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ON LIFE.
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which
we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The
mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder
of our being. We are struck with admiration at some
of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great
miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of
dynasties, with the opinions which supported them;
what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of
political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of
the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the
elements of which it is composed, compared with life?
What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this
inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their
destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle,
we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well
that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at
once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment
which would otherwise absorb and overawe the
functions of that which is its object.
If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the
