Nature is therefore sublime in those of its phenomena, whose intuition brings with it the Idea of their infinity. This last can only come by the inadequacy of the greatest effort of our Imagination to estimate the magnitude of an object. But now in mathematical estimation of magnitude the Imagination is equal to providing a sufficient measure for every object; because the numerical concepts of the Understanding, by means of progression, can make any measure adequate to any given magnitude. Therefore it must be the _aesthetical_ estimation of magnitude in which it is felt that the effort towards comprehension surpasses the power of the Imagination to grasp in a whole of intuition the progressive apprehension; and at the same time is perceived the inadequacy of this faculty, unbounded in its progress, for grasping and using, for the estimation of magnitude, a fundamental measure which could be made available by the Understanding with little trouble. Now the proper unchangeable fundamental measure of nature is its absolute whole; which, regarding nature as a phenomenon, would be infinity comprehended. But since this fundamental measure is a self-contradictory concept (on account of the impossibility of the absolute totality of an endless progress), that magnitude of a natural Object, on which the Imagination fruitlessly spends its whole faculty of comprehension, must carry our concept of nature to a supersensible substrate (which lies at its basis and also at the basis of our faculty of thought). As this, however, is great beyond all standards of sense, it makes us judge as _sublime_, not so much the object, as our own state of mind in the estimation of it. Therefore, just as the aesthetical Judgement in judging the Beautiful refers the Imagination in its free play to the _Understanding_, in order to harmonise it with the _concepts_ of the latter in general (without any determination of them); so does the same faculty when judging a thing as Sublime refer itself to the _Reason_ in order that it may subjectively be in accordance with its _Ideas_ (no matter what they are):--_i.e._ that it may produce a state of mind conformable to them and compatible with that brought about by the influence of definite (practical) Ideas upon feeling. We hence see also that true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the [subject] judging, not in the natural Object, the judgement upon which occasions this state. Who would call sublime, _e.g._ shapeless mountain masses piled in wild disorder upon each other with their pyramids of ice, or the gloomy raging sea? But the mind feels itself elevated in its own judgement if, while contemplating them without any reference to their form, and abandoning itself to the Imagination and to the Reason--which although placed in combination with the Imagination without any definite purpose, merely extends it--it yet finds the whole power of the Imagination inadequate to its Ideas.