Who journeys homeward, from a summer day's
Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils
And due repose, he loiters to behold
The sunshine gleaming, as through amber clouds,
O'er all the western sky? Full soon, I ween,
His rude expression, and untutor'd airs,
Beyond the power of language, will unfold
The form of Beauty smiling at his heart,
How lovely, how commanding!”[38]
But the mere emotion which beauty produces, is not the knowledge of the simpler feelings that have composed or modified it; and though the pleasure and admiration were to continue exactly the same, the peasant would surely have learned something, if he could be made to understand, that beauty was more than the form and colour which his eye perceived. What is thus true of beauty as differently understood by the peasant and the philosopher, is true, in like manner, of all the other complex mental phenomena. It would, indeed, be as reasonable to affirm, that, because we all move our limbs, we are all equally acquainted with the physiology of muscular motion; or, to take a case still more exactly appropriate, that we know all the sublimest truths of arithmetic and geometry, because we know all the numbers and figures of the mere relations of which these are the science,—as that we are all acquainted with the physiology of the mind, and the number of elements which enter into our various feelings, because we all perceive, and remember, and love, and hate. It is, it will be allowed, chiefly, or perhaps, wholly, as it is analytical, that the science of mind admits of discovery; but, as a science of analysis, in which new relations are continually felt on reflection, it presents us with a field of discovery as rich, and, I may say, almost as inexhaustible in wonders, as that of the universe without.