Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

procuring, receiving, and digesting of its food. It may be also necessary, that the animal be impelled by its sensations to exert its organs. But the pain of hunger would do all this. Why add pleasure to the act of eating; sweetness and relish to food? why a new and appropriate sense for the perception of the pleasure? Why should the juice of a peach, applied to the palate, affect the part so differently from what it does when rubbed upon the palm of the hand? This is a constitution which, so far as appears to me, can be resolved into nothing but the pure benevolence of the Creator. Eating is necessary; but the pleasure attending it is not necessary and that this pleasure depends, not only upon our being in possession of the sense of taste, which is different from every other, but upon a particular state of the organ in which it resides, a felicitous adaptation of the organ to the object, will be confessed by any one, who may happen to have experienced that vitiation of taste which frequently occurs in fevers, when every taste is irregular, and every one bad.

In mentioning the gratifications of the palate, it may be said that we have made choice of a trifling example. I am not of that opinion. They afford a share of enjoyment

to man; but to brutes, I believe that they are of very great importance. A horse at liberty passes a great part of his waking hours in eating. To the ox, the sheep, the deer, and other ruminating animals, the pleasure is doubled. Their whole time almost is divided between browsing upon their pasture and chewing their cud. Whatever the pleasure be, it is spread over a large portion of their existence. If there be animals, such as the lupous fish, which swallow their prey whole, and at once, without any time, as it should seem, for either drawing out, or relishing, the taste in the mouth, is it an improbable conjecture, that the seat of taste with them is in the stomach; or, at least, that a sense of pleasure, whether it be taste or not, accompanies the dissolution of the food in that receptacle, which dissolution in general is carried on very slowly? If this opinion be right, they are more than repaid for the defect of palate. The feast lasts as long as the digestion.

In seeking for argument, we need not stay to insist upon the comparative importance of our example; for, the observation holds equally of all, or of three at least, of the other senses. The necessary purposes of hearing might have been answered without

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

harmony; of smell, without fragrance; of vision without beauty. Now, "if the Deity had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, we must impute to our good for-tune (as all design by this supposition is excluded), both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply of external objects fitted to excite it." I allege these as two felicities, for they are different things, yet both necessary: the sense being formed, the objects, which were applied to it, might not have suited it; the objects being fixed, the sense might not have agreed with them. A coincidence is here required, which no accident can account for. There are three possible suppositions upon the subject, and The first; that the sense, by its original constitution, was made to suit the object: The second; that the object, by its original constitution, was made to suit the sense: The third; that the sense is so constituted, as to be able, either universally, or within certain limits, by habit and familiarity, to render every object pleasant. Which-ever of these suppositions we adopt, the effect evinces, on the part of the Author of nature, a studious benevolence. If the pleasures which we derive from any of our senses, depend upon an original con

no more.

1

1

gruity between the sense and the properties perceived by it, we know by experience, that the adjustment demanded, with respect to the qualities which were conferred upon the objects that surround us, not only choice and selection, out of a boundless variety of possible qualities with which these objects might have been endued, but a proportioning also of degree, because an excess or defect of intensity spoils the perception, as much almost as an error in the kind and nature of the quality. Likewise the degree of dulness or acuteness in the sense itself, is no arbitrary thing, but, in order to preserve the congruity here spoken of, requires to be in an exact or near correspondency with the strength of the impression. The dulness of the senses forms the complaint of old age Persons in fevers, and, I believe, in most maniacal cases, experience great torment from their preternatural acuteness. Air in creased, no less than an impaired sensibility, induces a state of disease and suffering.39% of

The doctrine of a specific congruity be tween animal senses and their objects,cis strongly favoured by what is observed of insects in the election of their food. Some of: these will feed upon one kind of plant or aniA mal, and upon no other: some caterpillars

upon the cabbage alone; some upon the black currant alone. The species of caterpillar which eats the vine, will starve upon the elder; nor will that which we find upon fennel, touch the rose-bush. Some insects confine themselves to two or three kinds of

plants or animals. Some again show so strong a preference, as to afford reason to believe that, though they may be driven by hunger to others, they are led by the pleasure of taste to a few particular plants alone : and all this, as it should seem, independently of habit or imitation.

[ocr errors]

But should we accept the third hypothesis, and even carry it so far, as to ascribe every thing which concerns the question to habit. (as in certain species, the human species most particularly, there is reason to attribute something), we have then before us an animal capacity, not less perhaps to be admired than the native congruities which the other scheme adopts. It cannot be shown to result from any fixed necessity in nature, that what is frequently applied to the senses should of course become agreeable to them. It is, so far as it subsists, à power of accommodation provided in these senses by the Author of their structure, and forms a part of their perfection.

« VorigeDoorgaan »