advantages or pleasures arise from our having bodies, and being capable of commerce with a material world.
A material world without being perceived could be of no use.
Without beings capable of enjoying a material world, nature would not be full and coherent.
II. But let it be observed before we proceed, that as a material world cannot be said to have order and beauty; or to be wisely contrived, but with respect to beings, who perceive it, and are affected by it; or cannot indeed be created for any end, but so far as perceptive beings have communication with it: so were there not in nature such a kind of beings as we are, nature could not be full or coherent: there would be a chasm or void in nature which could not but render it deformed and imperfect to the view of any being capable of perceiving it; who hath, like us, any idea of richness, fulness, and perfection in nature. For so are we made, that we cannot represent<64> nature to ourselves as perfect and beautiful, without conceiving it to be full and coherent: we cannot suppose any degree of perfection wanting in the scale of life, that can exist, without being shocked at the thought of such a deficiency, such incompleteness, such a void and breach.
By our commerce with a material world we receive a great many pleasures of the sensitive kind.
Our senses are admirably adjusted to one another, and to our whole frame.
III. But not only is such a being as man necessary to make the gradation in nature full and complete; but the sensible pleasures we are susceptible of by means of our bodily organization, or our senses, do well deserve their place in the scale of life and being. The more pleasures a creature is by nature made capable of, the larger provision is certainly made for its happiness: now the enjoyments we are made capable of receiving from a corporeal world, by means of our sensitive organs, are not a few: the variety of them belonging to any of our senses, as for instance, to the sight or ear, is almost innumerable. And all these senses, with all their appurtenances, are admirably adjusted to one another, to our external condition, and to our whole bodily texture, made up of them, and preserved entire by their equal nourishment and sustentation. Thus, for example, our sight, at the same time that it is capable of receiving considerable assistances from artificial instruments, is wonderfully well adapted to judge of magnitudes, distances, and other tangible qualities; it being by contact and motion only, that the mechanism of the body can suffer any injury. In like manner, all our other senses are very well adjusted to one another, and to our situation, as has been often observed by several philosophers. This is delightfully told by our excellent poet already quoted.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly:<65>
Say, what the use, were finer opticks giv’n?
T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n.
Or touch, so tremblingly alive all o’er?
To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore.
Or quick effluvia darting thro’ the brain?
Die of a rose in aromatic pain.
If nature thunder’d in his opening ears,
And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that heav’n had left him still
The whisp’ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
Essay on man, Epist. 1.28
But though the pleasures our senses afford us be very many, and far from being despicable in their kind; yet the chief advantages our senses bring us, are, as they are means and instruments of sciences and arts; and the means, occasions and subjects of many excellent virtues.
Our senses are instruments of noble sciences and useful arts.
I. Our communication with the sensible world is not only the source of very considerable enjoyments to us, as sensitive beings; but it is yet a source of more noble pleasures to us, as we are capable of knowledge and imitation.
Of natural philosophy.
And many imitative arts.
By our bodily senses, our minds are rendered capable of contemplating, and of imitating by ingenious arts, many parts of a very wonderful system; many parts of a most beautiful disposition and arrangement of infinitely various objects. For how immense is the variety of the sensible world? Can there be a more delightful, or a more capacious field of study and speculation, than what the riches, the simplicity, the grandeur and perfect order of the natural world afford us? What is greater, or more elevating, than the contemplation of nature, when we are able to take in large views of it, and comprehend its laws? How agreeably do ancient<66> philosophers expatiate upon this topic!a The study of nature, according to them, is the natural food of the soul. And they indeed justly placed a great part of man’s best happiness in contemplating and imitating the regularity, wisdom, goodness and harmony of the sensible world. They with good reason concluded from the structure of our senses, considered together with our intellectual powers, that we are made, “Ad mundum contemplandum & imitandum.”29 To contemplate, admire and imitate nature. What distinguishes our sensesa from those of the brutes, is, (as these philosophers have observed) that sense of beauty, order and harmony, with which they are united in our frame, by means of which they are not merely sensitive, but rather rational faculties. For by these outward and inward senses, as they are conjoined in our frame, we are capable of understanding the regularity and wisdom of nature; of investigating its general laws, and admiring the wonderful consent<67> of all its various parts to make one beautiful whole. Nor is this all, for we are likewise qualified by them for divers imitative arts, as poetry, painting, statuary, music, architecture, gardening, &c. from which arts do indeed arise pleasures very nearly allied to virtue, very assistant to it; and which, next to its exercises, are our noblest and most pleasing enjoyments.
They are means and subjects of many virtuous exercises.
II. But our senses are yet of further and higher use in our frame, as they afford us means, occasions and materials for exercising many virtues; many kindly, benevolent and generous affections.
Of the social kind.
It is in consequence of our having a corporeal frame, or of being cloathed with bodies, that we are visible, audible, and embraceable one to another; all which are sources of pleasures of a very agreeable kind, as well as of a social nature and tendency. How unembodied spirits have intercourse, is a question we cannot possibly solve; but this is certain, that our mutual correspondence is by means of our bodies. And scarcely will any one object against our frame, merely for our being thus made fit for commerce with one another, by the eyes and touch, and by the faculties of hearing and speech.
And of rational dominion over the sensitive appetites.
But which is yet more, in consequence of our having bodies, various occasions arise of our mutually aiding, relieving, comforting, pleasing and gratifying one another, and of interchanging many good and friendly offices, for which there could not otherwise in the nature of things be room. And not to add more on this head, is not
