And smiles; the Passions, gently soothed away,
Sink to divine repose; and Love and Joy
Alone are waking.”[73]
When we consider the variety of our feelings thus wonderfully produced,—the pleasures, and, still more, the inexhaustible knowledge, which arise, by this mysterious harmony, from the imperceptible affection of a few particles of nervous matter, it is impossible for us not to be impressed with more than admiration of that Power, which even our ignorance, that is scarcely capable of seeing any thing, is yet, by the greatest of all the bounties of heaven, able to perceive and admire. In the creation of this internal world of thought, the Divine Author of our being has known how to combine infinity itself with that which may almost be considered as the most finite of things; and has repeated, as it were, in every mind, by the almost creative sensibilities with which He has endowed it, that simple but majestic act of omnipotence, by which, originally, He called from the rude elements of chaos, or rather from nothing, all the splendid glories of the universe.
Footnotes
[68] Gray de Princip, Cogit. lib. i. v. 48–50.
[69] Gray de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 54–63.
[70] On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii.
[71] On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii.
[72] “Then the charm,” &c. to “enchantment,” from the second form of the Poem. The corresponding clause, in the first form, from which all the rest of the quotation is taken, is this,