sublime
conception; the common quality in both makes each suggest the
other. For that reason, too, the parable of the natal stars governing
our lives is such a natural one to express our subjection to
circumstances, and can be transformed by the stupidity of disciples
into a literal tenet. In the same way, the kinship of the emotion
produced by the stars with the emotion proper to certain religious
moments makes the stars seem a religious object. They become,
like impressive music, a stimulus to worship. But fortunately there
are experiences which remain untouched by theory, and which
maintain the mutual intelligence of men through the estrangements
wrought by intellectual and religious systems. When the
superstructures crumble, the common foundation of human
sentience and imagination is exposed beneath.

The intellectual suggestion of the infinity of nature can, moreover,
be awakened by other experiences which are by no means sublime.
A heap of sand will involve infinity as surely as a universe of suns
and planets. Any object is infinitely divisible and, when we press
the thought, can contain as many worlds with as many winged
monsters and ideal republics as can the satellites of Sirius. But the
infinitesimal does not move us aesthetically; it can only awaken an
amused curiosity. The difference cannot lie in the import of the
idea, which is objectively the same in both cases. It lies in the
different immediate effect of the crude images which give us the
type and meaning of each; the crude image that underlies the idea
of the infinitesimal is the dot, the poorest and most uninteresting of
impressions; while the crude image that underlies the idea of
infinity is space, multiplicity in uniformity, and this, as we have
seen, has a powerful effect on account of the breadth, volume, and
omnipresence of the stimulation. Every point in the retina is evenly
excited, and the local signs of all are simultaneously felt. This
equable tension, this balance and elasticity in the very absence of
fixity, give the vague but powerful feeling that we wish to describe.
Did not the infinite, by this initial assault upon our senses, awe us
and overwhelm us, as solemn music might, the idea of it would be
abstract and moral like that of the infinitesimal, and nothing but an
amusing curiosity.

Nothing is objectively impressive; things are impressive only when
they succeed in touching the sensibility of the observer, by finding
the avenues