other. It is on this principle that
flattery is so prevalent; for flattery is no more than what raises in a
man's mind an idea of a preference which he has not. Now, whatever,
either on good or upon bad grounds, tends to raise a man in his own
opinion, produces a sort of swelling and triumph, that is extremely
grateful to the human mind; and this swelling is never more perceived,
nor operates with more force, than when without danger we are conversant
with terrible objects; the mind always claiming to itself some part of
the dignity and importance of the things which it contemplates. Hence
proceeds what Longinus has observed of that glorying and sense of inward
greatness, that always fills the reader of such passages in poets and
orators as are sublime: it is what every man must have felt in himself
upon such occasions.

SECTION XVIII.

THE RECAPITULATION.

To draw the whole of what has been said into a few distinct points:--The
passions 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 circumstances; 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 passions belonging to self-preservation are the strongest
of all the passions.

The second head to which the passions are referred with relation to
their final cause, is society. There are two sorts of societies. The
first is, the society of sex. The passion belonging to this is called
love, and it contains a mixture of lust; its object is the beauty of
women. The other is the great society with man and all other animals.
The passion subservient to this is called likewise love, but it has no
mixture of lust, 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 passion the most nearly resembling these. The
passion 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