§ XLIII. And because the thoughts of the choice we have to make between these two, ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions (for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is that which is capable of the greatest love, and the greatest awe: and this we are taught even in our times of rest; for when our minds are rightly in tone, the merely pleasurable excitement which they seek with most avidity is that which rises out of the contemplation of beauty or of terribleness. We thirst for both, and, according to the height and tone of our feeling, desire to see them in noble or inferior forms. Thus there is a Divine beauty, and a terribleness or sublimity coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of the highest art; and there is an inferior or ornamental beauty, and an inferior terribleness coequal with it in rank, which are the subjects of grotesque art. And the state of mind in which the terrible form of the grotesque is developed, is that which in some irregular manner, dwells upon certain conditions of terribleness, into the complete depth of which it does not enter for the time. § XLIV. Now the things which are the proper subjects of human fear are twofold; those which have the power of Death, and those which have the nature of Sin. Of which there are many ranks, greater or less in power and vice, from the evil angels themselves down to the serpent which is their type, and which though of a low and contemptible class, appears to unite the deathful and sinful natures in the most clearly visible and intelligible form; for there is nothing else which we know, of so small strength and occupying so unimportant a place in the economy of creation, which yet is so mortal and so malignant. It is, then, on these two classes of objects that the mind fixes for its excitement, in that mood which gives rise to the terrible grotesque; and its subject will be found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded in a peculiar temper; sometimes (A) of predetermined or involuntary apathy, sometimes (B) of mockery, sometimes (C) of diseased and ungoverned imaginativeness.