But this is not the only standard. A sublime lion is not only immensely stronger than we are, but is generally also exceptional among lions; and so with a sublime tree or bridge or thunderstorm. So that we seem also to use as unconscious standard the idea of the average of the kind to which the thing belongs. An average thunderstorm hardly seems sublime, and yet it is overwhelmingly superior to us in power.[15]
What, again, is the psychical machinery employed when we attempt to measure the shoreless sea, or time, and find them immeasurable? Is there any standard of the ‘usual’ here? I will leave this question to more skilled psychologists than myself.
2. Since the impression produced by sublimity is one of very exceptional strength, we are not able to feel it continuously for long, though we can repeat it after a pause. In this the sublime differs from the ‘beautiful,’ on which we like to dwell after our first surprise is over. A tragedy or symphony that was sublime from beginning to end could not be so experienced. Living among mountains, we feel their beauty more or less constantly, their sublimity only by flashes.
3. If our account of the impression produced by sublimity is true, why should not any sensation whatever produce this impression merely by gaining extraordinary strength? It seems to me it would, supposing at its normal strength it conformed to the general requirements of aesthetic experience, and supposing the requisite accession of strength did not remove this conformity. But this, in one respect at least, it would do. It would make the light, sound, smell, physiologically painful, and we should feel it as painful or even dangerous. We find this in the case of lightning. If it is to be felt as aesthetic it must not pass a certain degree of brightness; or, as we sometimes say, it must not be too ‘near.’
[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.