Sublimity, therefore, does not reside in anything of nature, but only
in our mind, in so far as we can become conscious that we are superior
to nature within, and therefore also to nature without us (so far
as it influences us). Everything that excites this feeling in us,
_e.g._ the _might_ of nature which calls forth our forces, is called
then (although improperly) sublime. Only by supposing this Idea in
ourselves, and in reference to it, are we capable of attaining to the
Idea of the sublimity of that Being, which produces respect in us, not
merely by the might that it displays in nature, but rather by means
of the faculty which resides in us of judging it fearlessly and of
regarding our destination as sublime in respect of it.
§ 29. _Of the modality of the judgement upon the sublime in nature_
There are numberless beautiful things in nature about which we can
assume and even expect, without being far mistaken, the harmony of
every one’s judgement with our own. But in respect of our judgement
upon the sublime in nature, we cannot promise ourselves so easily
the accordance of others. For a far greater culture, as well of the
aesthetical Judgement as of the cognitive faculties which lie at its
basis, seems requisite in order to be able to pass judgement on this
pre-eminent quality of natural objects.
That the mind be attuned to feel the sublime postulates a
susceptibility of the mind for Ideas. For in the very inadequacy of
nature to these latter, and thus only by presupposing them and by
straining the Imagination to use nature as a schema for them, is to
be found that which is terrible to sensibility and yet is attractive.
[It is attractive] because Reason exerts a dominion over sensibility
in order to extend it in conformity with its own realm (the practical)
and to make it look out into the Infinite, which is for it an abyss. In
fact, without development of moral Ideas, that which we, prepared by
culture, call sublime, presents itself to the uneducated man merely as
terrible. In the indications of the dominion of nature in destruction,
and in the great scale of its might, in comparison with which his own
is a vanishing quantity, he will only see the misery, danger, and
distress which surround the man who is exposed to it. So the good,
and indeed intelligent, Savoyard peasant (as Herr von _Saussure_[51]
relates) unhesitatingly called all lovers of snow-mountains fools. And
who knows, whether he would have been so completely wrong, if Saussure
had undertaken the danger to which he exposed himself merely, as most
travellers do, from amateur curiosity, or that he might be able to give
a pathetic account of them? But his design was the instruction of men;
and this excellent man gave the readers of his Travels, soul-stirring
sensations such as he himself had, into the bargain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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