Volume I Part 4 (2/2)
THE RECAPITULATION.
To draw the whole of what has been said into a few distinct points:--The pa.s.sions which belong to self-preservation turn on pain and danger; they are simply painful when their causes immediately affect us; they are delightful when we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circ.u.mstances; this delight I have not called pleasure, because it turns on pain, and because it is different enough from any idea of positive pleasure. Whatever excites this delight, I call _sublime_. The pa.s.sions belonging to self-preservation are the strongest of all the pa.s.sions.
The second head to which the pa.s.sions are referred with relation to their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The first is, the society of s.e.x. The pa.s.sion belonging to this is called love, and it contains a mixture of l.u.s.t; its object is the beauty of women. The other is the great society with man and all other animals.
The pa.s.sion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no mixture of l.u.s.t, and its object is beauty; which is a name I shall apply to all such qualities in things as induce in us a sense of affection and tenderness, or some other pa.s.sion the most nearly resembling these. The pa.s.sion of love has its rise in positive pleasure; it is, like all things which grow out of pleasure, capable of being mixed with a mode of uneasiness, that is, when an idea of its object is excited in the mind with an idea at the same time of having irretrievably lost it. This mixed sense of pleasure I have not called _pain_, because it turns upon actual pleasure, and because it is, both in its cause and in most of its effects, of a nature altogether different.
Next to the general pa.s.sion we have for society, to a choice in which we are directed by the pleasure we have in the object, the particular pa.s.sion under this head called sympathy has the greatest extent. The nature of this pa.s.sion is, to put us in the place of another in whatever circ.u.mstance he is in, and to affect us in a like manner; so that this pa.s.sion may, as the occasion requires, turn either on pain or pleasure; but with the modifications mentioned in some cases in Sect. 11. As to imitation and preference, nothing more need be said.
SECTION XIX.
THE CONCLUSION.
I believed that an attempt to range and methodize some of our most leading pa.s.sions would be a good preparative to such an inquiry as we are going to make in the ensuing discourse. The pa.s.sions I have mentioned are almost the only ones which it can be necessary to consider in our present design; though the variety of the pa.s.sions is great, and worthy, in every branch of that variety, of an attentive investigation.
The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of His wisdom who made it. If a discourse on the use of the parts of the body may be considered as a hymn to the Creator; the use of the pa.s.sions, which are the organs of the mind, cannot be barren of praise to him, nor unproductive to ourselves of that n.o.ble and uncommon union of science and admiration, which a contemplation of the works of infinite wisdom alone can afford to a rational mind; whilst, referring to him whatever we find of right or good or fair in ourselves, discovering his strength and wisdom even in our own weakness and imperfection, honoring them where we discover them clearly, and adoring their profundity where we are lost in our search, we may be inquisitive without impertinence, and elevated without pride; we may be admitted, if I may dare to say so, into the counsels of the Almighty by a consideration of his works. The elevation of the mind ought to be the princ.i.p.al end of all our studies; which, if they do not in some measure effect, they are of very little service to us. But, besides this great purpose, a consideration of the rationale of our pa.s.sions seems to me very necessary for all who would affect them upon solid and sure principles. It is not enough to know them in general; to affect them after a delicate manner, or to judge properly of any work designed to affect them, we should know the exact boundaries of their several jurisdictions; we should pursue them through all their variety of operations, and pierce into the inmost, and what might appear inaccessible parts of our nature,
Quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra.
Without all this it is possible for a man, after a confused manner sometimes to satisfy his own mind of the truth of his work; but he can never have a certain determinate rule to go by, nor can he ever make his propositions sufficiently clear to others. Poets, and orators, and painters, and those who cultivate other branches of the liberal arts, have, without this critical knowledge, succeeded well in their several provinces, and will succeed: as among artificers there are many machines made and even invented without any exact knowledge of the principles they are governed by. It is, I own, not uncommon to be wrong in theory, and right in practice: and we are happy that it is so. Men often act right from their feelings, who afterwards reason but ill on them from principle; but as it is impossible to avoid an attempt at such reasoning, and equally impossible to prevent its having some influence on our practice, surely it is worth taking some pains to have it just, and founded on the basis of sure experience. We might expect that the artists themselves would have been our surest guides; but the artists have been too much occupied in the practice: the philosophers have done little; and what they have done, was mostly with a view to their own schemes and systems; and as for those called critics, they have generally sought the rule of the arts in the wrong place; they sought it among poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings. But art can never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the reason why artists in general, and poets, princ.i.p.ally, have been confined in so narrow a circle: they have been rather imitators of one another than of nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity, and to so remote an antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but poorly of anything, whilst I measure it by no other standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A man who works beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors subservient to the cause of truth. In the following parts I shall inquire what things they are that cause in us the affections of the sublime and beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections themselves. I only desire one favor,--that no part of this discourse may be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates as a pleasure, and the loss or diminis.h.i.+ng of pleasure as a pain. It is this opinion which we consider here.
PART II.
SECTION I.
OF THE Pa.s.sION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME.
The pa.s.sion caused by the great and sublime in _nature_, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.[11] In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it antic.i.p.ates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.
SECTION II.
TERROR.
No pa.s.sion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as _fear_.[12] For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an advent.i.tious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime. Several languages bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these ideas. They frequently use the same word to signify indifferently the modes of astonishment or admiration and those of terror. [Greek: Thambos] is in Greek either fear or wonder; [Greek: deinos] is terrible or respectable; [Greek: ahideo], to reverence or to fear. _Vereor_ in Latin is what [Greek: ahideo] is in Greek. The Romans used the verb _stupeo_, a term which strongly marks the state of an astonished mind, to express the effect either of simple fear, or of astonishment; the word _attonitus_ (thunderstruck) is equally expressive of the alliance of these ideas; and do not the French _etonnement_, and the English _astonishment_ and _amazement_, point out as clearly the kindred emotions which attend fear and wonder? They who have a more general knowledge of languages, could produce, I make no doubt, many other and equally striking examples.
SECTION III.
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