THE 



LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC 



CLASS BOOK. 



LESSON 1. 



Intellectual Pleasures^ ^■ 



Evolv'ed, unfolded, unrolled, thrown out, 

 Transcen'dent, excellent, surpassing others. 



WHEN we think of what man is, not in his faculties only, 

 but in his intellectual acquisitions, and of what he must have 

 been, on his entrance into the world, it is difficult for us to 

 regard this knowledge and absolute ignorance as states of 

 the same mind. It seems to us almost as if we had to con- 

 sider a spiritual creation or transformation, as wondrous a/s 

 if, in contemplating the material universe, we were to strive 

 to think of the whole system of suns and planets, as evolved 

 from a mere particle of matter, or rising from nothing, as 

 when originally created. We believe that they were so cre- 

 ated, and we know that man, comprehensive as his acquire- 

 ments are, must have set out in his intellectual career from 

 absolute ignorance ; but how difficult is it for us to form any, 

 accurate conception of what we thus undoubtingly believe I 

 The mind, which is enriched with as many sciences as there 

 are classes of existing things in the universe, which our or- 

 gans are able to discern — the mind, which is skilled in all 

 the languages of all the civilized nations of the globe, and 

 which has fixed and treasured in its own remembrance, the 

 beauties of every work of transcendent genius, which age 

 after age has added to the stores of antiquity — this mind, we 

 know well, was once as ignorant as the dullest and feeblest 

 of those minds, which scarcely know enough, even to won- 

 der at its superiority. 



That pleasure attends the sublime operations of intellect 

 ia the discovery of truth, or the splendid creations of fancy, 



