Burke Edmund Of the Sublime and Beautiful

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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.
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[Footnote 1: Part II. sect. 2.]
Sect. 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
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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.
Sect. 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
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passions. Its object is the sublime.^1 Its 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.
Sect. VIII.
Why Things Not Dangerous Produce A Passion Like Terror
^2 A 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.]
Sect. IX.
Why Visual Objects Of Great Dimensions Are Sublime
Vision is performed by having a picture, formed by the rays of
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light which are reflected from the object, painted in one piece,
instantaneously, on the retina, or last nervous part of the eye. Or, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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