, in that disposition to spontaneous pleasure, which renders it almost an effort to be sad, as if existence itself were delight; giving him a fund of independent happiness in the very air which she has poured around him, and the ready limbs which move through it, almost without his bidding. In that beautiful passage, in which Goldsmith describes the sounds that come in one mingled murmur from the village, who does not feel the force of the happiness which is comprised in the single line, that speaks of
“The playful children, just let loose from school?”[84]
It is not the mere freedom from the intellectual task of which we think; it is much more, that burst of animal pleasure, which is felt in every limb, when the long constraint that has repressed it is removed, and the whole frame is given once more to all the freedom of nature. It is by the pleasure of exertion, and the pain of inexertion, that we are roused from that indolence, into which, with great injury to society, that requires our contribution of active aid, we otherwise might sink;—as we are roused, in like manner, by the pleasure of food, and the pain of hunger, to take the aliment that is necessary for our individual sustenance; and though the mere aliment is, indeed, more important for life, it is not more important for happiness than that pleasure of activity which calls and forces us from our slothful repose.
“Thee, too, My Paridel,—I saw thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair.”
With the same happy provision with which she has considered the young of our own species, Nature has, in the other animals, whose sources of general pleasure are still more limited than in the child, converted their muscular frame into an organ of delight. It is not in search of richer pasture that the horse gallops over his field, or the goat leaps from rock to rock; it is for the luxury of the exercise itself. “If the shell-fish on the shore,” says Dr Ferguson, “perform no visible action but that of opening and closing his shell, to receive the brine that accommodates, or to exclude the foul matter that annoys him, there are other animals that, in the opposite extreme, are active; and for whom Nature seems to administer the means of supply, merely as a restorative of that strength which they are so freely to waste in the seemingly sportive or violent exercises to which they are disposed.”[85]
“The bounding fawn, that darts across the glade,
When none pursues, through mere delight of heart,