nce of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state
of body. The best remedy for all these evils is exercise or _labor_; and
labor is a surmounting of _difficulties_, an exertion of the contracting
power of the muscles; and as such resembles pain, which consists in
tension or contraction, in everything but degree. Labor is not only
requisite to preserve the coarser organs, in a state fit for their
functions; but it is equally necessary to these finer and more delicate
organs, on which, and by which, the imagination and perhaps the other
mental powers act. Since it is probable, that not only the inferior
parts of the soul, as the passions are called, but the understanding
itself makes use of some fine corporeal instruments in its operation;
though what they are, and where they are, may be somewhat hard to
settle: but that it does make use of such, appears from hence; that a
long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the
whole body; and on the other hand, that great bodily labor, or pain,
weakens and sometimes actually destroys the mental faculties. Now, as a
due exercise is essential to the coarse muscular parts of the
constitution, and that without this rousing they would become languid
and diseased, the very same rule holds with regard to those finer parts
we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be shaken and
worked to a proper degree.

SECTION VII.

EXERCISE NECESSARY FOR THE FINER ORGANS.

As common labor, which is a mode of pain, is the exercise of the
grosser, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the
system; and if a certain mode of pain be of such a nature as to act upon
the eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs, the affection
approaches more nearly to that which has a mental cause. In all these
cases, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually
noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not
conversant about the present destruction of the person, as these
emotions clear the parts, whether fine or gross, of a dangerous and
troublesome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not
pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged
with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the
strongest of all the passions. Its object is the sublime.[33] Its
highest degree I call _astonishment_; the subordinate degrees are awe,
reverence, and res