S 13.--Mental Pleasure furthers the Welfare of the Human Frame.


Thus, a sensation which embraces within its range the whole spiritual
being agitates in the same measure the whole framework of the organic
body,--heart, veins and blood, muscles and nerves, all, from those mighty
nerves that give to the heart its living impulse of motion down to the
tiny and unimportant nerves by which hairs are attached to the skin,
share equally its influence. Everything tends to a more violent motion.
If the sensation be an agreeable one, all these parts will acquire a
higher degree of harmonious activity; the heart's beat will be free,
lively, uniform, the blood will flow unchecked, gently or with fiery
speed, according as the affection is of a gentle or violent description;
digestion, secretion, and excretion will follow their natural course; the
excitable membranes will pliantly play in a gentle vapor-bath, and
excitability as well as sensitiveness will increase. Therefore the
condition of the greatest momentary mental pleasure is at the same time
the condition of the greatest bodily well-being.

As many as there may be of these partial activities (and is not every
beat of the pulse the result perhaps of thousands?) so many will be the
obscure sensations crowding upon the soul, each one of which indicates
perfection. Out of this confused complexity arises entire sensation of
the animal harmonies, that is, the highest possible combined sensation of
animal pleasure, which ranges itself, as it were, alongside of the
original intellectual or moral sensation, which this addition infinitely
increases. Thus is every agreeable affection the source of countless
bodily pleasures.