; and can be only
artificially, and under high penalty, prolonged. But the pleasures of
sight and hearing are given as gifts. They answer not any purposes of
mere existence, for the distinction of all that is useful or dangerous
to us might be made, and often is made, by the eye, without its
receiving the slightest pleasure of sight. We might have learned to
distinguish fruits and grain from flowers, without having any superior
pleasure in the aspect of the latter. And the ear might have learned to
distinguish the sounds that communicate ideas, or to recognize
intimations of elemental danger without perceiving either music in the
voice, or majesty in the thunder. And as these pleasures have no
function to perform, so there is no limit to their continuance in the
accomplishment of their end, for they are an end in themselves, and so
may be perpetual with all of us--being in no way destructive, but rather
increasing in exquisiteness by repetition.

Sec. 6. Evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hearing.

Herein, then, we find very sufficient ground for the higher estimation
of these delights, first, in their being eternal and inexhaustible, and
secondly, in their being evidently no means or instrument of life, but
an object of life. Now in whatever is an object of life, in whatever may
be infinitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something
of divine, for God will not make anything an object of life to his
creatures which does not point to, or partake of, Himself. And so,
though we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of
sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence, and, when
occurring, isolated and imperfect, there would still be a supernatural
character about them, owing to their permanence and self-sufficiency,
where no other sensual pleasures are permanent or self-sufficient. But
when, instead of being scattered, interrupted, or chance-distributed,
they are gathered together, and so arranged to enhance each other as by
chance they could not be, there is caused by them not only a feeling of
strong affection towards the object in which they exist, but a
perception of purpose and adaptation of it to our desires; a perception,
therefore, of the immediate operation of the Intelligence which so
formed us, and so feeds us.

Out of which perception arise joy, admiration, and gratitude.

Now the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness I call aesthesis;