thing. One alone, the incomprehensible Author of all things, is
self-subsisting in his perfect Unity.

We shall now endeavour to establish the following proposition: namely,
that the Pleasures in question have their true source in One Intuitive
Universal Principle or living Power, and that the three Ideas of
Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, which we assume to represent the
_perfect_ in the physical, intellectual, and moral worlds, are
but the several realized phases of this sovereign principle, which we
shall call _Harmony_.

Our first step, then, is to possess ourself of the essential or
distinctive characteristic of these pleasurable emotions. Apparently,
there is nothing more simple. And yet we are acquainted with no single
term that shall fully express it. But what every one has more or less
felt may certainly be made intelligible in a more extended form, and,
we should think, by any one in the slightest degree competent to
self-examination. Let a person, then, be appealed to; and let him put
the question as to what passes within him when possessed by these
emotions; and the spontaneous feeling will answer for us, that what we
call _self_ has no part in them. Nay, we further assert, that,
when singly felt, that is, when unallied to other emotions as
modifying forces, they are wholly unmixed with _any personal
considerations, or any conscious advantage to the individual_.

Nor is this assigning too high a character to the feelings in question
because awakened in so many instances by the purely physical; since
their true origin may clearly be traced to a common source with those
profounder emotions which we are wont to ascribe to the intellectual
and moral. Besides, it should be borne in mind, that no physical