University of Virginia Library

OF HARMONY.

Nature opposes beings to each other, in order to produce between them agreeable conformities. This law has been acknowledged from the highest antiquity. It is to be found in many passages of the holy Scriptures. I produce one from the book of Ecclesiasticus: 'All things are double one against another; and He hath made nothing unperfect: one thing establisheth the good of another.'

I consider this great truth as the key of all philosophy. It has been fruitful in discovery, as well as that other:

Nothing has been created in vain. It has been the source of taste in arts and eloquence. Out of contraries arise the pleasures of vision, hearing, touching, tasting, and all the various attractions of beauty. But from contraries likewise arise ugliness, discord, and all disgusting sensations. Is it wonderful that Nature should employ the same causes to produce opposite effects? When she opposes contraries to each other, painful affections are excited in us; but when she blends them, we are agreeably affected. From the opposition of contraries springs discord, from their union results harmony.

Let us find in Nature some proofs of this law. Cold is the opposite of heat, light of darkness, earth of water; and the harmony of these contrary elements produces effects the most delightful; but if cold succeeds rapidly to heat, or heat to cold, most vegetables and animals are in danger of perishing. The light of the sun is agreeable; but if a black cloud suddenly intercepts the lustre of his rays, or if lightning bursts from the bosom of a dark night, the eye undergoes a painful sensation.

Nature opposes, at sea, the white foam of the billows to the black colour of the rocks, to announce to mariners from afar the danger of shallows. She frequently presents to them forms analogous to destruction, such as those of ferocious animals, edifices in ruins, or the keels of ships turned upward. She even extracts from these awful forms hollow noises resembling groans, and broken off by long intervals of silence. She employs also those clashing oppositions and ominous signs to express the characters of savage and dangerous animals. The lion strolling through the solitudes of Africa announces his approach by roarings resembling thunder. The vivid and instantaneous flashes of fire, which dart from his eyes in the dark, exhibit besides the appearance of lightning. During the winter season the howlings of wolves in the forests of the north resemble the whistling of the winds among trees; the cries of birds of prey are shrill, piercing, and now and then interrupted by hollow notes. Nay, some emit the sounds of a human being in pain. Such is the lom, a species of sea-fowl, which feeds on the shelvy coasts of Lapland, on the dead bodies of animals thrown ashore: he cries like a man drowning.

Noxious insects exhibit the same oppositions and signals of destruction. The gnat, thirsting after human blood, announces himself to the eye by the white points on his brown-coloured body, and to the ear by his shrill notes, which disturb the tranquillity of the grove; the carnivorous wasp is speckled with black stripes on a yellow ground; and the insects which attack our persons more immediately, are distinguished by glaring oppositions of colour to the field on which they settle.

But when two countraries come to be blended, the combination produces pleasure, beauty, and harmony. I call the instant and the point of their union harmonic expression. This is the only principle I have perceived in Nature, for the elements themselves, as we have seen, are not simple; they always present accords formed of two contraries to analyses multiplied without end. Thus the gentlest temperature, and the most favourable to every species of vegetation, are those of the seasons in which the cold is blended with heat, as spring and autumn. They are then productive of two saps in trees, which the strongest heats of summer do not effect. The most agreeable production of light and darkness is perceptible at those seasons when they melt into each other, and form what painters call the clear-obscure and half-lights. Hence the most interesting hours of the day are those of morning and evening; when the shade and light strive for the mastery of the azure fields. The most lovely prospects are those in which land and water are lost in each other; this suggested that observation of honest Plutarch, namely, that the pleasantest land-journeys are those along the shore of the sea; and the most delightful voyages those which are coasting along the land. You will observe these same harmonies result from savours and sounds the most opposite, in the pleasures of the palate and of the ear.

We shall proceed to examine the uniformity of this law, in the very principles by which Nature gives us the first sensations of her works, viz. colours, forms, and motions.