There is surely
nothing to be dissatisfied with, to complain of, in the circumstance
that the elements of our experience are, in the last resort, two, and
not one. If we had been provided with fifty ultimate experiences, none
of them having a single property in common with any other; and if we had
only our present limited intellects, we might be entitled to complain
of the world's mysteriousness in the one proper acceptation of
mystery--namely, as overpowering our means of comprehension, as loading
us with unassimilable facts. As it is, matter, in its commoner aspects
and properties, is perfectly intelligible; in the great number and
variety of its endowments or properties, it is revealed to us slowly and
with much difficulty, and these subtle properties--the deep affinities
and molecular arrangements--- are the mysteries rightly so called. Mind
in itself is also intelligible; a pleasure is as intelligible as would
be any transmutation of it into the inscrutable essence that people
often desiderate. It is one of the facts of our sensibility, and has
a great many facts of its own kindred, which makes it all the more
intelligible.
The varieties of pleasure, pain, and emotion are very numerous; and to
know, remember, and classify them, is a work of labour, a _legitimate_
mystery.
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