The sublime of disposition is seen in all character independent of the accidents of fate. “A noble heart struggling against adversity,” says Seneca, “is a spectacle full of attraction even for the gods.” Such for example is that which the Roman Senate offered after the disaster of Cannæ. Lucifer even, in Milton, when for the first time he contemplates hell—which is to be his future abode—penetrates us with a sentiment of admiration by the force of soul he displays:— “Hail, horrors, hail. Infernal world, and thou, profoundest Hell; Receive thy new possessor!—one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time; The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell.... Here at least We shall be free,” &c. The reply of Medea in the tragedy belongs also to this order of the sublime. The sublime of disposition makes itself seen, it is visible to the spectator, because it rests upon co-existence, the simultaneous; the sublime action, on the contrary, is _conceived only by the thought_, because the impression and the act are successive, and the intervention of the mind is necessary to infer from a free determination the idea of previous suffering. It follows that the first alone can be expressed by the plastic arts, because these arts give but that which is simultaneous; but the poet can extend his domain over one and the other. Even more; when the plastic art has to represent a sublime action, it must necessarily bring it back to sublimity. In order that the sublimity of action should take place, not only must the suffering of man have no influence upon the moral constitution, but rather the opposite must be the case. The affection is the work of his moral character. This can happen in two ways: either mediately, or according to the law of liberty, when out of respect for such and such a duty it decides from free choice to suffer—in this case, the idea of duty determines as a motive, and its suffering is a voluntary act—or immediately, and according to the necessity of nature, when he expiates by a moral suffering the violation of duty; in this second case, the idea of duty determines him as a _force_, and his suffering is no longer an _effect_. Regulus offers us an example of the first kind, when, to keep his word, he gives himself up to the vengeance of the Carthaginians; and he would serve as an example of the second class, if, having betrayed his trust, the consciousness of this crime would have made him miserable. In both cases suffering has a moral course, but with this difference, that on the one part Regulus shows us its moral character, and that, on the other, he only shows us that he was made to have such a character. In the first case he is in our eyes a morally great person; in the second he is only æsthetically great.