Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

1 40 Ordered Sottth
the composition of the picture? And not
only a change of posture — a snatch of
perfume, the sudden singing of a bird, the
freshness of some pulse of air from an invisible
sea, the light shadow of a travelling cloud,
the merest nothing that sends a little shiver
along the most infinitesimal nerve of a man's
body — not one of the least of these but has
a hand somehow in the general effect, and
brings some refinement of its own into the
character of the pleasure we feel.
And if the external conditions are thus
varied and subtle, even more so are those
within our own bodies. No man can find
out the world, says Solomon, from beginning
to end, because the world is in his heart ;
and so it is impossible for any of us to
understand, from beginning to end, that
agreement of harmonious circumstances that
creates in us the highest pleasure of admira-
tion, precisely because some of these circum-
stances are hidden from us for ever in the
constitution of our own bodies. After we
have reckoned up all that we can see or hear