I
Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful When I say I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of Sublimity and Beauty,I would not be understood to say,that I can come to the ultimate cause.
I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain,why certain affections of the body produce such a distinct emotion of mind,and no other;or why the body is at all affected by the mind,or the mind by the body.A little thought will show this to be impossible.But I conceive,if we can discover what affections of the mind produce certain emotions of the body,and what distinct feelings and qualities of body shall produce certain determinate passions in the mind,and no others,I fancy a great deal will be done;something not unuseful towards a distinct knowledge of our passions,so far at least as we have them at present under our consideration.This is all,I believe,we can do.If we could advance a step farther,difficulties would still remain,as we should be still equally distant from the first cause.When Newton first discovered the property of attraction,and settled its laws,he found it served very well to explain several of the most remarkable phaenomena in nature;but yet,with reference to the general system of things,he could consider attraction but as an effect,whose cause at that time he did not attempt to trace.But when he afterwards began to account for it by a subtle elastic aether,this great man (if in so great a man it be not impious to discover anything like a blemish)seemed to have quitted his usual cautious manner of philosophizing;since,perhaps,allowing all that has been advanced on this subject to be sufficiently proved,I think it leaves us with as many difficulties as it found us.The great chain of causes,which links one to another,even to the throne of God himself,can never be unravelled by any industry of ours.When we go but one step beyond the immediate sensible qualities of things,we go out of our depth.All we do after is but a faint struggle,that shows we are in an element which does not belong to us.So that when I speak of cause,and efficient cause,I only mean certain affections of the mind,that cause certain changes in the body;or certain powers and properties in bodies,that work a change in the mind.As if I were to explain the motion of a body falling to the ground,I would say it was caused by gravity;and I would endeavour to show after what manner this power operated,without attempting to show why it operated in this manner:
or if I were to explain the effects of bodies striking one another by the common laws of percussion,I should not endeavour to explain how motion itself is communicated.
II
Association It is no small bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause of our passions,that the occasions of many of them are given,and that their governing motions are communicated at a time when we have not capacity to reflect on them;at a time of which all sort of memory is worn out of our minds.For besides such things as affect us in various manners,according to their natural powers,there are associations made at that early season,which we find it very hard afterwards to distinguish from natural effects.Not to mention the unaccountable antipathies which we find in many persons,we all find it impossible to remember when a steep became more terrible than a plain;
or fire or water more terrible than a clod of earth;though all these are very probably either conclusions from experience,or arising from the premonitions of others;and some of them impressed,in all likelihood,pretty late.
But as it must be allowed that many things affect us after a certain manner,not by any natural powers they have for that purpose,but by association;so it would be absurd,on the other hand,to say that all things affect us by association only;since some things must have been originally and naturally agreeable or disagreeable,from which the others derive their associated powers;and it would be,I fancy,to little purpose to look for the cause of our passions in association,until we fail of it in the natural properties of things.
III
