Page images
PDF
EPUB

er flights of science. By looking into physical causes, our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chace is certainly of service. Cicero, true as he was to the academick philosophy, and consequently led to reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge, yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding; "Est animo"rum ingeniorumque nostrorum nuturale quaddam quasi pabu«lum consideratio contemplatioque natura." If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences some of the graces and elegancies of taste, without which the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal.

CONTENTS.

A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

[The first edition of this work was published in 1756: the second,
with large additions, in the year 1757.]

Introduction. On Taste

PART I.

PAGE

81

63

[blocks in formation]

IV. Of Delight and Pleasure, as opposed to each

other

85

V. Joy and Grief

87

VI. Of the Passions which belong to Self-preser

vation

VII. Of the Sublime

VIII. Of the passions which belong to Society
IX. The final cause of the difference between the
Passions belonging to self-preservation, and
those which regard the Society of the sexes

X. Of Beauty

XI. Society and Solitude

XII. Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition

XIII. Sympathy

XIV. The effects of Sympathy in the distresses of

others

88

ibid

89

90

91

92

93

ibid

94

VII. Exercise necessary for the finer Organs

VIII. Why things not dangerous sometimes pro-

duce a passion like Terrour

ibid

[blocks in formation]

XIII. The effects of succession in visual objects ex-

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »