Classic Poem

Coleridge used to tell a story about his visit to the Falls of Clyde;
but he told it with such variations that the details are uncertain, and
without regard to truth I shall change it to the shape that suits my
purpose best. After gazing at the Falls for some time, he began to
consider what adjective would answer most precisely to the impression he
had received; and he came to the conclusion that the proper word was
'sublime.' Two other tourists arrived, and, standing by him, looked in
silence at the spectacle. Then, to Coleridge's high satisfaction, the
gentleman exclaimed, 'It is sublime.' To which the lady responded, 'Yes,
it is the prettiest thing I ever saw.'

This poor lady's incapacity (for I assume that Coleridge and her husband
were in the right) is ludicrous, but it is also a little painful.
Sublimity and prettiness are qualities separated by so great a distance
that our sudden attempt to unite them has a comically incongruous
effect. At the same time the first of these qualities is so exalted that
the exhibition of entire inability to perceive it is distressing.
Astonishment, rapture, awe, even self-abasement, are among the emotions
evoked by sublimity. Many would be inclined to pronounce it the very
highest of all the forms assumed by beauty, whether in nature or in
works of imagination.

I propose to make some remarks on this quality, and even to attempt some
sort of answer to the question what sublimity is. I say 'some sort of
answer,' because the question is large and difficult, and I can deal
with it only in outline and by drawing artificial limits round it and
refusing to discuss certain presuppositions on which the answer rests.
What I mean by these last words will be evident if I begin by referring
to a term which will often recur in this lecture--the term 'beauty.'

When we call sublimity a form of beauty, as I did just now, the word
'beauty' is obviously being used in the widest sense. It is the sense
which the word bears when we distinguish beauty from goodness and from
truth, or when 'beautiful' is taken to signify anything and everything
that gives aesthetic satisfaction, or when 'Aesthetics' and 'Philosophy
of the Beautiful' are used as equivalent expressions. Of beauty, thus
understood, sublimity is one particular kind among a number of others,
for instance prettiness. But 'beauty' and 'beautiful' have also another
meaning, narrower and more specific, as when we say that a thing is
pretty but not beautiful, or that it is beautiful but not sublime. The
beauty we have in view here is evidently not the same as beauty in the
wider sense; it is only, like sublimity or prettiness, a particular kind
or mode of that beauty. This ambiguity of the words 'beauty' and
'beautiful' is a great inconvenience, and especially so in a lecture,
where it forces us to add some qualification to the words whenever they
occur: but it cannot be helped. (Now that the lecture is printed I am
able to avoid these qualifications by printing the words in inverted
commas where they bear the narrower sense.)

Now, obviously, all the particular kinds or modes of beauty must have,
up to a certain point, the same nature. They must all possess that
character in virtue of which they are called beautiful rather than good
or true. And so a philosopher, investigating one of these kinds, would
first have to determine this common nature or character; and then he
would go on to ascertain what it is that distinguishes the particular
kind from its companions. But here we cannot follow such a method. The
nature of beauty in general is so much disputed and so variously defined
that to discuss it here by way of preface would be absurd; and on the
other hand it would be both presumptuous and useless to assume the truth
of any one account of it. Our only plan, therefore, must be to leave it
entirely alone, and to consider merely the distinctive character of
sublimity. Let beauty in general be what it may, what is it that marks
off this kind of beauty from others, and what is there peculiar in our
state of mind when we are moved to apply to anything the specific
epithet 'sublime'?--such is our question. And this plan is not merely
the only possible one, but it is, I believe, quite justifiable, since,
so far as I can see, the answer to our particular question, unless it is
pushed further than I propose to go, is unaffected by the differences
among theories of repute concerning beauty in general. At the same time,
it is essential to realise and always to bear in mind one consequence of
this plan; which is that our account of what is peculiar to sublimity
will not be an account of sublimity in its full nature. For sublimity is
not those peculiar characteristics alone, it is that beauty which is
distinguished by them, and a large part of its effect is due to that
general nature of beauty which it shares with other kinds, and which we
leave unexamined.

In considering the question thus defined I propose to start from our
common aesthetic experience and to attempt to arrive at an answer by
degrees. It will be understood, therefore, that our first results may
have to be modified as we proceed. And I will venture to ask my hearers,
further, to ignore for the time any doubts they may feel whether I am
right in saying, by way of illustration, that this or that thing is
sublime. Such differences of opinion scarcely affect our question, which
is not whether in a given case the epithet is rightly applied, but what
the epithet signifies. And it has to be borne in mind that, while no two
kinds of beauty can be quite the same, a thing may very well possess
beauty of two different kinds.

Let us begin by placing side by side five terms which represent five of
the many modes of beauty--sublime, grand, 'beautiful,' graceful, pretty.
'Beautiful' is here placed in the middle. Before it come two terms,
sublime and grand; and beyond it lie two others, graceful and pretty.
Now is it not the case that the first two, though not identical, still
seem to be allied in some respect; that the last two also seem to be
allied in some respect; that in this respect, whatever it may be, these
two pairs seem to stand apart from one another, and even to stand in
contrast; that 'beauty,' in this respect, seems to hold a neutral
position, though perhaps inclining rather to grace than to grandeur; and
that the extreme terms, sublime and pretty, seem in this respect to be
the most widely removed; so that this series of five constitutes, in a
sense, a descending series,--descending not necessarily in value, but in
some particular respect not yet assigned? If, for example, in the lady's
answer, 'Yes, it is the prettiest thing I ever saw,' you substitute for
'prettiest' first 'most graceful,' and then 'most beautiful,' and then
'grandest,' you will find that your astonishment at her diminishes at
each step, and that at the last, when she identifies sublimity and
grandeur, she is guilty no longer of an absurdity, but only of a slight
anti-climax. If, I may add, she had said 'majestic,' the anti-climax
would have been slighter still, and, in fact, in one version of the
story Coleridge says that 'majestic' was the word he himself chose.

What then is the 'respect' in question here,--the something or other in
regard to which sublimity and grandeur seemed to be allied with one
another, and to differ decidedly from grace and prettiness? It appears
to be greatness. Thousands of things are 'beautiful,' graceful, or
pretty, and yet make no impression of greatness, nay, this impression in
many cases appears to collide with, and even to destroy, that of grace
or prettiness, so that if a pretty thing produced it you would cease to
call it pretty. But whatever strikes us as sublime produces an
impression of greatness, and more--of exceeding or even overwhelming
greatness. And this greatness, further, is apparently no mere
accompaniment of sublimity, but essential to it: remove the greatness in
imagination, and the sublimity vanishes. Grandeur, too, seems always to
possess greatness, though not in this superlative degree; while 'beauty'
neither invariably possesses it nor tends, like prettiness and grace, to
exclude it. I will try, not to defend these statements by argument, but
to develop their meaning by help of illustrations, dismissing from view
the minor differences between these modes of beauty, and, for the most
part, leaving grandeur out of account.

We need not ask here what is the exact meaning of that 'greatness' of
which I have spoken: but we must observe at once that the greatness in
question is of more than one kind. Let us understand by the term, to
begin with, greatness of extent,--of size, number, or duration; and let
us ask whether sublime things are, in this sense, exceedingly great.
Some certainly are. The vault of heaven, one expanse of blue, or dark
and studded with countless and prodigiously distant stars; the sea that
stretches to the horizon and beyond it, a surface smooth as glass or
breaking into innumerable waves; time, to which we can imagine no
beginning and no end,--these furnish favourite examples of sublimity;
and to call them great seems almost mockery, for they are images of
immeasurable magnitude. When we turn from them to living beings, of
course our standard of greatness changes; but, using the standard
appropriate to the sphere, we find again that the sublime things have,
for the most part, great magnitude. A graceful tree need not be a large
one; a pretty tree is almost always small; but a sublime tree is almost
always large. If you were asked to mention sublime animals, you would
perhaps suggest, among birds, the eagle; among fishes, if any, the
whale; among beasts, the lion or the tiger, the python or the elephant.
But you would find it hard to name a sublime insect; and indeed it is
not easy, perhaps not possible, to feel sublimity in any animal smaller
than oneself, unless one goes beyond the special kind of greatness at
present under review. Consider again such facts as these: that a human
being of average, or even of less than average, stature and build may be
graceful and even 'beautiful,' but can hardly, in respect of stature and
build, be grand or sublime; that we most commonly think of flowers as
little things, and also most commonly think of them as 'beautiful,'
graceful, pretty, but rarely as grand, and still more rarely as
sublime, and that in these latter cases we do not think of them as
small; that a mighty river may well be sublime, but hardly a stream; a
towering or far-stretching mountain, but hardly a low hill; a vast
bridge, but hardly one of moderate span; a great cathedral, but hardly a
village church; that a model of a sublime building is not sublime,
unless in imagination you expand it to the dimensions of its original;
that a plain, though flat, may be sublime if its extent is immense; that
while we constantly say 'a pretty little thing,' or even 'a beautiful
little thing,' nobody ever says 'a sublime little thing.' Examples like
these seem to show clearly--not that bigness is sublimity, for bigness
need have no beauty, while sublimity is a mode of beauty--but that this
particular mode of beauty is frequently connected with, and dependent
on, exceeding greatness of extent.

Let us now take a further step. Can there be sublimity when such
greatness is absent? And, if there can, is greatness of some other sort
always present in such cases, and essential to the sublime effect? The
answer to the first of these questions is beyond doubt. Children have no
great extension, and what Wordsworth calls 'a six-years' darling of a
pigmy size' is (if a darling) generally called pretty but not sublime;
for it is 'of a pigmy size.' Yet it certainly may be sublime, and it
is so to the poet who addresses it thus:

Thou whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity....
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find.

A baby is still smaller, but a baby too may be sublime. The starry sky
is not more sublime than the babe on the arm of the Madonna di San
Sisto. A sparrow is more diminutive still; but that it is possible for a
sparrow to be sublime is not difficult to show. This is a translation
of a prose poem by Tourgénieff:

I was on my way home from hunting, and was walking up the garden
avenue. My dog was running on in front of me.

Suddenly he slackened his pace, and began to steal forward as though
he scented game ahead.

I looked along the avenue; and I saw on the ground a young sparrow,
its beak edged with yellow, and its head covered with soft down. It
had fallen from the nest (a strong wind was blowing, and shaking the
birches of the avenue); and there it sat and never stirred, except to
stretch out its little half-grown wings in a helpless flutter.

My dog was slowly approaching it, when suddenly, darting from the tree
overhead, an old black-throated sparrow dropt like a stone right
before his nose, and, all rumpled and flustered, with a plaintive
desperate cry flung itself, once, twice, at his open jaws with their
great teeth.

It would save its young one; it screened it with its own body; the
tiny frame quivered with terror; the little cries grew wild and
hoarse; it sank and died. It had sacrificed itself.

What a huge monster the dog must have seemed to it! And yet it could
not stay up there on its safe bough. A power stronger than its own
will tore it away.

My dog stood still, and then slunk back disconcerted. Plainly he too
had to recognise that power. I called him to me; and a feeling of
reverence came over me as I passed on.

Yes, do not laugh. It was really reverence I felt before that little
heroic bird and the passionate outburst of its love.

Love, I thought, is verily stronger than death and the terror of
death. By love, only by love, is life sustained and moved.

This sparrow, it will be agreed, is sublime. What, then, makes it so?
Not largeness of size, assuredly, but, we answer, its love and courage.
Yes; but what do we mean by 'its love and courage'? We often meet with
love and courage, and always admire and approve them; but we do not
always find them sublime. Why, then, are they sublime in the sparrow?
From their extraordinary greatness. It is not in the quality alone, but
in the quantity of the quality, that the sublimity lies. And this may be
readily seen if we imagine the quantity to be considerably reduced,--if
we imagine the parent bird, after its first brave effort, flinching and
flying away, or if we suppose the bird that sacrifices itself to be no
sparrow but a turkey. In either case love and courage would remain, but
sublimity would recede or vanish, simply because the love and courage
would no longer possess the required immensity.

The sublimity of the sparrow, then, no less than that of the sky or sea,
depends on exceeding or overwhelming greatness--a greatness, however,
not of extension but rather of strength or power, and in this case of
spiritual power. 'Love is stronger than death,' quotes the poet; 'a
power stronger than its own tore it away.' So it is with the dog of
whom Scott and Wordsworth sang, whose master had perished among the
crags of Helvellyn, and who was found three months after by his master's
body,

How nourished here through such long time
He knows who gave that love sublime,
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.

And if we look further we shall find that these cases of sublimity are,
in this respect, far from being exceptions: 'thy soul's immensity,'
says Wordsworth to the child; 'mighty prophet' he calls it. We shall
find, in fact, that in the sublime, when there is not greatness of
extent, there is another greatness, which (without saying that the
phrase is invariably the most appropriate) we may call greatness of
power and which in these cases is essential.

We must develop this statement a little. Naturally the power, and
therefore the sublimity, will differ in its character in different
instance