It is usual to include under the same heading as the æsthetic sentiment two other emotions, that of the sublime and that of the comic, though I can only perceive a somewhat vague analogy and partial affinities between them. We shall attempt to see wherein these three states approximate to and differ from one another.
"The feeling of sublimity is that peculiar emotion which is excited by the presentation or ideal suggestion of vastness, whether in space or time (Kant’s ‘mathematical’ sublime), or physical or moral power (Kant’s ‘dynamical’ sublime)."[218] The distinction generally drawn between the mathematical and the dynamical sublime appears to me quite secondary, as the two cases reduce themselves to the idea of a force in action. Current opinion asserts that the emotion of the sublime is simpler than the æsthetic emotion properly so called. If we understand by this that the latter is richer in its development, much more complex, much more varied in aspect, comprehending the pretty, the graceful, the purely beautiful, the pathetic, etc., the opinion cannot be disputed; but if we mean that the sense of sublimity is simpler as regards its origin, we cannot admit it. I have already given the emotion of the sublime as an example of a binary combination (Part II., Chap. VII.) formed by synthesis of (_a_) a painful feeling of oppression, dejection, lowered vitality, reducible to one primary emotion—fear; (_b_) the consciousness of a rush, of violent energy in action, of a heightening of vitality, reducible to one primary emotion—the sense of personal power, “self-feeling” under its positive form. Moreover, one negative condition is necessary: the conscious or unconscious feeling of our security in the presence of some formidable power. Without this last all æsthetic feeling disappears.
-----
Footnote 218:
Sully, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii. p. 146.
-----
The sentiment of the sublime loses the egoism which lies at its root by extending, through sympathy, to men and things. In participating, through the imagination, in the grandeur of a real or fictitious personage,—the Napoleon of history, the Moses of Michael Angelo, the Satan of Milton,—the _ego_ is objectivised and alienated. It is the history of this development that we must now follow.
“Human might,” says Bain, “is the true and literal sublime, and the point of departure for the sublimity of other things.” This is, in fact, the starting-point. Grant Allen[219] has brilliantly illustrated this view, by trying to demonstrate that the feeling of the sublime has been evolved from a narrow anthropomorphism—the admiration for man’s physical strength—towards the sublimity of moral and intellectual qualities, and that of mass and time in nature. This conception deserves to be given in a condensed form, though it is somewhat of an outline, and not without lacunæ: neither is it certain, whatever this writer may say, that the terror with which man was inspired by natural phenomena did not show itself at a very early period, in a form approaching to the emotion of sublimity.
-----
Footnote 219:
_Mind_, October 1878.
-----
According to Grant Allen, the earliest object of human admiration—_i.e._, of a feeling of respect mingled with fear—is the strong man, the invincible warrior, whom none can resist. This feeling shows itself even among the higher animals, with regard to each other, and still more unmistakably among children: they admire physical strength. In the course of social progress, the chief or despotic king, with power of life and death over all, becomes the incarnation of power—the sublime object—and so the feeling is specialised. After his death, it is believed that his surviving “double,” or ghost, is invested with the same, or even greater privileges. Thus the feeling hitherto enclosed within the world of experience is transferred to a supersensuous region.
The author might have shown that, at this stage of evolution, the idea of an intellectual power, proved by superior knowledge and foresight, and that of a great moral power, proved by courage and energy in effort, must have inspired the same feeling.
As, at this period, everything in nature is conceived as alive, man has necessarily assimilated natural forces to human power: as with thunderstorms, hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Looking at mountains, he seems to see a superhuman power which has raised them. Finally, the movement of thought, continually going on, leads to the idea of a paramount or sole deity, considered as absolute and unlimited power, and the maker of all.
As for the sublimity of mass, it was probably first felt in presence of great monuments, temples, palaces, pyramids, tombs, constructed by the pride of kings, and suggesting the idea of their vast power and the enormous amount of human strength expended. As for sublimity in the immensity of time, it is not attached to the conception of empty and abstract time: it moves us because it appears to us as peopled by a myriad of past or possible events, of activities succeeding each other with unfailing prodigality.
Thus all these cases are reduced to an overwhelming force, conceived by analogy and felt by sympathy. Taking this evolution in its main lines, it has passed through two principal periods, one of predominant terror, which is not and cannot be æsthetic, and one of predominant admiration and sympathy, where the consciousness of personal safety gives the feeling a disinterested character: here emotion has _become_ æsthetic. It is probable, says Sully, that this feeling passed from a disagreeable into an agreeable one, and became æsthetic “through the elimination of the gross element of personal fear.”[220]
-----
Footnote 220:
_The Human Mind_, ii. p. 148.
-----
Attempts have been made to reduce the emotion of the sublime to a contrast; it rests rather on a harmony, a synthesis of contradictories (in the Hegelian sense); it is a case of _combination_, as we have tried to show in another part of this work. It is neither fear nor pride (consciousness of strength) felt directly or by sympathy, but a product of their coexistence in consciousness, and their fusion in a special state which can never be completely dissociated by analysis. In short, it is far more closely related to the two primary feelings already named than to the æsthetic feeling, to which it approximates, not by nature, but by accident.[221]
Footnote 221:
Æsthetic activity is that form of play which uses images as its creative materials. It is generally admitted that visual and auditory perceptions or representations are the only ones which provoke æsthetic emotion; yet Guyau (followed perhaps by others) has maintained that we must attribute this power to all external sensations, without exception (_Problèmes de l’esthétique contemporaine_, chap. vi.), heat, cold, contacts, tastes, and odours; but the facts he enumerates are in most cases referable to association, especially where odours are concerned. The so-called lower sensations do not act directly, they only revive the representations of sight and hearing. A delicious coolness, a soft contact, an intoxicating odour produce an agreeable state—_i.e._, a physical pleasure, and nothing more, if there is no association. Besides, without entering into an idle and hair-splitting discussion, it is sufficient to observe that, as a matter of fact, there exists no art, in the æsthetic sense, based on any other sensations than those of sight and hearing, unless we are to look on perfumery and cookery as such.
Why is this privilege exclusively confined to two species of sensations? Various reasons have been given: because they are more remote from the life-serving functions with which the sensations of touch, taste, and smell are closely connected (II. Spencer); or because their pleasures and pains have, in general, a moderate character, and their special nerves are rarely subjected to a violent shock (Gurney); or, according to Grant Allen, because the nerves of the lower senses are excited in mass, and those of the higher by isolated fibres (? ?). It appears to me that one of the principal reasons has been forgotten. If we refer back to the inquiries detailed in Chap. IX. (Part I.) as to the olfactory and gustatory images, we shall see that they have their own peculiar characters. For visual and auditory images, revival and association are easy, whether simultaneously, in groups, or successively, in series. For images of smell and taste, it is quite the contrary; their revivability is feeble or _nil_, their power of association with each other _nil_. (The tactile-motor images form an intermediate group, but nearer to the lower senses.) These psychological conditions render them quite unsuitable for a place in a constructive scheme. Called up with great difficulty by the memory, incapable of being grouped, either in simultaneities or in series, they can supply neither an art in rest nor an art in movement.
