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[15] that 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[16] rapine 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