Coleridge used to tell a story about his visit to the Falls of Clyde;
but he told it with such variations that the details are uncertain, and
without regard to truth I shall change it to the shape that suits my
purpose best. After gazing at the Falls for some time, he began to
consider what adjective would answer most precisely to the impression he
had received; and he came to the conclusion that the proper word was
'sublime.' Two other tourists arrived, and, standing by him, looked in
silence at the spectacle. Then, to Coleridge's high satisfaction, the
gentleman exclaimed, 'It is sublime.' To which the lady responded, 'Yes,
it is the prettiest thing I ever saw.'
This poor lady's incapacity (for I assume that Coleridge and her husband
were in the right) is ludicrous, but it is also a little painful.
Sublimity and prettiness are qualities separated by so great a distance
that our sudden attempt to unite them has a comically incongruous
effect. At the same time the first of these qualities is so exalted that
the exhibition of entire inability to perceive it is distressing.
Astonishment, rapture, awe, even self-abasement, are among the emotions
evoked by sublimity. Many would be inclined to pronounce it the very
highest of all the forms assumed by beauty, whether in nature or in
works of imagination.
I propose to make some remarks on this quality, and even to attempt some
sort of answer to the question what sublimity is. I say 'some sort of
answer,' because the question is large and difficult, and I can deal
with it only in outline and by drawing artificial limits round it and
refusing to discuss certain presuppositions on which the answer rests.
What I mean by these last words will be evident if I begin by referring
to a term which will often recur in this lecture--the term 'beauty.'
When we call sublimity a form of beauty, as I did just now, the word
'beauty' is obviously being used in the widest sense. It is the sense
which the word bears when we distinguish beauty from goodness and from
truth, or when 'beautiful' is taken to signify anything and everything
that gives aesthetic satisfaction, or when 'Aesthetics' and 'Philosophy
of the Beautiful' are used as equivalent expressions. Of beauty, thus
understood, sublimity is one particular kind among a number of others,
for instance prettiness. But 'beauty' and 'beautiful' have also another
meaning, narrower and more specific, as when we say that a thing is
pretty but not beautiful, or that it is beautiful but not sublime. The
beauty we have in view here is evidently not the same as beauty in the
wider sense; it is only, like sublimity or prettiness, a particular kind
or mode of that beauty. This ambiguity of the words 'beauty' and
'beautiful' is a great inconvenience, and especially so in a lecture,
where it forces us to add some qualification to the words whenever they
occur: but it cannot be helped. (Now that the lecture is printed I am
able to avoid these qualifications by printing the words in inverted
commas where they bear the narrower sense.)[2]
Now, obviously, all the particular kinds or modes of beauty must have,
up to a certain point, the same nature. They must all possess that
character in virtue of which they are called beautiful rather than good
or true. And so a philosopher, investigating one of these kinds, would
first have to determine this common nature or character; and then he
would go on to ascertain what it is that distinguishes the particular
kind from its companions. But here we cannot follow such a method. The
nature of beauty in general is so much disputed and so variously defined
that to discuss it here by way of preface would be absurd; and on the
other hand it would be both presumptuous and useless to assume the truth
of any one account of it. Our only plan, therefore, must be to leave it
entirely alone, and to consider merely the distinctive character of
sublimity. Let beauty in general be what it may, what is it that marks
off _this_ kind of beauty from others, and what is there peculiar in our
state of mind when we are moved to apply to anything the specific
epithet 'sublime'?--such is our question. And this plan is not merely
the only possible one, but it is, I believe, quite justifiable, since,
so far as I can see, the answer to our particular question, unless it is
pushed further than I propose to go, is unaffected by the differences
among theories of repute concerning beauty in general. At the same time,
it is essential to realise and always to bear in mind one consequence of
this plan; which is that our account of what is peculiar to sublimity
will not be an account of sublimity in its full nature. For sublimity is
not those peculiar characteristics alone, it is that _beauty_ which is
distinguished by them, and a large part of its effect is due to that
general nature of beauty which it shares with other kinds, and which we
leave unexamined.
In considering the question thus defined I propose to start from our
common aesthetic experience and to attempt to arrive at an answer by
degrees. It will be understood, therefore, that our first results may
have to be modified as we proceed. And I will venture to ask my hearers,
further, to ignore for the time any doubts they may feel whether I am
right in saying, by way of illustration, that this or that thing is
sublime. Such differences of opinion scarcely affect our question, which
is not whether in a given case the epithet is rightly applied, but what
the epithet signifies. And it has to be borne in mind that, while no two
kinds of beauty can be quite the same, a _thing_ may very well possess
beauty of two different kinds.
Let us begin by placing side by side five terms which represent five of
the many modes of beauty--sublime, grand, 'beautiful,' graceful, pretty.
'Beautiful' is here placed in the middle. Before it come two terms,
sublime and grand; and beyond it lie two others, graceful and pretty.
Now is it not the case that the first two, though not identical, still
seem to be allied in some respect; that the last two also seem to be
allied in some respect; that in this respect, whatever it may be, these
two pairs seem to stand apart from one another, and even to stand in
contrast; that 'beauty,' in this respect, seems to hold a neutral
position, though perhaps inclining rather to grace than to grandeur; and
that the extreme terms, sublime and pretty, seem in this respect to be
the most widely removed; so that this series of five constitutes, in a
sense, a descending series,--descending not necessarily in value, but in
some particular respect not yet assigned? If, for example, in the lady's
answer, 'Yes, it is the prettiest thing I ever saw,' you substitute for
'prettiest' first 'most graceful,' and then 'most beautiful,' and then
'grandest,' you will find that your astonishment at her diminishes at
each step, and that at the last, when she identifies sublimity and
grandeur, she is guilty no longer of an absurdity, but only of a slight
anti-climax. If, I may add, she had said 'majestic,' the anti-climax
would have been slighter still, and, in fact, in one version of the
story Coleridge says that 'majestic' was the word he himself chose.
What then is the 'respect' in question here,--the something or other in
regard to which sublimity and grandeur seemed to be allied with one
another, and to differ decidedly from grace and prettiness? It appears
to be greatness. Thousands of things are 'beautiful,' graceful, or
pretty, and yet make no impression of greatness, nay, this impression in
many cases appears to collide with, and even to destroy, that of grace
or prettiness, so that if a pretty thing produced it you would cease to
call it pretty. But whatever strikes us as sublime produces an
impression of greatness, and more--of exceeding or even overwhelming
greatness. And this greatness, further, is apparently no mere
accompaniment of sublimity, but essential to it: remove the greatness in
imagination, and the sublimity vanishes. Grandeur, too, seems always to
possess greatness, though not in this superlative degree; while 'beauty'
neither invariably possesses it nor tends, like prettiness and grace, to
exclude it. I will try, not to defend these statements by argument, but
to develop their meaning by help of illustrations, dismissing from view
the minor differences between these modes of beauty, and, for the most
part, leaving grandeur out of account.
We need not ask here what is the exact meaning of that 'greatness' of
which I have spoken: but we must observe at once that the greatness in
question is of more than one kind. Let us understand by the term, to
begin with, greatness of extent,--of size, number, or duration; and let
us ask whether sublime things are, in this sense, exceedingly great.
Some certainly are. The vault of heaven, one expanse of blue, or dark
and studded with countless and prodigiously distant stars; the sea that
stretches to the horizon and beyond it, a surface smooth as glass or
breaking into innumerable waves; time, to which we can imagine no
beginning and no end,--these furnish favourite examples of sublimity;
and to call them great seems almost mockery, for they are images of
immeasurable magnitude. When we turn from them to living beings, of
course our standard of greatness changes;[3] but, using the standard
appropriate to the sphere, we find again that the sublime things have,
for the most part, great magnitude. A graceful tree need not be a large
one; a pretty tree is almost always small; but a sublime tree is almost
always large. If you were asked to mention sublime animals, you would
perhaps suggest, among birds, the eagle; among fishes, if any, the
whale; among beasts, the lion or the tiger, the python or the elephant.
But you would find it hard to name a sublime insect; and indeed it is
not easy, perhaps not possible, to feel sublimity in any animal smaller
than oneself, unless one goes beyond the special kind of greatness at
present under review. Consider again such facts as these: that a human
being of average, or even of less than average, stature and build may be
graceful and even 'beautiful,' but can hardly, in respect of stature and
build, be grand or sublime; that we most commonly think of flowers as
little things, and also most commonly think of them as 'beautiful,'
graceful, pretty, but rarely as grand, and still more rarely as
sublime, and that in these latter cases we do not think of them as
small; that a mighty river may well be sublime, but hardly a stream; a
towering or far-stretching mountain, but hardly a low hill; a vast
bridge, but hardly one of moderate span; a great cathedral, but hardly a
village church; that a model of a sublime building is not sublime,
unless in imagination you expand it to the dimensions of its original;
that a plain, though flat, may be sublime if its extent is immense; that
while we constantly say 'a pretty little thing,' or even 'a beautiful
little thing,' nobody ever says 'a sublime little thing.' Examples like
these seem to show clearly--not that bigness is sublimity, for bigness
need have no beauty, while sublimity is a mode of beauty--but that this
particular mode of beauty is frequently connected with, and dependent
on, exceeding greatness of extent.
Let us now take a further step. Can there be sublimity when such
greatness is absent? And, if there can, is greatness of some other sort
always present in such cases, and essential to the sublime effect? The
answer to the first of these questions is beyond doubt. Children have no
great extension, and what Wordsworth calls 'a six-years' darling of a
pigmy size' is (if a darling) generally called pretty but not sublime;
for it _is_ 'of a pigmy size.' Yet it certainly _may_ be sublime, and it
is so to the poet who addresses it thus:
Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity....
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find.
A baby is still smaller, but a baby too may be sublime. The starry sky
is not more sublime than the babe on the arm of the Madonna di San
Sisto. A sparrow is more diminutive still; but that it is possible for a
sparrow to be sublime is not difficult to show. This is a translation
of a prose poem by Tourgenieff:
I was on my way home from hunting, and was walking up the garden
avenue. My dog was running on in front of me.
Suddenly he slackened his pace, and began to steal forward as though
he scented game ahead.
I looked along the avenue; and I saw on the ground a young sparrow,
its beak edged with yellow, and its head covered with soft down. It
had fallen from the nest (a strong wind was blowing, and shaking the
birches of the avenue); and there it sat and never stirred, except to
stretch out its little half-grown wings in a helpless flutter.
My dog was slowly approaching it, when suddenly, darting from the tree
overhead, an old black-throated sparrow dropt like a stone right
before his nose, and, all rumpled and flustered, with a plaintive
desperate cry flung itself, once, twice, at his open jaws with their
great teeth.
It would save its young one; it screened it with its own body; the
tiny frame quivered with terror; the little cries grew wild and
hoarse; it sank and died. It had sacrificed itself.
What a huge monster the dog must have seemed to it! And yet it could
not stay up there on its safe bough. A power stronger than its own
will tore it away.
My dog stood still, and then slunk back disconcerted. Plainly he too
had to recognise that power. I called him to me; and a feeling of
reverence came over me as I passed on.
Yes, do not laugh. It was really reverence I felt before that little
heroic bird and the passionate outburst of its love.
Love, I thought, is verily stronger than death and the terror of
death. By love, only by love, is life sustained and moved.
This sparrow, it will be agreed, is sublime. What, then, makes it so?
Not largeness of size, assuredly, but, we answer, its love and courage.
Yes; but what do we mean by '_its_ love and courage'? We often meet with
love and courage, and always admire and approve them; but we do not
always find them sublime. Why, then, are they sublime in the sparrow?
From their extraordinary greatness. It is not in the quality alone, but
in the quantity of the quality, that the sublimity lies. And this may be
readily seen if we imagine the quantity to be considerably reduced,--if
we imagine the parent bird, after its first brave effort, flinching and
flying away, or if we suppose the bird that sacrifices itself to be no
sparrow but a turkey. In either case love and courage would remain, but
sublimity would recede or vanish, simply because the love and courage
would no longer possess the required immensity.[4]
The sublimity of the sparrow, then, no less than that of the sky or sea,
depends on exceeding or overwhelming greatness--a greatness, however,
not of extension but rather of strength or power, and in this case of
spiritual power. 'Love is _stronger_ than death,' quotes the poet; 'a
power _stronger_ than its own tore it away.' So it is with the dog of
whom Scott and Wordsworth sang, whose master had perished among the
crags of Helvellyn, and who was found three months after by his master's
body,
How nourished here through such long time
He knows who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.[5]
And if we look further we shall find that these cases of sublimity are,
in this respect, far from being exceptions: 'thy soul's _immensity_,'
says Wordsworth to the child; '_mighty_ prophet' he calls it. We shall
find, in fact, that in the sublime, when there is not greatness of
extent, there is another greatness, which (without saying that the
phrase is invariably the most appropriate) we may call greatness of
power and which in these cases is essential.
We must develop this statement a little. Naturally the power, and
therefore the sublimity, will differ in its character in different
instances, and therefore will affect us variously. It may be--to
classify very roughly--physical, or vital, or (in the old wide sense of
the word) moral, like that of the sparrow and the dog. And physical
force will appeal to the imagination in one way, and vital in another,
and moral or spiritual in another. But it is still power of some kind
that makes a thing sublime rather than graceful, and immensity of power
that makes it sublime rather than merely grand. For example, the lines
of the water in a thin cascade may be exquisitely graceful, but such a
cascade has not power enough to be sublime. Flickering fire in a grate
is often 'beautiful,' but it is not sublime; the fire of a big bonfire
is on the way to be so; a 'great fire' frequently is so, because it
gives the impression of tremendous power. The ocean, in those stanzas of
_Childe Harold_ which no amount of familiarity or of defect can deprive
of their sublimity, is the untameable monster which engulfs men as
lightly as rain-drops and shatters fleets like toys. The sublimity of
Behemoth and Leviathan in the _Book of Job_ lies in the contrast of
their enormous might with the puny power of man; that of the horse in
the fiery energy of his courage and strength. Think of sublime figures
or ideas in the world of fiction or of history, and you find that,
whether they are radiant or gloomy, violent or peaceful, terrible or
adorable, they all impress the imagination by their immense or even
irresistible might. It is so with Achilles, standing alone beyond the
wall, with the light of the divine flame soaring from his head, while he
sends across the trench that shout at whose far-off sound the hearts of
the Trojans die within them; or with Odysseus, when the moment of his
vengeance has come, and he casts off his rags, and leaps onto the
threshold with his bow, and pours his arrows down at his feet, and looks
down the long hall at the doomed faces of his feasting enemies. Milton's
Satan is sublime when he refuses to accept defeat from an omnipotent
foe; he ceases to be so in tempting Eve, because here he shows not power
but cunning, and we feel not the strength of his cunning but the
weakness of his victim. In the bust of Zeus in the Vatican, in some of
the figures of the Medici Chapel, in 'The horse and his rider,' we feel
again sublimity, because we feel gigantic power, put forth or held in
reserve. Fate or Death, imagined as a lurking assassin, is not sublime,
but may become so when imagined as inevitable, irresistible,
_ineluctabile fatum_. The eternal laws to which Antigone appeals, like
that Duty which preserves the strength and freshness of the most ancient
heavens, are sublime. Prometheus, the saviour of mankind, opposing a
boundless power of enduring pain to a boundless power of inflicting it;
Regulus returning unmoved to his doom; Socrates, serene and even joyous
in the presence of injury and death and the lamentations of his friends,
are sublime. The words 'I have overcome the world' are among the most
sublime on record, and they are also the expression of the absolute
power of the spirit.[6]
It seems clear, then, that sublimity very often arises from an
overwhelming greatness of power. So abundant, indeed, are the instances
that one begins to wonder whether it ever arises from any other kind of
greatness, and whether we were right in supposing that mere magnitude of
extension can produce it. Would such magnitude, however prodigious, seem
to us sublime unless we insensibly construed it as the sign of power? In
the case of living things, at any rate, this doubt seems to be well
founded. A tree is sublime not because it occupies a large extent of
empty space or time, but from the power in it which raises aloft and
spreads abroad a thousand branches and a million leaves, or which has
battled for centuries with buffeting storms and has seen summers and
winters arise and pass like the hours of our day. It is not the mere
bulk of the lion or the eagle that wins them their title as king of
beasts or of birds, but the power exhibited in the gigantic head and arm
or the stretch of wing and the piercing eye. And even when we pass from
the realm of life our doubt remains. Would a mountain, a river, or a
building be sublime to us if we did not read their masses and lines as
symbols of force? Would even the illimitable extent of sea or sky, the
endlessness of time, or the countlessness of stars or sands or waves,
bring us anything but fatigue or depression if we did not apprehend
them, in some way and however vaguely, as expressions of immeasurable
power--power that created them, or lives in them, or _can_ count them;
so that what impresses us is not the mere absence of limits, but the
presence of something that overpowers any imaginable limit? If these
doubts are justified (as in my opinion they are), the conclusion will
follow that the exceeding greatness required for sublimity is _always_
greatness of some kind of power, though in one class of cases the
impression of this greatness can only be conveyed through immensity of
extent.
However this question may be decided, our result so far seems to be that
the peculiarity of the sublime lies in some exceeding and overwhelming
greatness. But before this result can be considered safe, two obstacles
must be removed. In the first place, are there no negative instances? Is
it impossible to find anything sublime which does _not_ show this
greatness? Naturally I can say no more than that I have conscientiously
searched for exceptions to the rule and have searched in vain. I can
find only apparent exceptions which in reality confirm the rule; and I
will mention only those which look the most formidable. They are cases
where at first sight there seems to be not merely an inconsiderable
amount of power or other greatness, but actually the negation of it. For
example, the silence of night, or the sudden pause in a storm or in
stormy music, or again the silence and movelessness of death, may
undoubtedly be sublime; and how, it may be asked, can a mere absence of
sound and motion be an exhibition of immense greatness? It cannot, I
answer; but neither can it be sublime. If you apprehend the silence in
these cases as a mere absence, no feeling of sublimity will arise in
your mind; and if you do apprehend the silence as sublime, it is to you
the sign of immense power, put forth or held in reserve. The 'dead pause
abrupt of mighty winds' is the pause _of_ mighty winds and not of gentle
breezes; and it is not the absence of mighty winds, but their _pause_
before they burst into renewed fury; or if their silence is not their
will, it is a silence imposed on them by something mightier even than
they. In either case there may be sublimity, but then there is the
impression of immense power. In the same way the silence of night, when
it seems sublime, is apprehended not as the absence but as the subdual
of sound,--the stillness wrought by a power so mighty that at its touch
all the restless noises of the day fall dumb,--or the brooding of an
omnipotent peace over the world. And such a peace it is, an unassailable
peace, that may make the face of death sublime, a stillness which is not
moveless but immovable.[7]
At present, then, our result seems to stand firm. But another danger
remains. Granted that in the sublime there is always some exceeding and
overwhelming greatness, is that _all_ there is? Is there not in every
case some further characteristic? This question, premising that the
phrase 'overwhelming greatness' contains important implications which
have yet to be considered, I can only answer like the last. I do not
find any other peculiarity that is _always_ present. Several have been
alleged, and one or two of these will be mentioned later, but none of
them appears to show itself indubitably wherever sublimity is found. It
is easy to give a much fuller account of the sublime if you include in
it everything that impresses you in a sublime baby while you omit to
consider Behemoth, or if you build upon Socrates and ignore Satan, or if
you confine yourself to the sublime thunderstorm and forget the sublime
rainbow or sunrise. But then your account will not answer to the
instances you have ignored; and when you take them in you will have to
pare it down until perhaps you end in a result like ours. At any rate we
had better be content with it for the present, and turn to another
aspect of the matter.[8]
So far, on the whole, we have been regarding the sublime object as if
its sublimity were independent of our state of mind in feeling and
apprehending it. Yet the adjective in the phrase 'overwhelming
greatness' should at once suggest the truth that this state of mind is
essential to sublimity. Let us now therefore look inward, and ask how
this state differs from our state in perceiving or imagining what is
graceful or 'beautiful.' Since Kant dealt with the subject, most writers
who have thought about it have agreed that there is a decided
difference, which I will try to describe broadly, and without pledging
myself to the entire accuracy of the description.
When, on seeing or hearing something, we exclaim, How graceful! or How
lovely! or How 'beautiful'! there is in us an immediate outflow of
pleasure, an unchecked expansion, a delightful sense of harmony between
the thing and ourselves.
The air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.... The heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here.
The thing wins us and draws us towards itself without resistance.
Something in us hastens to meet it in sympathy or love. Our feeling, we
may say, is entirely affirmative. For though it is not always untouched
by pain (for the thing may have sadness in it),[9] this touch of pain or
sadness does not mean any disharmony between the thing and us, or
involve any check in our acceptance of it.
In the case of sublimity, on the other hand, this acceptance does not
seem to be so simple or immediate. There seem, in fact, to be two
'aspects' or stages in it.[10] First--if only for a fraction of a
second--there is a sense of being checked, or baffled, or even
stupefied, or possibly even repelled or menaced, as though something
were affecting us which we could not receive, or grasp, or stand up to.
In certain cases we appear to shrink away from it, as though it thrust
upon us a sense of our own feebleness or insignificance. This we may
call by the convenient but too strong name of the negative stage. It is
essential to sublimity; and nothing seems to correspond to it in our
perception of loveliness or grace except sometimes a sense of surprise
or wonder, which is wholly pleasant, and which does not necessarily
qualify the lovely or graceful thing.
But this first stage or aspect clearly does not by itself suffice for
sublimity. To it there succeeds, it may be instantaneously or more
gradually, another: a powerful reaction, a rush of self-expansion, or an
uplifting, or a sense of being borne out of the self that was checked,
or even of being carried away beyond all checks and limits. These
feelings, even when the sublime thing might be called forbidding,
menacing, or terrible, are always positive,--feelings of union with it;
and, when its nature permits of this, they may amount to rapture or
adoration. But the mark of the negation from which they have issued, the
'smell of the fire,' usually remains on them. The union, we may say
perhaps, has required a self-surrender, and the rapture or adoration is
often strongly tinged with awe.
Now, this peculiar doubleness in our apprehension of sublimity, this
presence of two equally necessary stages or phases, a negative and a
positive, seems to correspond with the peculiarity which we found in the
sublime object when we were provisionally regarding it by itself. It is
its overwhelming greatness which for a moment checks, baffles, subdues,
even repels us or makes us feel our littleness, and which then, forcing
its way into the imagination and emotions, distends or uplifts them to
its own dimensions. We burst our own limits, go out to the sublime thing,
identify ourselves ideally with it, and share its immense greatness. But
if, and in so far as, we remain conscious of our difference from it, we
still feel the insignificance of our actual selves, and our glory is
mingled with awe or even with self-abasement.[11]
In writing thus I was endeavouring simply and without any _arriere
pensee_ to describe a mode of aesthetic experience. But it must have
occurred to some of my hearers that the description recalls other kinds
of experience. And if they find it accurate in the main, they will
appreciate, even if they do not accept, the exalted claim which
philosophers, in various forms, have made for the sublime. It awakes in
us, they say, through the check or shock which it gives to our finitude,
the consciousness of an infinite or absolute; and this is the reason of
the kinship we feel between this particular mode of aesthetic experience
on the one side, and, on the other, morality or religion. For there, by
the denial of our merely finite or individual selves, we rise into union
with the law which imposes on us an unconditional demand, or with the
infinite source and end of our spiritual life.
These are ideas much too large to be considered now, and even later I
can but touch on them. But the mere mention of them may carry us to the
last enquiries with which we can deal. For it suggests this question:
Supposing that high claim to be justified at all, can it really be made
for _all_ sublimity, or must it not be confined to the very highest
forms? A similar question must be raised as to various other statements
regarding the sublime; and I go on to speak of some of these.
(1) Burke asserted that the sublime is always founded on fear; indeed he
considered this to be its distinguishing characteristic. Setting aside,
then, the connection of this statement with Burke's general doctrine (a
doctrine impossible to accept), we may ask, Is it true that the 'check'
administered by the sublime object is always one of fear? We must
answer, first, that if this check is part of an aesthetic experience and
not a mere preliminary to it, it can _never_ be fear in the common
meaning of that word, or what may be called practical or real fear. So
far as we are _practically_ afraid of a storm or a mountain, afraid, for
instance, for ourselves as bodily beings in this particular spatial and
temporal position, the storm or mountain is not sublime to us, it is
simply terrible. _That_ fear must be absent, or must not engage
attention, or must be changed in character, if the object is to be for
us _sublimely_ terrible, something with which we identify ourselves in
imaginative sympathy, and which so causes a great self-expansion. But,
secondly, even if 'fear' is understood rightly as indicating a feature
in an aesthetic and not a practical experience, our question must
obviously be answered in the negative. There is fear in the apprehension
of some sublimity, but by no means in that of all. If there is a
momentary check, for example, in the case of a rainbow, a glorious
sunrise, the starry night, Socrates, or Tourgenieff's sparrow, 'fear,'
unless the meaning of the word is unnaturally extended, is surely not
the name for this check.
Burke's mistake, however, implies a recognition of the 'negative aspect'
in sublimity, and it may remind us of a truth. Instances of the sublime
differ greatly in regard to the prominence and tone of this aspect. It
is less marked, for example, and less obvious, in the case of a sublime
rainbow or sunrise than in that of a sublime and 'terrible'
thunderstorm. And in general we may say that the _distinctive_ nature of
sublimity appears most clearly where this aspect is most prominent,--so
prominent, perhaps, that we have a more or less explicit sense of the
littleness and powerlessness of ourselves, and indeed of the whole
world of our usual experience. It is here that the object is most
decidedly more than 'glorious,' or even 'majestic,' and that sublimity
appears in antithesis to grace. Only we must not give an account of the
sublime which fully applies to these cases _alone_, or suppose that the
negative aspect is absent in other cases. If a rainbow or sunrise is
really sublime, it is overwhelming as well as uplifting. Nor must we
assume that the most distinctively sublime must also be the most
sublime. The sunrise witnessed from an immense snowfield in the high
Alps may be as sublime as an Alpine thunderstorm, though its sublimity
is different.
(2) Grace and 'beauty,' it has been said, though not of course merely
sensuous, are yet friendly to sense. It is their essence, in fact, to be
a harmonious unity of sense and spirit, and so to reconcile powers which
in much of our experience are conflicting and dissonant. But sublimity
is harsh and hostile to sense. It makes us feel in ourselves and in the
world the presence of something irresistibly superior to sense. And this
is the reason why it does not soothe or delight, but uplifts us.
This statement recalls some of the ideas we have been considering, but
it may easily mislead. For one thing, it is impossible for any sublimity
whatever to be _merely_ hostile to 'sense,' since everything aesthetic
must appeal to sense or sensuous imagination, so that the sublime must
at least express its hostility to sense by means of sense. And if we
take the phrase in another meaning, the statement may mislead still, for
it attributes to sublimity in general what is a characteristic only of
certain forms of the sublime. Scores of examples could easily be quoted
which show no hostility to sense: _e.g._ a sublime lion, or bull, or
tree. And if we think of our old examples of the rainbow and the
sunrise, or, better still, of a thunderstorm, or 'The horse and his
rider,' or the 'Sanctus' in Bach's Mass, we find the sublime thing
actually making a powerful appeal to sense and depending for its
sublimity on the vehemence or volume of this appeal. Diminish at all
markedly in these cases the amount of light, colour, or sound, and the
sublimity would vanish. Of course the appeal here is not merely to
sense, but it _is_ to sense.
But undoubtedly there is another kind of sublimity; and it is
particularly interesting. Here, it is true, a sort of despite is done to
the senses and what speaks to them. As we have seen, the greatness of
soul in the sparrow is enhanced by contrast with the smallness and
feebleness of its body, and pours contempt on the visible magnitude of
the hound; and the stillness of night or death is sublime from its
active negation of sound and motion. Again, there is a famous passage
which depends for its effect on this, that, first, sublime things are
introduced which appeal powerfully to sense, and then something else,
which does not so appeal, is made to appear even more sublime and to put
them to shame: first a great and strong wind, an earthquake, a fire; and
after the fire a still small voice. Sometimes, again, as Burke observed,
sublimity depends on, or is increased by, darkness, obscurity,
vagueness,--refusal of satisfaction to the sense of sight. Often in
these cases the sublime object is terrible, and its terror is increased
by inability to see or distinguish it. Examples are the image of 'the
pestilence that walketh in darkness,' or Milton's description of Death,
or the lines in the _Book of Job_:
In thoughts from the visions of the night
When deep sleep falleth on men,
Fear came upon me and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my face;
The hair of my flesh stood up.
It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof.
An image was before mine eyes.
There was silence, and I heard a voice.
It has been observed that attempts to illustrate such passages as these
dissipate their sublimity by diminishing the obscurity of the object.
Blake's illustrations of the lines in Milton and in _Job_[12] show this,
while his design of the morning-stars singing together is worthy even of
the words.
We may trace this severity towards sense, again, in examples already
mentioned, the ideas of Fate, of the eternal laws to which Antigone
appeals, of Duty in Wordsworth's ode. We imagine these powers as removed
from sight, and indeed wholly immaterial, and yet as exercising
sovereign dominion over the visible and material world. And their
sublimity would be endangered if we tried to bring them nearer to sense
by picturing the means by which they exercise their control.
I will take a last example. It has probably been mentioned in almost
every account of the sublime since Longinus quoted it in his work on
Elevation of Style. And it is of special interest here because it
illustrates at one and the same time the two kinds of sublimity which we
are engaged in distinguishing. 'God said, Let there be light, and there
was light.' The idea of the first and instantaneous appearance of light,
and that the whole light of the whole world, is already sublime; and its
primary appeal is to sense. The further idea that this transcendently
glorious apparition is due to mere words, to a breath--our symbol of
tenuity, evanescence, impotence to influence material bulk--heightens
enormously the impression of absolutely immeasurable power.
To sum up, then, on this matter. It is not safe to distinguish the
sublime from the 'beautiful' by its hostility to sense. The sublime may
impress its overwhelming greatness in either of two ways, by an appeal
to sense, or by a kind of despite done to it. Nor can we assert, if we
think of the sunrise, the thunderstorm, or of sublime music, that the
second of these ways is more distinctive of the sublime than the first.
But perhaps we may say this. In 'beauty' that which appears in a
sensuous form seems to rest in it, to be perfectly embodied in it, and
to have no tendency to pass beyond it. In the sublime, even where no
such tendency is felt and sublimity is nearest to 'beauty,' we still
feel the presence of a power held in reserve, which could with ease
exceed its present expression. In _some_ forms of sublimity, again, the
sensuous embodiment seems threatening to break in its effort to express
what appears in it. And in others we definitely feel that the power
which for a moment intimates its presence to sense is infinite and
utterly uncontainable by any or all vehicles of its manifestation. Here
we are furthest (in a way) from sense, and furthest also from 'beauty.'
(3) I come finally and, as it will at first seem, needlessly to an idea
which has already been touched on. The words 'boundless,' 'illimitable,'
'infinite,' constantly recur in discussions of sublimity, and it cannot
be denied that our experience constantly provokes them. The sublime has
been said to awake in us the consciousness of our own infinity. It has
been said, again, to represent in all cases the inadequacy of all finite
forms to express the infinite. And so we may be told that, even if we do
not adopt some such formula, but continue to speak of 'greatness,' we
ought at least to go beyond the adjective 'exceeding' or 'overwhelming,'
and to substitute 'immeasurable' or 'incomparable' or 'infinite.'
Now, at the point we have reached, it would seem we might at once answer
that a claim is here being made for the sublime in general which really
holds good only of one kind of sublimity. Sometimes the sublime object
_is_ apprehended as the Infinite, or again as an expression of it. This
is, for example, a point of view frequent in Hebrew poetry. Sometimes,
again, the object (_e.g._ time or the heavens) is apprehended, not
indeed as _the_ Infinite, but still as infinite or immeasurable. But how
are we to say that a sublime lion or mountain, or Satan or Lady Macbeth,
is apprehended as the Infinite, or as infinite, or (usually) as even an
expression of the Infinite? And how are we to say that the greatness of
most sublime objects is apprehended as incomparable or immeasurable? It
is only failure to observe these distinctions that leads to errors like
one recorded in Coleridge's Table-talk (July 25, 1832): 'Could you ever
discover anything sublime, in our sense of the word, in the classic
Greek literature? I never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.'
This reply, however, though sound so far as it goes, does not settle the
question raised. It may still be maintained that sublimity in all cases,
and even when we have no idea of infinity before us, does represent the
inadequacy of all finite forms to express the infinite. And it is
unfortunately impossible for us to deal fully with this contention. It
would carry us into the region of metaphysics; and, while believing that
no theory of the sublime can be complete which stops short of that
region, I am aiming in this lecture at no such theory, but only at a
result which may hold good without regard to further developments. All
that I can do is to add a few words on the question whether, going
beyond the adjective 'exceeding' or 'overwhelming,' we can say that the
sublime is the beautiful which has immeasurable, incomparable, or
infinite greatness. And the answer which I suggest and will go on to
explain may be put thus: the greatness is only sometimes immeasurable,
but it is _always_ unmeasured.
We cannot apprehend an object as sublime while we apprehend it as
comparably, measurably, or finitely great. Let the thing be what it
may--physical, vital, or spiritual--the moment we say to ourselves, 'It
is very great, but I know _how_ great,' or 'It is very great, but
something else is as great or greater,' at that moment it has ceased to
be sublime. Outside the consciousness of its sublimity we may be
perfectly well aware that a thing is limited, measurable, equal or
inferior to something else. But then we are _not_ finding it sublime.
And when we _are_ so finding it, we are absorbed in _its_ greatness, and
have no thought either of the limits of that or of its equality or
inferiority to anything else. The lion of whom we are thinking, 'An
elephant could kill him,' is no sublime lion. The Falls of Schaffhausen
are sublime when you are lost in astonishment at them, but not when you
are saying to yourself 'What must Niagara be!' This seems indubitable,
and hence we may say that, in one sense, all sublimity has unmeasured
greatness, and that no greatness is sublime which we apprehend as
finite.
But the absence of a consciousness of measure or finitude is one thing;
the presence of a consciousness of immeasurableness or infinity is
another. The first belongs to all sublimity, the second only to one kind
of it,--to that where we _attempt_ to measure, or find limits to, the
greatness of the thing. _If_ we make this attempt, as when we try in
imagination to number the stars or to find an end to time, then it is
essential to sublimity that we should fail, and so fail that the idea of
immeasurability or endlessness emerges. In like manner, _if_ we compare
things, nothing will appear sublime whose greatness is surpassed or even
equalled by that of something else; and, if this process of comparison
is pursued, in the end nothing will be found sublime except the absolute
totality (however it may be imagined). And this kind of sublimity,
which arises from attempts to measure or compare, is often exceedingly
striking. But it is only one kind. For it is an entire delusion--though
a very common one in theories of the sublime--to suppose that we _must_
attempt to measure or compare. On the contrary, in the majority of cases
our impression of overwhelming greatness is accompanied neither by any
idea that this greatness has a measure, nor by the idea that it is
immeasurable or infinite.[13]
It will not do, then, to lay it down that the sublime is the beautiful
which has immeasurable, incomparable, or infinite greatness. But I
suggest that, after the explanations given, we may conveniently use the
adjective 'unmeasured,' so long as we remember that this means one thing
where we do not measure at all, and another thing where we try to
measure and fail. And, this being so, it seems that we may say that
_all_ sublimity, and not only that in which the idea of infinite
greatness or of the Infinite emerges, is an image of infinity; for in
all, through a certain check or limitation and the overcoming of it, we
reach the perception or the imaginative idea of something which, on the
one hand, has a positive nature, and, on the other, is either _not_
determined as finite or _is_ determined as infinite. But we must not add
that this makes the sublime superior to the 'beautiful.' For the
'beautiful' too, though in a different way, is an image of infinity. In
'beauty,' as we said, that which appears in a sensuous form seems to
rest in that form, to be wholly embodied in it; it shows no tendency to
pass beyond it, and intimates no reserve of force that might strain or
break it. So that the 'beautiful' thing is a whole complete in itself,
and in moments when beauty fills our souls we know what Wordsworth meant
when he said 'the least of things seemed infinite,' though each thing,
being but one of many, must from another point of view, here suppressed,
be finite. 'Beauty,' then, we may perhaps say, is the image of the total
presence of the Infinite within any limits it may choose to assume;
sublimity the image of its boundlessness, and of its rejection of any
pretension to independence or absoluteness on the part of its finite
forms; the one the image of its immanence, the other of its
transcendence.
Within an hour I could attempt no more than an outline of our subject.
That is inevitable; and so is another defect, which I regret more. In
analysing any kind of aesthetic experience we have to begin by
disentangling the threads that meet in it; and when we can only make a
beginning, no time is left for the further task of showing how they are
interwoven. We distinguish, for example, one kind of sublimity from
another, and we must do so; but in the actual experience, the single
instance, these kinds often melt together. I take one case of this.
Trying to overlook the field in which sublimity appears, we say that
there is a sublimity of inorganic things, and of things vital, and of
things spiritual, and that these kinds differ. And this is true; and
perhaps it is also true that sometimes we experience one of these kinds,
so to say, quite pure and unmixed with others. But it is not always,
perhaps not usually so. More frequently kind mingles with kind, and we
mutilate the experience when we name it after one of them. In life the
imagination, touched at one point, tingles all over and responds at all
points. It is offered an impression of physical or vital greatness, but
at once it brings from the other end of its world reminiscences of
quite another order, and fuses the impression with them. Or an appeal is
made to the sense of spiritual greatness, but there rises before the
imagination a vision with the outlines and hues of material Nature.
Offer it a sunset--a mere collection of coloured lines and spots--and
they become to it regrets and hopes and longings too deep for tears.
Tell it of souls made perfect in bliss, and it sees an immeasurable
rose, or city-walls that flash with the light of all the gems on earth.
The truth that a sparrow and a mountain are different, and that Socrates
is not Satan, interests it but little. What it cares for is the truth
that, when they are sublime, they are all the same; for each becomes
infinite, and it feels in each its own infinity.
1903.