In thoughts from the visions of the night,when deep sleep falleth upon men,fear came upon me,and trembling,which made all my bones to shake.Then a spirit passed before my face;the hair of my flesh stood up.It stood still,but I could not discern the form thereof:an image was before mine eyes,there was silence,and I heard a voice,-Shall mortal man be more just than God?We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision;we are first terrified,before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion;but when this grand cause of terror makes it appearance,what is it?Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness,more awful,more striking,more terrible,than the liveliest deion,than the clearest painting,could possibly represent it?When painters have attempted to give us clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas,they have,I think,almost always failed;insomuch that I have been at a loss,in all the pictures I have seen of hell,to determine whether the painter did not intend something ludicrous.Several painters have handled a subject of this kind,with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imagination could suggest;but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptation of St.
Anthony were rather a sort of odd,wild grotesques,than anything capable of producing a serious passion.In all these subjects poetry is very happy.
Its apparitions,its chimeras,its harpies,its allegorical figures,are grand and affecting;and though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure,they are magnificent figures.These figures in painting would be clear enough,but I fear they might become ridiculous.
V
Power [Footnote 1:Part I.sect.7.]
[Footnote 2:Vide Part III.sect.21]
Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger,and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause,I know of nothing sublime,which is not some modification of power.And this branch rises,as naturally as the other two branches,from terror,the common stock of everything that is sublime.The idea of power,at first view,seems of the class of those indifferent ones,which may equally belong to pain or to pleasure.
But in reality,the affection,arising from the idea of vast power,is extremely remote from that neutral character.For first,we must remember,1that the idea of pain,in its highest degree,is much stronger than the highest degree of pleasure;and that it preserves the same superiority through all the subordinate gradations.From hence it is,that where the chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal,the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent.And indeed the ideas of pain,and,above all,of death,are so very affecting,that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting either,it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror.Again,we know by experience,that,for the enjoyment of pleasure,no great efforts of power are at all necessary;nay,we know,that such efforts would go a great way towards destroying our satisfaction:for pleasure must be stolen,and not forced upon us;pleasure follows the will;and therefore we are generally affected with it by many things of a force greatly inferior to our own.But pain is always inflicted by a power in some way superior,because we never submit to pain willingly.So that strength,violence,pain,and terror,are ideas that rush in upon the mind together.Look at a man,or any other animal of prodigious strength,and what is your idea before reflection?Is it that this strength will be subservient to you,to your ease,to your pleasure,to your interest in any sense?No;the emotion you feel is,lest this enormous strength should be employed to the purposes of rapine2
and destruction.That power derives all its sublimity from the terror with which it is generally accompanied,will appear evidently from its effect in the very few cases,in which it may be possible to strip a considerable degree of strength of its ability to hurt.When you do this,you spoil it of everything sublime,and it immediately becomes contemptible.An ox is a creature of vast strength;but he is an innocent creature,extremely serviceable,and not at all dangerous;for which reason the idea of an ox is by no means grand.A bull is strong too:but his strength is of another kind;often very destructive,seldom (at least amongst us)of any use in our business;the idea of a bull is therefore great,and it has frequently a place in sublime deions,and elevating comparisons.
Let us look at another strong animal,in the two distinct lights in which we may consider him.The horse in the light of a useful beast,fit for the plough,the road,the draft;in every social,useful light,the horse has nothing sublime:but is it thus that we are affected with him,whose neck is clothed with thunder,the glory of whose nostrils is terrible,who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage,neither believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet?In this deion,the useful character of the horse entirely disappears,and the terrible and sublime blaze out together.We have continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable,but not pernicious.Amongst these we never look for the sublime;it comes upon us in the gloomy forest,and in the howling wilderness,in the form of the lion,the tiger,the panther,or rhinoceros.
