est sagacity and
industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or,
what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is
almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done
but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never
should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever
ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more
to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters
must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues. A man who works
beyond the surface of things, though he may be wrong himself, yet he
clears the way for others, and may chance to make even his errors
subservient to the cause of truth. In the following parts I shall
inquire what things they are that cause in us the affections of the
sublime and beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections
themselves. I only desire one favor,--that no part of this discourse may
be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible
I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious
controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they
are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who
are willing to give a peaceful entrance to truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Mr. Locke [Essay on Human Understanding, l. ii. c. 20, sect. 16,]
thinks that the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and
operates as a pleasure, and the loss or diminishing of pleasure as a
pain. It is this opinion which we consider here.

PART II.

SECTION I.

OF THE PASSION CAUSED BY THE SUBLIME.

The passion caused by the great and sublime in _nature_, when those
causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment: and astonishment is
that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some
degree of horror.[11] In this case the mind is so entirely filled with
its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence
reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of
the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our
reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as
I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the
inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and respect.

SECTION II.

TERROR.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acti