ENG112 Edmund Burke’s The Sublime And The Beautiful After reading Edmund Burke’s “The Sublime and the Beautiful,” answer Writing About the Text #1 OR #2 (n

ENG112 Edmund Burke’s The Sublime And The Beautiful After reading Edmund Burke’s “The Sublime and the Beautiful,” answer Writing About the Text #1 OR #2 (not both—choose one) on p. 261 in a well organized post of 250-300 words that includes 2-4 paragraphs. G
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EDMUND BURKE
from The Sublime and Beautiful
(1757)
EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) was an Irish philosopher and politician who served
in the British Parliament during the eighteenth century. In the 1770s, he gained
notoriety in Great Britain for his public support of the American colonies in their
conflict with England. In later years, he became even better known for his opposition
to the French Revolution, which he outlined in his most famous book, Reflections
on the Revolution in France (1790). In Reflections, Burke argued that social change,
when necessary, should occur gradually in a way that does not destroy the fabric
of a society-an argument that has become central to modern conservatism in
Europe and the United States.
Before entering politics, Burke made his living by writing works of historical and
philosophical criticism. It was during this time that he wrote his influential treatise
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
a sustained meditation on human aesthetic responses. For the purpose of his argu-
ment, Burke divided aesthetic objects into two kinds: the beautiful, which give us
emotional pleasure by evoking positive feelings, and the sublime, which overwhelm
our consciousness with their largeness, power, and capacity for destruction.
For Burke, sublime objects have a greater potential to move us emotionally
because they are based on our primal instinct to fear what can kill us. When such
fear-inspiring phenomena are contained at a safe distance, they retain their power
to overwhelm our emotions even though we know intellectually that they pose no
real danger. This is why we derive such pleasure from things like roller coasters,
horror movies, and dangerous animals at the zoo.
Burke’s idea of the sublime had a tremendous influence on English literature of
the Romantic period, and especially on writers such as William Blake (p. 262), Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Lord Byron. The works of these
writers are full of things that Burke would consider sublime: expansive landscapes,
wild animals, terrifying monsters, immense spaces, and supernatural evil. Governed
largely by Burke’s theories, the Romantics believed that it was better to overwhelm
readers with immensity and terror than merely entertain them with pleasing images
and well-constructed verses.
A major rhetorical device that Burke uses in this selection is proof by example.
His argument consists of organizing and explaining a phenomenon that most people
are already familiar with, providing relatable examples in the belief that his audi-
ence will have already felt the emotions that he describes as “sublime.” Evidence
of Burke’s influence can still be observed today in the huge market for scary books
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EDMUND BURKE . The Sublime and Beautiful
257
and horror movies designed to frighten their audiences from the relative safety of
living rooms and movie theaters.
C !!! O
目
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate
most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in
which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the
mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by
consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power
of the sublime, that, far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings,
and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect
of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence,
and respect.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning
as fear. For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner
that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is
sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions
or not; for it is impossible to look on anything as trifling, or contemptible, that
may be dangerous. There are many animals, who though far from being large, are
yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects
of terror. As serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. And to things of
great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without
comparison greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean
idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean:
but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean itself? This is
owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is
an object of no small terror. Indeed, terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more
openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime. Several languages bear
a strong testimony to the affinity of these ideas. They frequently use the same
word, to signify indifferently the modes of astonishment or admiration, and those
of terror
To make anything very terrible, obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When
we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great
deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be sensible of this, who considers
how greatly night adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions
of ghosts and goblins, of which none can form clear ideas, affect minds which give
credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic govern
ments, which are founded on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion
of fear, keep their chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has
been the same in many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark.
Even in the barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol
in a dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this purpose too
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258
THE ARTS
目
5
the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest woods, and
in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oaks….
It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting to the
imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a
very clear idea of those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of imitation, which
is something) my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape
would have affected in the reality. On the other hand, the most lively and spirited
verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and imperfect idea of such objects;
but then it is in my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could
do by the best painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
conveying the affections of the mind from one to another, is by words; there is a
great insufficiency in all other methods of communication; and so far is a clearess
of imagery from being absolutely necessary to an influence upon the passions, that
they may be considerably operated upon, without presenting any image at all, by
certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have a sufficient proof in the
acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental music. In reality, a great clearess
helps but little towards affecting the passions, as it is in some sort an enemy to all
enthusiasms whatsoever. …
Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which
produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime, which
is not some modification of power. And this branch rises, as naturally as the other
two branches, from terror, the common stock of everything that is sublime. The
idea of power, at first view, seems of the class of those indifferent ones, which may
equally belong to pain or to pleasure. But in reality, the affection, arising from the
idea of vast power, is extremely remote from that neutral character.
For first, we must remember, that the idea of pain, its highest degree, is much
stronger than the highest degree of pleasure, and that it preserves the same superiority
through all the subordinate gradations. From hence it is, that where the chances for
equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort equal, the idea of the suffering
must always be prevalent. And indeed the ideas of pain, and, above all, of death, are
so very affecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to
have the power of inflicting either, it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror.
Again, we know by experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts
of power are at all necessary; nay, we know, that such efforts would go a great way
towards destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be stolen, and not forced upon
us; pleasure follows the will; and therefore we are generally affected with it by many
things of a force greatly inferior to our own.
But pain is always inflicted by a power in some way superior, because we never
submit to pain willingly. So that strength, violence, pain, and terror, are ideas that
1. Druids: priests of the Celtic people who 2. Mechanical cause: an automatic, uncon-
were early inhabitants of present-day Britain scious response.
and France
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EDMUND BURKE – The Sublime and Beautiful
259
目
rush in upon the mind together. Look at a man, or any other animal of prodigious
strength, and what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this strength will be sub-
servient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure to your interest in any sense? No; the
emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength should be employed to the purposes
of rapine and destruction. That power derives all its sublimity from the terror with
which it is generally accompanied, will appear evidently from its effect in the very
few cases, in which it may be possible to strip a considerable degree of strength
of its ability to hurt. When you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, and it
immediately becomes contemptible.
An ox is a creature of vast strength; but he is an innocent creature, extremely
serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for which reason the idea of an ox is by no
means grand. A bull is strong too: but his strength is of another kind; often very
destructive, seldom (at least amongst us) of any use in our business; the idea of a bull
is therefore great, and it has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating
comparisons. Let us look at another strong animal, in the two distinct lights in which
we may consider him. The horse in the light of a useful beast, fit for the plough,
the road, the draft; in every social, useful light, the horse has nothing sublime but
is it thus that we are affected with him, whose neck is clothed with thunder, the glory
of whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage, neither
believeth that it is the sound of the trumpet? In this description, the useful character
of the horse entirely disappears, and the terrible and sublime blaze out together.
We have continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but
not pernicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in
the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger,
the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful, and employed for our
benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime: for nothing can act agreeably to us,
that does not act in conformity to our will; but to act agreeably to our will, it must
be subject to us, and therefore can never be the cause of a grand and commanding
conception….
Greatness of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This is too evident,
and the observation too common, to need any illustration: it is not so common to
consider in what ways greatness of dimension, vastness of extent or quantity, has
the most striking effect. For certainly, there are ways and modes, wherein the same
quantity of extension shall produce greater effects than it is found to do in others.
Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length strikes least; an
hundred yards of even ground will never work such an effect as a tower an hundred
yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine likewise,
that height is less grand than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down
3. “Whose neck is clothed with thunder …the created horses and gave them their attributes.
sound of the trumpet”: Burke is paraphrasing The importance for Burke is that the horse is
not directly quoting. Job 39: 19-25, a passage in described as something wild, and therefore sub-
which God challenges Job by asking him if he lime, instead of as a domestic beast.
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260
THE ARTS
目
from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not
very positive
A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane;
and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth
and polished. It would carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause
of these appearances; but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of specula-
tion. However, t may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon magnitude, that,
as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in
some measure sublime likewise: when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter,
when we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings,
that escape the nicest inquisition of the sense; when we push our discoveries yet
downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller, and the still
diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is lost as well as the
sense; we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can
we distinguish in its effects this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For divi-
sion must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can no
more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which nothing may be added.
Another source of the sublime is infinity; if it does not rather belong to the last.
Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is
the most genuine effect and truest test of the sublime. There are scarce any things
which can become the objects of our senses, that are really and in their own nature
infinite. But the eye not being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they
seem to be infinite, and they produce the same effects as if they were really so. We
are deceived in the like manner, if the parts of some large object are so continued
to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder
its extending them at pleasure.
Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of mechanism,
repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to operate. After whirling about,
when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a long succession
of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge-hammers, the hammers beat
and the water roars in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased to
affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If
you hold up a straight pole, with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a
length almost incredible. Place a number of uniform and equi-distant marks on this
pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without end. The
senses, strongly affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or
adapt themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until the
strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an appearance very frequent
in madmen; that they remain whole days and nights, sometimes whole years, in the
constant repetition of some remark, some complaint, or song, which having struck
powerfully on their disordered imagination in the beginning of their frenzy, every
repetition reinforces it with new strength; and the hurry of their spirits, unrestrained
by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of their lives.
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