But even stormy movements of mind which may be connected under the
name of edification with Ideas of religion, or--as merely belonging
to culture--with Ideas containing a social interest, can in no way,
however they strain the Imagination, lay claim to the honour of
being _sublime_ presentations, unless they leave after them a mental
mood which, although only indirectly, has influence upon the mind’s
consciousness of its strength, and its resolution in reference to that
which involves pure intellectual purposiveness (the supersensible). For
otherwise all these emotions belong only to _motion_, which one would
fain enjoy for the sake of health. The pleasant exhaustion, consequent
upon such disturbance produced by the play of the affections, is an
enjoyment of our well-being arising from the restored equilibrium of
the various vital forces. This in the end amounts to the same thing as
that state which Eastern voluptuaries find so delightful, when they
get their bodies as it were kneaded and all their muscles and joints
softly pressed and bent; only that in this case the motive principle
is for the most part external, in the other case it is altogether
internal. Many a man believes himself to be edified by a sermon, when
indeed there is no edification at all (no system of good maxims); or
to be improved by a tragedy, when he is only glad at his ennui being
happily dispelled. So the Sublime must always have reference to the
_disposition_, _i.e._ to the maxims which furnish to the intellectual
[part] and to the Ideas of Reason a superiority over sensibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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