hat we venture on this subject; for,
though we shall offer nothing not believed to be true, we are but too
sensible how small a portion of truth it is in our power to present.
But, were it far greater, and the present writer of a much higher
order of intellect, there would still be sufficient cause for
humility in view of those impassable bounds that have ever met every
self-questioning of the mind.

But whilst the narrowness of human knowledge may well preclude all
self-exaltation, it would be worse than folly to hold as naught the
many important truths which have been wrought out for us by the mighty
intellects of the past. If they have left us nothing for vainglory,
they have left us at least enough to be grateful for. Nor is it
a little, that they have taught us to look into those mysterious
chambers of our being,--the abode of the spirit; and not a little,
indeed, if what we are there permitted to know shall have brought with
it the conviction, that we are not abandoned to a blind empiricism, to
waste life in guesses, and to guess at last that we have all our
lives been guessing wrong,--but, unapproachable though it be to the
subordinate Understanding, that we have still within us an abiding
Interpreter, which cannot be gainsaid, which makes our duty to God and
man clear as the light, which ever guards the fountain of all true
pleasures, nay, which holds in subjection the last high gift of the
Creator, that imaginative faculty whereby his exalted creature, made
in his image, might mould at will, from his most marvellous world, yet
unborn forms, even forms of beauty, grandeur, and majesty, having all
of truth but his own divine prerogative,--_the mystery of Life_.

As the greater part of those Pleasures which we propose to discuss are
intimately connected with the material world, it may be well, perhaps,
to assign some reason for the epithet _mental_. To many, we know,
this will seem superfluous; but, when it is remembered how often we
hear of this and that object delighting the eye, or of certain sounds
charming the ear, it may not be amiss to show that such expressions
have really no meaning except as metaphors. When the senses, as the
medium of communication, have conveyed to the mind either the sounds
or images, their function ceases. So also with respect to the objects:
their end is attained, at least as to us, when the sounds or images
are thus transmitted, which, so far as they are concerned, must for
ever