We can now compare the above Transcendental Exposition of aesthetical judgements with the Physiological worked out by _Burke_ and by many clear-headed men among us, in order to see whither a merely empirical exposition of the Sublime and Beautiful leads. _Burke_, who deserves to be regarded as the most important author who adopts this mode of treatment, infers by this method “that the feeling of the Sublime rests on the impulse towards self-preservation and on _fear_, _i.e._ on a pain, which not going so far as actually to derange the parts of the body, produces movements which, since they purify the finer or grosser vessels of dangerous or troublesome stoppages, are capable of exciting pleasant sensations; not indeed pleasure, but a kind of satisfying horror, a certain tranquillity tinged with terror.”[61] The Beautiful, which he founded on love (which he wishes to keep quite separate from desire), he reduces to “the relaxing, slackening, and enervating of the fibres of the body, and a consequent weakening, languor, and exhaustion, a fainting, dissolving, and melting away for enjoyment.”[62] And he confirms this explanation not only by cases in which the Imagination in combination with the Understanding can excite in us the feeling of the Beautiful or of the Sublime, but by cases in which it is combined with sensation.--As psychological observations, these analyses of the phenomena of our mind are exceedingly beautiful, and afford rich material for the favourite investigations of empirical anthropology. It is also not to be denied that all representations in us, whether, objectively viewed, they are merely sensible or are quite intellectual, may yet subjectively be united to gratification or grief, however imperceptible either may be; because they all affect the feeling of life, and none of them, so far as it is a modification of the subject, can be indifferent. And so, as Epicurus maintained, all _gratification_ or _grief_ may ultimately be corporeal, whether it arises from the representations of the Imagination or the Understanding; because life without a feeling of bodily organs would be merely a consciousness of existence, without any feeling of well-being or the reverse, _i.e._ of the furthering or the checking of the vital powers. For the mind is by itself alone life (the principle of life), and hindrances or furtherances must be sought outside it and yet in the man, consequently in union with his body.