[1815; publ. 1840]



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 mountains, the seas,