We find here realized the first of the three conditions of the sublime that have been mentioned further back,—a very powerful natural force, armed for destruction, and ridiculing all resistance. But that this strong element may at the same time be _terrible_, and thereby _sublime_, two distinct operations of the mind are wanted; I mean two representations that we produce in ourselves by our own activity. _First_, we recognize this irresistible natural force as terrible by comparing it with the weakness of the faculty of resistance that the physical man can oppose to it; and, _secondly_, it is by referring it to our will, and recalling to our consciousness that the will is absolutely independent of all influence of physical nature, that this force becomes to us a sublime object. But it is _we ourselves_ who represent these two relations; the poet has only given us an object armed with a great force seeking to manifest itself. If this object makes us _tremble_, it is only because we in thought suppose ourselves, or some one like us, engaged with this force. And if trembling in this way, we experience the feeling of the sublime, it is because our consciousness tells us that, if we are the victims of this force, we should have nothing to fear, from the freedom of our Ego, for the _autonomy_ of the determinations of our will. In short the description up to here is sublime, but quite a contemplative, intuitive sublimity:— Diffugimus visu exsangues, illi agmine certo Laocoonta petunt....—_Æneid_, ii. 212–213. Here the force is presented to us as _terrible_ also; and contemplative sublimity passes into the pathetic. We see that force enter really into strife with man’s impotence. Whether it concerns Laocoon or ourselves is only a question of degree. The instinct of sympathy excites and frightens in us the instinct of preservation: there are the monsters, they are darting—on ourselves; there is no more safety, flight is vain. It is no more in our power to measure this force with ours, and to refer it or not to our own existence. This happens without our co-operation, and is given us by the object itself. Accordingly our fear has not, as in the preceding moment, a purely subjective ground, residing in our soul; it has an objective ground, residing in the object. For, even if we recognize in this entire scene a simple fiction of the imagination, we nevertheless distinguish in this fiction a conception communicated to us from without, from another conception that we produce spontaneously in ourselves. Thus the mind loses a part of her freedom, inasmuch as she receives now from without that which she produced before her own activity. The idea of danger puts on an appearance of objective reality, and affection becomes now a serious affair.