1

contrary to that which it receives from

these paffions.

H

SECT. V.

How the Sublime is produced.

AVING confidered terror as producing an unnatural tension and certain violent emotions of the nerves; it eafily follows, from what we have just faid, that whatever is fitted to produce fuch a tenfion must be productive of a paffion fimilar to terror *, and confequently must be a fource of the fublime, though it should have no idea of danger connected with it. So that little remains towards fhewing the cause of the fublime, but to fhew that the instances we have given of it in the second part relate to such things, as are fitted by nature to produce this fort of tension, either by the primary operation of the mind

* Part 2. fect. 2.

mind or the body. With regard to fuch things as affect by the affociated idea of danger, there can be no doubt but that they produce terror, and act by fome modification of that paffion; and that terror, when fufficiently violent, raises the emotions of the body just mentioned, can as little be doubted. But if the fublime is built on terror, or some pasfion like it, which has pain for its object; it is previously proper to enquire how any species of delight can be derived from a caufe fo apparently contrary to it. I fay, delight, because, as I have often remarked, it is very evidently different in its cause, and in its own nature, from actual and pofitive pleafure.

SECT.

SE C T. VI.

How pain can be a cause of delight

PRO

ROVIDENCE has fo ordered it that a ftate of rest and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, fhould be productive of many inconveniencies; that it fhould generate fuch disorders, as may force us to have recourse to fome labour, as a thing abfolutely requifite to make us pass our lives with tolerable fatisfaction; for the nature of rest is to fuffer all the parts of our bodies to fall into a relaxation, that not only difables the members from performing their functions, but takes away the vigorous tone of fibre which is requifite for carrying on the natural and neceffary fecretions. At the fame time, that in this languid inactive ftate, the nerves are more liable to the most hor rid convulfions, than when they are sufă ficiently

ficiently braced and ftrengthened. Melancholy, dejection, despair, and often felf-murder, is the confequence of the gloomy view we take of things in this relaxed state of body. The best remedy for all thefe evils is exercise or labour; and labour is a furmounting of difficulties, an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles; and as fuch resembles pain, which confifts in tenfion or contraction, in every thing but degree. Labour is not only requifite to preserve the coarfer organs in a state fit for their functions, but it is equally neceffary to these finer and more delicate organs, on which, and by which, the imagination, and perhaps the other mental powers act. Since it is probable, that not only the inferior parts of the foul, as the paffions are called, but the understanding itself makes ufe of fome fine corporeal inftruments in its operation; though what they are, and where they are, may be fomewhat hard to fettle: but that it does make use

of

of fuch, appears from hence; that a long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable laffitude of the whole bo". dy, and on the other hand, that great bodily labour, or pain, weakens, and fometimes actually deftroys the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercise is effential to the coarse muscular parts of the constitution, and that without this roufing they would become languid, and diseased, the very fame rule holds with regard to those finer parts we have mentioned; to have them in proper order, they must be fhaken and worked to a proper degree.

SECT. VII.

EXERCISE neceffary for the finer organs.

S common labour, which is a

AR

mode of pain, is the exercise of the groffer, a mode of terror is the exercife of the finer parts of the fyftem;