The feeling of the sublime is usually considered as a form of the æsthetic sentiment, and we shall have to return to it later on. Whatever it may have for its object—whether the spectacle of sullen glaciers, of a boundless desert, or of a man who throws himself recklessly into some great act of self-devotion,—it is composed of discordant elements fused into a single synthesis: (1) a painful feeling of oppression, of lowered vitality, of annihilation, which drags us down and depresses us; (2) the consciousness of an upward rush, of unfolded energy, of an inward lifting up, of an increase of vital power; (3) the conscious or unconscious feeling of security in presence of a formidable power. Without the last-named the emotion would change its nature, and we should feel fear. These three co-existent and interdependent elements enter collectively into the consciousness, and present themselves to it as an irreducible unit. Höffding (_op. cit._, p. 407) gives humour as an example of a combination, or, as he calls it, a mixed feeling. He defines it as “the sentiment of the ridiculous based on sympathy.” This state consists in seeing simultaneously and indissolubly the petty side of great events and the great side of the most trivial things. It is the synthesis of two antithetic elements: the destructive and contemptuous laugh which makes us feel ourselves superior; and the indulgence, pity, and compassion which place us on a footing of equality with others. This emotional manifestation may be simply a passing whim, or it may be a permanent trait of character, a peculiar manner of understanding nature and human life, striking an average between optimism, which finds everything too bright, and pessimism, which sees the ugly side of everything. The school of “irony,” which, with Solger, Schlegel, and others, played its part in German æsthetics at the opening of this century, proposed humour—negative and destructive in form, positive and constructive in reality—as its fundamental principle in the interpretation of the universe. I am inclined to place in this group an emotional state which has given rise to many dissertations and discussions—I mean modesty. I look upon it as a binary compound capable of being resolved into two primary emotions: self-feeling and fear. Whatever may be thought of this explanation, the subject is worth the trouble of a little examination; it could scarcely be omitted from a treatise on the psychology of the feelings. There is no lack of documents respecting the manifestations of modesty among different peoples; they may be found in the narratives of travellers, and in works on anthropology and ethnology. The psychological question of its nature and origin has been treated by Spencer, Sergi, James, Mantegazza, to mention contemporary writers only. The last-named even gives us a definition of it: “Modesty is physical self-respect.”