tions as it would acquire by the means of a certain paffion; it will of itself excite fomething very like hat paffion in the mind.

2

SECT. IV.

Continued.

O this purpose Mr. Spon in his Recherches d'Antiquite, gives us a curious story of the celebrated phyfiognomift Campanella. This man, it feems, had not only made very accurate obfervations on human faces, but was very expert in mimicking fuch as were any way remarkable. When he had a mind to penetrate into the inclinations of those he had to deal with, he compofed his face, his gesture, and his whole body, as nearly as he could into the exact fimilitude of the perfon he intended to examine; and then carefully obferved what turn of mind he feemed to acquire by this change. So that, fays my author, he was able to enter into the difpofitions and thoughts of people as effectually as if he had been changed into the very men. I have often obferved, that on mimicking the looks and geftures of angry, or placid, or frighted, or daring men, I have involuntarily found my mind turned to that paffion, whose appearance I endeavoured to imitate; nay, I am convinced it is hard to avoid it, though one strove to separate the paffion from its correfpondent geftures. Our minds and bodies are fo closely and intimately connected, that one is incapable of pain or pleasure without the other. Campanella, of whom we have

2

been

been fpeaking, could fo abstract his attention from any fufferings of his body, that he was able to endure the rack itself without much pain; and in leffer pains, every body must have obferved, that when we can employ our attention on any thing elfe, the pain has been for a time fufpended on the other hand, if by any means the body is indisposed to perform fuch geftures, or to be stimulated into fuch emotions as any paffion ufually produces in it, that paffion itself never can arife, though its caufe fhould be never so strongly in action; though it should be merely mental, and immediately affecting none of the ienfes. As an opiate, or fpirituous liquors, fhall fufpend the operation of grief, or fear, or anger, in spite of all our efforts to the contrary; and this by inducing in the body a difpofition contrary to that which it receives from these paffions.

HAV

SECT. V.]

How the Sublime is produced.

AVING confidered terror as producing an unnatural tenfion 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 fhould have no idea of danger connected with it. So that little remains towards fhewing the cause of the fublime, but to fhew that the inftances we have given of it in the fecond part re

Part II. Sect. 2.

late

late to fuch things, as are fitted by nature to produce this fort of tenfion, either by the primary operation of the 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, raifes the emotions of the body juft mentioned, can as little be doubted; but if the fublime is built on terror, or fome paffion like it, which has pain for its object, it is previoufly 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 caufe, and in its own nature, from actual and pofitive pleasure.

SECT. VI.

How PAIN can be a caufe of DELIGHT.

ROVIDENCE has fo ordered it, that a state of

PRO

reft and inaction, however it may flatter our indolence, fhould be productive of many inconveniencies; that it should generate fuch disorders, as may force us to have recourfe to fome labour, as a thing abfolutely requifite to make us pafs 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

time, that in this languid inactive ftate, the nerves are more liable to the most horrid convulfions, than when they are fufficiently braced and strengthened. Melancholy, dejection, defpair, 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 these 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 coarser organs in a ftate fit for their function; but it is equally neceffary to thefe 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 passions 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 fuch, appears from hence; that a long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable laffitude of the whole body; and on the other hand, that great bodily labour, or pain, weakens and fometimes actually def troys the mental faculties. Now, as a due exercife. is effential to the coarse muscular parts of the conftitution, 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.

SECT. VII.

EXERCISE neceffary for the finer organs.

S common labour, which is a mode of pain,

AS

is the exercise of the groffer, a mode of terror is the exercise of the finer parts of the system; and if a certain mode of pain be of fuch a nature as to act upon the eye or the ear, as they are the most delicate organs, the affection approaches more nearly to that which has a mental caufe. In all these cafes, if the pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not converfant about the prefent destruction of the perfon, as these emotions clear the parts, whether fine or grofs, of a dangerous and troublefome incumbrance, they are capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a fort of delightful horror, a fort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to felf-preservation, is one of the strongeft of all the paffions. Its object is the fublime *. Its highest degree I call astonishment; the fubordinate degrees are awe, reverence, and respect, which, by the very etymology of the words, fhew from what source they are derived, and how they stand diftinguished from pofitive pleasure.

* Part II. Sect. 2.

SECT.