Part 3 (1/2)

A baby is still smaller, but a baby too may be sublime The starry sky is not more sublime than the babe on the arm of the Madonna di San Sisto A sparrow is more diminutive still; but that it is possible for a sparrow to be sublime is not difficult to show This is a translation of a prose poe, and alking up the garden avenue My dog was running on in front of an to steal forward as though he scented garound a young sparrow, its beak edged with yellow, and its head covered with soft down It had fallen fro the birches of the avenue); and there it sat and never stirred, except to stretch out its little half-groings in a helpless flutter

My dog was slowly approaching it, when suddenly, darting from the tree overhead, an old black-throated sparrow dropt like a stone right before his nose, and, all ru itself, once, twice, at his open jaith their great teeth

It would save its young one; it screened it with its own body; the tiny frareild and hoarse; it sank and died It had sacrificed itself

What a hugemust have seeh A power stronger than its oill tore it away

My dog stood still, and then slunk back disconcerted Plainly he too had to recognise that power I called hi of reverence cah It was really reverence I felt before that little heroic bird and the passionate outburst of its love

Love, I thought, is verily stronger than death and the terror of death By love, only by love, is life sustained and reed, is sublieness of size, assuredly, but, we answer, its love and courage

Yes; but what do we e'? We often e, and always admire and approve them; but we do not always find them sublime Why, then, are they sublireatness It is not in the quality alone, but in the quantity of the quality, that the subliine the quantity to be considerably reduced,--if we iine the parent bird, after its first brave effort, flinching and flying away, or if we suppose the bird that sacrifices itself to be no sparrow but a turkey In either case love and courage would remain, but sublimity would recede or vanish, sier possess the required immensity[4]

The sublimity of the sparrow, then, no less than that of the sky or sea, depends on exceeding or overwhelreatness, however, not of extension but rather of strength or power, and in this case of spiritual power 'Love is _stronger_ than death,' quotes the poet; 'a power _stronger_ than its own tore it away' So it is with the dog of who the crags of Helvellyn, and as found three months after by histith of feeling, great Above all human estimate[5]

And if we look further we shall find that these cases of subli exceptions: 'thy soul's _ihty_ prophet' he calls it We shall find, in fact, that in the sublireatness, which (without saying that the phrase is invariably the reatness of power and which in these cases is essential

We must develop this statement a little Naturally the power, and therefore the sublimity, will differ in its character in different instances, and therefore will affect us variously It hly--physical, or vital, or (in the old wide sense of the word)And physical force will appeal to the iination in one way, and vital in another, and moral or spiritual in another But it is still power of soraceful, and irand For example, the lines of the water in a thin cascade raceful, but such a cascade has not power enough to be sublirate is often 'beautiful,' but it is not sublireat fire' frequently is so, because it gives the impression of tremendous power The ocean, in those stanzas of _Childe Harold_ which no amount of familiarity or of defect can deprive of their sublihtly as rain-drops and shatters fleets like toys The sublimity of Behemoth and Leviathan in the _Book of Job_ lies in the contrast of their enorht with the puny power of e and strength Think of subliures or ideas in the world of fiction or of history, and you find that, whether they are radiant or gloomy, violent or peaceful, terrible or adorable, they all iination by their iht It is so with Achilles, standing alone beyond the wall, with the light of the divine fla from his head, while he sends across the trench that shout at whose far-off sound the hearts of the Trojans die within theeance has cos, and leaps onto the threshold with his bow, and pours his arron at his feet, and looks down the long hall at the doo enemies Milton's Satan is sublime when he refuses to accept defeat fro Eve, because here he shows not power but cunning, and we feel not the strength of his cunning but the weakness of his victiures of the Medici Chapel, in 'The horse and his rider,' we feel again subliantic power, put forth or held in reserve Fate or Death, i assassin, is not subliined as inevitable, irresistible, _ineluctabile fatuone appeals, like that Duty which preserves the strength and freshness of the most ancient heavens, are subli a boundless power of enduring pain to a boundless power of inflicting it; Regulus returning unmoved to his doom; Socrates, serene and even joyous in the presence of injury and death and the lamentations of his friends, are subli the most sublime on record, and they are also the expression of the absolute power of the spirit[6]

It seems clear, then, that sublireatness of power So abundant, indeed, are the instances that one begins to wonder whether it ever arises froht in supposing that nitude, however prodigious, seen of power? In the case of living things, at any rate, this doubt seems to be well founded A tree is sublie extent of empty space or time, but from the power in it which raises aloft and spreads abroad a thousand branches and a million leaves, or which has battled for centuries with buffeting storms and has seen summers and winters arise and pass like the hours of our day It is not the le that wins the of beasts or of birds, but the power exhibited in the gigantic head and ar eye And even e pass from the realm of life our doubt re be sublime to us if we did not read their masses and lines as symbols of force? Would even the illimitable extent of sea or sky, the endlessness of ti us anything but fatigue or depression if we did not apprehend theuely, as expressions of immeasurable power--power that created them, or lives in them, or _can_ count them; so that what impresses us is not thethat overpowers any iinable limit? If these doubts are justified (as in my opinion they are), the conclusion will follow that the exceeding greatness required for sublih in one class of cases the ih immensity of extent

However this question may be decided, our result so far seems to be that the peculiarity of the sublireatness But before this result can be considered safe, two obstacles ative instances? Is it i sublireatness? Naturally I can say no more than that I have conscientiously searched for exceptions to the rule and have searched in vain I can find only apparent exceptions which in reality confirm the rule; and I will mention only those which look the ht there seems to be not reatness, but actually the negation of it For exaht, or the sudden pause in a storain the silence and movelessness of death, may undoubtedly be sublime; and how, it may be asked, can a reatness? It cannot, I answer; but neither can it be sublime If you apprehend the silence in these cases as aof sublimity will arise in your mind; and if you do apprehend the silence as sublin of immense power, put forth or held in reserve The 'dead pause abrupt of entle breezes; and it is not the absence of hty winds, but their _pause_ before they burst into renewed fury; or if their silence is not their will, it is a silence ihtier even than they In either case there may be sublimity, but then there is the iht, when it seems sublime, is apprehended not as the absence but as the subdual of sound,--the stillness wrought by a power so hty that at its touch all the restless noises of the day fall du of an omnipotent peace over the world And such a peace it is, an unassailable peace, that may make the face of death sublime, a stillness which is not moveless but immovable[7]

At present, then, our result seeer remains Granted that in the sublireatness, is that _all_ there is? Is there not in every case so that the phrase 'overwhelreatness' contains important implications which have yet to be considered, I can only answer like the last I do not find any other peculiarity that is _always_ present Several have been alleged, and one or two of these will be mentioned later, but none of them appears to show itself indubitably wherever subliive a much fuller account of the subli that impresses you in a sublime baby while you onore Satan, or if you confine yourself to the subliet the sublime rainbow or sunrise But then your account will not answer to the instances you have ignored; and when you take them in you will have to pare it down until perhaps you end in a result like ours At any rate we had better be content with it for the present, and turn to another aspect of thethe sublime object as if its subli and apprehending it Yet the adjective in the phrase 'overwhelest the truth that this state of mind is essential to sublimity Let us now therefore look inward, and ask how this state differs froraceful or 'beautiful' Since Kant dealt with the subject, reed that there is a decided difference, which I will try to describe broadly, and without pledging myself to the entire accuracy of the description

When, on seeing or hearing soraceful! or How lovely! or How 'beautiful'! there is in us an ihtful sense of har and ourselves

The air Nientle senses The heaven's breath S wins us and draws us towards itself without resistance

So in us hastens to , we h it is not always untouched by pain (for the thing may have sadness in it),[9] this touch of pain or sadness does notand us, or involve any check in our acceptance of it

In the case of sublimity, on the other hand, this acceptance does not seem to be so simple or ies in it[10] First--if only for a fraction of a second--there is a sense of being checked, or baffled, or even stupefied, or possibly even repelled orus which we could not receive, or grasp, or stand up to

In certain cases we appear to shrink away froh it thrust upon us a sense of our own feebleness or insignificance This we ative stage It is essential to subli seerace except sometimes a sense of surprise or wonder, which is wholly pleasant, and which does not necessarily qualify the lovely or graceful thing

But this first stage or aspect clearly does not by itself suffice for sublimity To it there succeeds, it radually, another: a powerful reaction, a rush of self-expansion, or an uplifting, or a sense of being borne out of the self that was checked, or even of being carried away beyond all checks and liht be called forbidding, s of union with it; and, when its nature permits of this, they ation from which they have issued, the 'smell of the fire,' usually remains on them The union, we may say perhaps, has required a self-surrender, and the rapture or adoration is often strongly tinged with awe

Now, this peculiar doubleness in our apprehension of sublies or phases, a negative and a positive, seems to correspond with the peculiarity which we found in the subli it by itself It is its overwhelreatness which for a moment checks, baffles, subdues, even repels us orits way into the iination and emotions, distends or uplifts theo out to the subli, identify ourselves ideally with it, and share its ireatness But if, and in so far as, we remain conscious of our difference fronificance of our actual selves, and our glory is led with awe or even with self-abase simply and without any _arriere pensee_ to describe a mode of aesthetic experience But it must have occurred to some of my hearers that the description recalls other kinds of experience And if they find it accurate in the main, they will appreciate, even if they do not accept, the exalted claim which philosophers, in various forms, have h the check or shock which it gives to our finitude, the consciousness of an infinite or absolute; and this is the reason of the kinshi+p we feel between this particular mode of aesthetic experience on the one side, and, on the other, ion For there, by the denial of our merely finite or individual selves, we rise into union with the lahich imposes on us an unconditional demand, or with the infinite source and end of our spiritual life

These are ideas e to be considered now, and even later I can but touch on them But the mere mention of them may carry us to the last enquiries hich we can deal For it suggests this question: Supposing that high claim to be justified at all, can it really be made for _all_ sublihest forms? A similar questionthe sublio on to speak of some of these

(1) Burke asserted that the sublime is always founded on fear; indeed he considered this to be its distinguishi+ng characteristic Setting aside, then, the connection of this stateeneral doctrine (a doctrine impossible to accept), we may ask, Is it true that the 'check'