Our minds might have been constituted exactly as they are, we might have
been capable of comprehending the highest and sublimest truths, and yet,
but for a small organ in the head, the world of sound would have been shut
out from us; we should have lost the sounds of nature, the charms of
music, the conversation of friends, and have been condemned to perpetual
silence: and yet a slight alteration in the retina, which is not thicker
than a sheet of paper, not larger than a finger nail,--and the glorious
spectacle of this beautiful world, the exquisite variety of form, the
glory and play of color, the variety of scenery, of woods and fields, and
lakes and hills, seas and mountains, the glory of the sky alike by day and
night, would all have been lost to us.
Mountains, again, "seem to have been built for the human race, as at once
their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript
for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale
cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper.
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