If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of discovering the truth,it may answer an end perhaps as useful,in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding.If it does not make us knowing,it may make us modest.If it does not preserve us from error,it may at least from the spirit of error;and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste,when so much labour may end in so much uncertainty.
I could wish that,in examining this theory,the same method were pursued which I endeavoured to observe in forming it.The objections,in my opinion,ought to be proposed,either to the several principles as they are distinctly considered,or to the justness of the conclusion which is drawn from them.
But it is common to pass over both the premises and conclusion in silence,and to produce,as an objection,some poetical passage which does not seem easily accounted for upon the principles I endeavour to establish.
This manner of proceeding I should think very improper.The task would be infinite,if we could establish no principle until we had previously unravelled the complex texture of every image or deion to be found in poets and orators.
And though we should never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our principles,this can never overturn the theory itself,whilst it is founded on certain and indisputable facts.A theory founded on experiment,and not assumed,is always good for so much as it explains.Our inability to push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it.This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some necessary mediums;to a want of proper application;
to many other causes besides a defect in the principles we employ.In reality,the subject requires a much closer attention than we dare claim from our manner of treating it.
If it should not appear on the face of the work,I must caution the reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the Sublime and Beautiful.My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of these ideas.
If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the Sublime be all found consistent with each other,and all different from those which I place under the head of Beauty;and if those which compose the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,and the same opposition to those which are classed under the denomination of Sublime,I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to follow the name I give them or not,provided he allows that what I dispose under different heads are in reality different things in nature.The use I make of the words may be blamed,as too confined or too extended;my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.
To conclude:whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of truth in this matter,I do not repent the pains I have taken in it.The use of such inquiries may be very considerable.Whatever turns the soul inward on itself,tends to concentre its forces,and to fit it for greater and stronger flights of science.By looking into physical causes our minds are opened and enlarged;
and in this pursuit,whether we take or whether we lose our game,the chase is certainly of service.Cicero,true as he was to the academic philosophy,and consequently led to reject the certainty of physical,as of every other kind of knowledge,yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding;"Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum consideratio contemplatioque naturae."If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations,upon the humbler field of the imagination,whilst we investigate the springs,and trace the courses of our passions,we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity,but we may reflect back on the severer sciences some of the graces and elegancies of taste,without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal.
