om the general vigors
of the system just in proportion to their dignity. The eye,--what
an expensive boarder at the gastric tables is that! Considerable
provinces of the brain have to be made over to its exclusive use;
and it will be remembered that a single ounce of delicate, sensitive
brain, full of mysterious and marvellous powers, requires more vital
support than many pounds of common muscle. The powers of the eye are
great; it has a right to cost much, and it does cost. Also we observe
that in this organ there is the exceeding susceptibility to injury,
which, as we have observed, invariably accompanies powers of a lofty
grade.

Noble senses cost much; noble susceptibilities cost vastly more.
Compare oxen with men in respect to the amount of feeling and nervous
wear and tear which they severally experience. The ox enjoys grass and
sleep; he feels hunger and weariness, and he is wounded by that which
goes through his hide. But upon the nerve of the man what an incessant
thousandfold play! Out of the eyes of the passers-by pleasures and
pains are rained upon him; a word, a look, a tone thrills his every
fibre; the touch of a hand warms or chills the very marrow in his
bones. Anticipation and memory, hope and regret, love and hate,
ideal joy and sorrow and shame, ah, what troops of visitants are
ever present with his soul, each and all, whether welcome guests or
unwelcome, to be nourished from the resources of his bosom! And out of
this high sensibility of man must come what innumerable stabs of quick
agony, what slow, gasping hours of grief and pain, that to the cattle
upon the hills are utterly unknown! But do you envy the ox his bovine
peace? It is precisely that which makes him an ox, It is due to
nothing but his insensibility,--by no means, as I take occasion to
assure those poets who laud outward Nature and inferior creatures
to the disparagement of man,--by no means due to composure and
philosophy. The ox is no great hero, after all, for he will bellow at
a thousandth part the sense of pain which from a Spartan child wrings
no tear nor cry.

Yes, it is precisely this sensibility which makes man human. Were he
incapable of ideal joy and sorrow, he, too, were brute. It is through
this delicacy of conscious relationship, it is through this openness
to the finest impressions, that he can become an organ of supernal
intelligence, that he is capable of social and celestial inspirations.
High spiritual sensibility i