e in the affection.

In the truly moral soul the terrible trial (of the imagination) passes
quickly and readily into the sublime. In proportion as imagination loses
its liberty, reason makes its own prevail, and the soul ceases not to
enlarge within when it thus finds outward limits. Driven from all the
intrenchments which would give physical protection to sensuous creatures,
we seek refuge in the stronghold of our moral liberty, and we arrive by
that means at an absolute and unlimited safety, at the very moment when
we seem to be deprived in the world of phenomena of a relative and
precarious rampart. But precisely because it was necessary to have
arrived at the physical oppression before having recourse to the
assistance of our moral nature, we can only buy this high sentiment of
our liberty through suffering. An ordinary soul confines itself entirely
to this suffering, and never comprehends in the sublime or the pathetic
anything beyond the terrible. An independent soul, on the contrary,
precisely seizes this occasion to rise to the feeling of his moral force,
in all that is most magnificent in this force, and from every terrible
object knows how to draw out the sublime.

The moral man (the father) [see Aeneid, ii. 213-215] is here attacked
before the physical man, and that has a grand effect. All the affections
become more aesthetic when we receive them second-hand; there is no
stronger sympathy than that we feel for sympathy.

The moment [see Aeneid, ii. 216-217] had arrived when the hero himself
had to be recommended to our respect as a moral personage, and the poet
seized upon that moment. We already know by his description all the
force, all the rage of the two monsters who menace Laocoon, and we know
how all resistance would be in vain. If Laocoon were only a common man
he would better understand his own interests, and, like the rest of the
Trojans, he would find safety in rapid flight. But there is a heart in
that breast; the danger to his children holds him back, and decides him
to meet his fate. This trait alone renders him worthy of our pity. At
whatever moment the serpents had assailed him, we should have always been
touched and troubled. But because it happens just at the moment when as
father he shows himself so worthy of respect, his fate appears to us as
the result of having fulfilled his duty as parent, of his tender
disquietude for his children. It is this which calls forth our sympathy
in the high