art. But when we confidet the power of an object upon our paffions, we must know that when any thing is intended to affect the mind by the force of fome predominant property, the affection produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other properties or qualities of the object be of the fame nature, and tending to the fame defign as the principal.

If black and white blend, foften, and unite,
A thousand ways, are there no black and white?

If the qualities of the fublime and beautiful are fometimes found united, does this prove that they are the fame; does it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the fame. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colours, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, fo ftrong as when each ftands uniform and diftinguished.

THE END OF THE THIRD PART.

A PHILO

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS

OF THE

SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL.

PART IV.

SECTION I.

OF THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE SUBLIME AND

WH

BEAUTIFUL.

HEN I fay, I intend to inquire into the efficient caufe of fublimity and beauty, I would not be understood to fay, that I can come to the ultimate caufe. I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain, why certain affections of the body produce fuch a diftinct emotion of mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected by the mind, or the mind by the body. A little thought will fhew this to be impoffible. But I conceive, if we can discover what affections of the mind produce certain emotions of the body;

and

and what distinct feelings and qualities of body fhall produce certain determinate paflions in the mind, and no others, I fancy a great deal will be done; fomething not unufeful towards a diftinct knowledge of our paffions, fo far at leaft as we have them at prefent under our confideration. This is all, I believe, we can do. If we could advance a step farther, difficulties would ftill remain, as we should be ftill equally diftant from the firft caufe. When Newton firft difcovered the property of attraction, and fettled its laws, he found it ferved very well to explain feveral of the most remarkable phænomena in nature; but yet with reference to the general system of things, he could confider attraction but as an effect, whose cause at that time he did not attempt to trace. But when he afterwards began to account for it by a fubtile elastic æther, this great man (if in fo great a man it be not impious to discover any thing like a blemish) feemed to have quitted his ufual cautious manner of philofophifing; fince, perhaps, allow ing all that has been advanced on this fubject to be fufficiently proved, I think it leaves us with as many difficulties as it found us. That great chain of caufes, which links one to another, even to the throne of God himself, can never be unravelled by any industry of ours. When we go but one ftep fenfible qualities of things,

beyond the immediate

we go out of our depth. All we do after is but a

faint ftruggle, that fhews we are in an element which does not belong to us. So that when I speak of caufe, and efficient caufe, I only mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain changes in the body; or certain powers and properties in bodies, that work a change in the mind, As if I were to explain the motion of a body falling to the ground, I would fay it was caused by gravity; and I would endeavour to fhew after what manner this power operated, without attempting to fhew why it operated in this manner: or if I were to explain the effects of bodies ftriking one another by the common laws of percuffion, I fhould not endeavour to explain how motion itself is communicated.

IT is no fmall bar in the way of our inquiry into the cause of our paffions, that the occafion of many of them are given, and that their governing motions are communicated at a time when we have not capacity to reflect on them; at a time of which all fort of memory is worn out of our minds. For befides fuch things as affect us in various manners, according to their natural powers, there are affociations made at that early feafon, which we find it very hard afterwards to diftinVOL. I.

S

guilh

guish from natural effects. Not to mention the unaccountable antipathies which we find in many perfons, we all find it impoffible to remember when a steep became more terrible than a plain; or fire or water more terrible than a clod of earth; though all these are very probably either conclufions from experience, or arifing from the premonitions of others; and fome of them impreffed, in all likelihood, pretty late. But as it must be allowed that many things affect us after a certain manner, not by any natural powers they have for that purpose, but by affociation; fo it would be abfurd, on the other hand, to fay that all things affect us by affociation only; fince fome things muft have been originally and naturally agreeable or difagreeable, from which the others derive their affociated powers; and it would be, I fancy, to little purpose to look for the cause of our paffions in affociation, until we fail of it in the natural properties of things.

SECT. III.

CAUSE OF PAIN, AND FEAR.

I HAVE before obferved,* that whatever is qualified to caufe terrour, is a foundation capable of the fublime; to which I add, that not only thefe, but many things from which we cannot probably apprehend any danger, have a fimilar

*Part I. fect. 8.

effect,