village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,--then I suppose he
will have a sensation which perhaps he never had before. He has a
feeling not in addition or increase of former feelings, but of something
different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for
a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress,
and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does not stand
where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which he
was before a stranger.

Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens upon us, if
allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost whirl it round and make
it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly called an
intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term.

And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign animals,
their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of their
forms and gestures and habits, and their variety and independence of
each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, and as if
under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may come
on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for our
faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who,
having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his
arms and legs free.

Hence physical science generally, in all its departments, as bringing
before us the exuberant riches and resources, yet the orderly course, of
the universe, elevates and excites the student, and at first, I may say,
almost takes away his breath, while in time it exercises a
tranquillising influence upon him.