Chapter VI: Section 4: Sublimity

Where pure grace ends, the awe of the sublime begins, composed of the influence of pain, of pleasure, of grace, and deformity, playing into each other, that the mind is unable to determine which to call it, pain, pleasure, or terror. Without a conjunction of these powers there could be no sublimity.

Those only who have passed through the degrees, _common sense, truth_ and _grace_, i.e. the sentiment of grace, can have a sentiment of sublimity. It is the mild admiration of grace raised to _wonder_ and _astonishment_; to a sentiment of _power_ out of _our power_ to produce or control. Grace must have been as familiar to the intellect, in order to discover sublimity, as common sense in the common region must have been to the discovery of truth and beauty. In fine, genius, or taste, which is the sentiment of grace, and which I have called the common sense of the ideal region, can alone discover the true sublime.

It is a pinnacle of beatitude bordering upon horror, deformity, madness! an eminence from whence the mind, that dares to look farther, is lost! It seems to stand, or rather to waver, between certainty and uncertainty, between security and destruction. It is the point of terror, of undetermined fear, of undetermined power!

The idea of the supreme Being is, I imagine, in every breast, from the clown to the greatest philosopher, his point of sublimity!