How The Sublime Is Produced Having considered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain violent emotions of the nerves;it easily follows,from what we have just said,that whatever is fitted to produce such a tension must be productive of a passion similar to terror,1and consequently must be a source of the sublime,though it should have no idea of danger connected with it.So that little remains towards showing the cause of the sublime,but to show that the instances we have given of it in the second part relate to such things as are fitted by nature to produce this sort of tension,either by the primary operation of the mind or the body.With regard to such things as effect by the associated idea of danger,there can be no doubt but that they produce terror,and act by some modification of that passion;and that terror,when sufficiently violent,raises the emotions of the body just mentioned,can as little be doubted.
But if the sublime is built on terror,or some passion like it,which has pain for its object,it is previously proper to inquire how any species of delight can be derived from a cause so apparently contrary to it.I say delight,because,as I have often remarked,it is very evidently different in its cause,and in its own nature,from actual and positive pleasure.
[Footnote 1:Part II.sect.2.]
VI
How Pain Can Be A Cause Of Delight Providence has so ordered it,that a state of rest and inaction,however it may flatter our indolence,should be productive of many inconveniences;that it should generate such disorders,as may force us to have recourse to some labour,as a thing absolutely requisite to make us pass our lives with tolerable satisfaction;for the nature of rest is to suffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation,that not only disables the members from performing their functions,but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requisite for carrying on the natural and necessary secretions.At the same time,that in this languid inactive state,the nerves are more liable to the most horrid convulsions,that when they are sufficiently braced and strengthened.
Melancholy,dejection,despair,and often self-murder,is the consequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state of body.The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or labour;and labour is a surmounting of difficulties,an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles;and as such resembles pain,which consists in tension or contraction,in everything but degree.Labour is not only requisite to preserve the coarser organs in a state fit for their functions;but it is equally necessary to those finer and more delicate organs,on which,and by which,the imagination,and perhaps the other mental powers,act.Since it is probable,that not only the inferior parts of the soul,as the passions are called,but the understanding itself,makes use of some fine corporeal instruments in its operation;though what they are,and where they are,may be somewhat hard to settle;but that it does make use of such,appears from hence;that a long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the whole body;and,on the other hand,that great bodily labour,or pain,weakens,and sometimes actually destroys,the mental faculties.Now,as a due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution,and that without this rousing they would become languid and diseased,the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned;to have them in proper order,they must be shaken and worked to a proper degree.
VII
Exercise Necessary For The Finer Organs As common labour,which is a mode of pain,is the exercise of the grosser,a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the system;and if a certain mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon the eye or the ear,as they are the most delicate organs,the affection approaches more nearly to that which has a mental cause.In all these cases,if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious;if the pain is not carried to violence,and the terror is not conversant about the present destruction of the person,as these emotions clear the parts,whether fine or gross,of a dangerous and troublesome encumbrance,they are capable of producing delight;not pleasure,but a sort of delightful horror,a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror;which,as it belongs to self-preservation,is one of the strongest of all the passions.Its object is the sublime.1Its highest degree I call astonishment;the subordinate degrees are awe,reverence,and respect,which,by the very etymology of the words show from what source they are derived,and how they stand distinguished from positive pleasure.
VIII
Why Things Not Dangerous Produce A Passion Like Terror 2A Mode of terror or pain is always the cause of the sublime.For terror,or associated danger,the foregoing explication is,I believe,sufficient.
It will require something more trouble to show,that such examples as I have given of the sublime in the second part are capable of producing a mode of pain,and of being thus allied to terror,and to be accounted for on the same principles.And first of such objects as are great in their dimensions.
I speak of visual objects.
[Footnote 1:Part II.sect 2.]
[Footnote 2:Part I.sect.7.Part II.sect 2.]
[Footnote 3:Part II.sect.7.]
