PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 41 



May 4. ... some buildings set on fire by the lightining & burnt — 

 belonging to John Pearson. 



July 11, 12, l\ 14 & 15. Many cases of yellow fever in the City, 

 safd to be brot in a vessel from the Isle St. Domingo. 



21. Apples ripe. 



1819 

 July 30. Therm. 98, 99, 102, & 104 in shade at different places. 



1820 

 Jan. 8. Was surprised at hearing the voice of the Cat-bird in the 

 garden. 



It is in his aesthetic expression, in giving vent to his reactions 

 to the beauty of nature, that he becomes the subjective philoso- 

 pher uttering views that he subtly absorbed in the atmosphere 

 of his eighteenth-century home, in the eighteenth-century world 

 in which he lived, and from the eighteenth-century books that 

 he read. 



Beginning the second paragraph of the book which was to 

 make him famous, he meditates upon "This world, as a glorious 

 apartment of the boundless palace of the sovereign Creator, . . . 

 furnished with an infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressi- 

 bly beautiful and pleasing, equally free to the inspection and 

 enjoyment of all his creatures" {Travels, xiv). He perceives 

 " In every order of nature ... a variety of qualities distributed 

 amongst individuals, designed for different purposes and uses," 

 and concludes " that the Author has impartially distributed his 

 favours to his creatures, so that the attributes of each one seem 

 to be of sufficient importance to manifest the divine and inimi- 

 table workmanship" (p. xvi). 



All his meditations arise first in his aesthetic response to the 

 external aspects of nature and then become sublimated and 

 intellectualized into theological and moral philosophy. He first 

 attains " a grand view of the boundless ocean " and then trans- 

 lates his emotion into the pious invocation, " O thou Creator 

 supreme, almighty! how infinite and incomprehensible thy 

 works! most perfect, and every way astonishing!" (p. 59)- 

 Looking at the great savanna, he first contemplates " the un- 

 limited, varied, and truly astonishing native wild scenes of land- 



