and the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of
the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours
which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the
atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before existing,
truly we should have been astonished, and it would not have been a
vain boast to have said of such a man, 'Non merita nome di creatore,
se non Iddio ed il Poeta.' But now these things are looked on with
little wonder, and to be conscious of them with intense delight is
esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and extraordinary
person. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus with
Life--that which includes all.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will,
and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is
unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live
on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it
to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly
used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is
much. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is
birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What
is birth and death?

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life,
which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which
the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished
in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene
of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse
my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that
nothing exists but as it is perceived.