Next to the developement of our moral nature, to have subordinated the
senses to the mind is the highest triumph of the civilized state. Were
it possible to embody the present complicated scheme of society, so as
to bring it before us as a visible object, there is perhaps nothing
in the world of sense that would so fill us with wonder; for what is
there in nature that may not fall within its limits? and yet how small
a portion of this stupendous fabric will be found to have any direct,
much less exclusive, relation to the actual wants of the body! It
might seem, indeed, to an unreflecting observer, that our physical
necessities, which, truly estimated, are few and simple, have rather
been increased than diminished by the civilized man. But this is not
true; for, if a wider duty is imposed on the senses, it is only to
minister to the increased demands of the imagination, which is now so
mingled with our every-day concerns, even with our dress, houses, and
furniture, that, except with the brutalized, the purely sensuous wants
might almost be said to have become extinct: with the cultivated and
refined, they are at least so modified as to be no longer prominent.

But this refilling on the physical, like every thing else, has had its
opponents: it is declaimed against as artificial. If by artificial is
meant unnatural, we cannot so consider it; but hold, on the contrary,
that the whole multiform scheme of the civilized state is not only in
accordance with our nature, but an essential condition to the proper
developement of the human being. It is presupposed by the very wants
of his mind; nor could it otherwise have been, any more than could
have been the cabin of the beaver, or the curious hive of the bee,
without their preëxisting instincts; it is therefore in the highest
sense natural, as growing out of the inherent desires of the mind.

But we would not be misunderstood. When we speak of the refined