[1] I have learned something from many discussions of this subject.
In its outline the view I have taken is perhaps nearer to Hartmann's
than to any other.
[2] Popular usage coincides roughly with this sense. Indeed, it can
hardly be said to recognise the wider one at all. 'Beauty' and
'beautiful,' in that wider sense, are technical terms of Aesthetics.
It is a misfortune that the language of Aesthetics should thus differ
from the ordinary language of speech and literature; but the
misfortune seems to be unavoidable, for there is no word in the
ordinary language which means 'whatever gives aesthetic
satisfaction,' and yet that idea _must_ have a name in Aesthetics.
[3] I do not mean to imply that in aesthetic apprehension itself we
always, or generally, make conscious use of a standard or, indeed,
think of greatness. But here we are _reflecting_ on this
apprehension.
[4] Thus, it may be noticed, the sparrow's size, which is the reverse
of sublime, is yet indirectly essential to the sublimity of the
sparrow.
[5] The poet's language here has done our analysis for us.
[6] A word may be added here on a disputed point as to 'spiritual'
sublimity. It has been held that intellect cannot be sublime; but
surely in the teeth of facts. Not to speak of intellect as it appears
in the sphere of practice, how can it be denied that the intellect of
Aristotle or Shakespeare or Newton may produce the impression of
sublimity? All that is true is, first, that the intellect must be
apprehended imaginatively and not thought abstractly (otherwise it
can produce _no_ aesthetic impression), and, secondly, that it
appears sublime in virtue not of its quality alone but of the
quantity, or force, of that quality.
[7] The same principle applies to other cases. If, for example, the
desolation of a landscape is felt to be sublime, it is so not as the
mere negation of life, verdure, etc., but as their _active_ negation.
[8] The reader will remember that in one sense of the question, Is
there no more in the sublime than overwhelming greatness? this
question must of course be answered in the affirmative. Sublimity is
a mode of beauty: the sublime is not the overwhelmingly great, it is
the beautiful which has overwhelming greatness; and it affects us
through its whole nature, not by mere greatness.
[9] I am warning the reader against a mistake which may arise from
the complexity of aesthetic experience. We may make a broad
distinction between 'glad' and 'sad' modes of beauty; but that does
not coincide with the distinction of modes with which we are
concerned in this lecture. What is lovely or 'beautiful' may be glad
or sad, and so may what is grand or sublime.
[10] In what follows I have spoken as if the two were always
successive stages, and as if these always came in the same order. It
is easier to make the matter quickly clear by taking this view, which
also seemed to answer to my own experience. But I do not wish to
commit myself to an opinion on the point, which is of minor
importance. What is essential is to recognise the presence of the two
'aspects' or 'stages,' and to see that both are requisite to
sublimity.
[11] 'Ich fuehlte mich so klein, so gross,' says Faust, remembering
the vision of the Erdgeist, whom he addresses as 'Erhabener Geist.'
He was at once overwhelmed and uplifted.
[12] At least if the 'Vision' is sublime its sublimity is not that of
the original. We can 'discern the form thereof' distinctly enough.
[13] To avoid complication I have passed by the case where we compare
the sublime thing with another thing and find it much greater without
finding it immeasurably great. Here the greatness, it appears to me,
is still unmeasured. That is to say, we do not attempt to determine
its amount, and if we did we should lose the impression of sublimity.
We may _say_, perhaps, that it is ten, fifty, or a million times, as
great; but these words no more represent mathematical calculations
than Hamlet's 'forty thousand brothers.'
[14] I am far from being satisfied with the ideas imperfectly
expressed in the first and third of these Notes, but they require
more consideration than I can give to them during the printing of the
Second Edition. The reader is requested to take them as mere
suggestions.
[15] Hence a creature much less powerful than ourselves _may_, I
suppose, be sublime, even from the mere point of view of vital
energy. But I doubt if this is so in my own case. I have seen
'magnificent' or 'glorious' cocks and cats, but if I called them
'sublime' I should say rather more than I feel. I mention cocks,
because Ruskin somewhere mentions a sublime cock; but I cannot find
the passage, and this cock may have been sublime (if it really was so
to Ruskin) from some other than 'vital' greatness.