Such appear to us to be the objective qualities of sublimity, but the peculiar emotion they excite has hitherto been thought undefinable : we shall nevertheless attempt it.
III. The emotion of sublimity. As in considering objectively every case of material or moral sublimity, we found as the primary and invariable fact vastness or intensity, so in considering subjectively every case of sublimity as an emotion, we shall find the primary and invariable fact to be a sense of our own insignificance ; of our inferiority to the object, or to the will which prompted the deed ; and this sense of inferiority has guided mankind in the employment of a word ex pressing elevation for sublimity. Mere vastness excites this emotion by exciting a corresponding sense of our smallness. Mere intensity excites this emotion by esciting a corresponding sense of our feeble ness. Vary the objects—vary the emotions as you may, there will invariably be this one feeling of comparative insignificance. Take as an example the sublime words of Scripture, " I am the High and the Lofty One, who inhabiteth eternity." Nothing can exceed the grandeur of that idea, and he who conceives it conceives also, at the same time, the corresponding idea of his own entail and finite nature. In the violent dashing of a cataract, in the roar of the ocean, in the violence of the storm, or in the majestic quiet of Mont Blanc preserving its calm amidst all the storms that play around it, or in the concentrated will of a Scievola, Horace, Brutus, or CEdipus, in all these cases we are moved by a vivid feeling of some greater power than our own, or some will more capable of suffering, more vast iu its strength than our feeble vacillating will It is from this reason that an imaginative mind experiences mere emotions of sublimity than another. In proportiou
as we comprehend the majesty of nature, or the amount of self-sacrifice in an heroic action, we comprehend our own inferiority to them.
In conclusion we may thus sum up our theory. The invariable condition of sublimity it) objects, either material or moral, is vastness or intensity. The invariable condition of the emotion of sublimity— that which distinguishes this emotion from every other emotion—is a comprehension of this vastness with a simultaneous feeling of our own comparative insignificance, together with a concomitant sense of pre sent 'security from any danger which might result from this superior power. The antithesis to the emotion of sublimity is the emotion of contempt.