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Part IISections I - VIII.
Sections I - VIII.
Section I.
Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes
operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of
the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of
horror.^1 In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it
cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which
employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that, far from being
produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an
irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime
in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence, and
respect.
Sect. II.
Terror
[Footnote 1: Part I. sect. 3, 4, 7.]
[Footnote 2: Part IV. sect. 3-6.]
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and
reasoning as fear.^2 For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it
operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is
terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror
be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on
anything as trifling, or contemptible, that may be dangerous. There are many
animals, who though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of
the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror. As serpents and
poisonous animals of almost all kinds. And to things of great dimensions, if
we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison
greater. A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea;
the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean:
but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean itself? This
is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the
ocean is an object of no small terror. Indeed, terror is in all cases
whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the
sublime. Several languages bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these
ideas. They frequently use the same word, to signify indifferently the modes
of astonishment or admiration, and those of terror. Oaubos is in Greek, either
fear or wonder; delvos is terrible or respectable; aidew, to reverence or to
fear. Vereor in Latin, is what aidew is in Greek. The Romans used the verb
stupeo, a term which strongly marks the state of an astonished mind, to
express the effect of either of simple fear or of astonishment; the word
attonitus (thunder-struck) is equally expressive of the alliance of these
ideas; and do not the French etonnement, and the English astonishment and
amazement, point out as clearly the kindred emotions which attend fear and
wonder? They who have a more general knowledge of languages, could produce, I
make no doubt, many other and equally striking examples.
Sect. III.
Obscurity
[Footnote 1: Part IV. sect. 14-16.]
To make anything very terrible, obscurity^1 seems in general to be
necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom
our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes. Every one will be
sensible of this, who considers how greatly night adds to our dread, in all
cases of danger, and how much the notions of ghosts and goblins, of which none
can form clear ideas, affect minds which give credit to the popular tales
concerning such sorts of beings. Those despotic governments, which are founded
on the passions of men, and principally upon the passion of fear, keep their
chief as much as may be from the public eye. The policy has been the same in
many cases of religion. Almost all the heathen temples were dark. Even in the
barbarous temples of the Americans at this day, they keep their idol in a
dark part of the hut, which is consecrated to his worship. For this purpose
too the Druids performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest
woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oaks. No person seems
better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible
things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of
a judicious obscurity, than Milton. His description of Death in the second
book is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with
what a significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and colouring, he has
finished the portrait of the king of terrors:
-The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed;
For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and
sublime to the last degree.
Sect. IV.
Of The Difference Between Clearness And Obscurity With Regard To The Passions
It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it affecting
to the imagination. If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a
landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then (allowing
for the effect of imitation, which is something) my picture can at most affect
only as the palace, temple, or landscape would have affected in the reality.
On the other hand, the most lively and spirited verbal description I can give
raises a very obscure and imperfect idea of such objects; but then it is in
my power to raise a stronger emotion by the description than I could do by
the best painting. This experience constantly evinces. The proper manner of
conveying the affections of the mind from one to another, is by words; there
is a great insufficiency in all other methods of communication; and so far is
a clearness of imagery from being absolutely necessary to an influence upon
the passions, that they may be considerably operated upon, without presenting
any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose; of which we have
a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful effects of instrumental
music. In reality, a great clearness helps but little towards affecting the
passions, as it is in some sort an enemy to all enthusiasms whatsoever.
Sect. IV.
The Same Subject Continued
There are two verses in Horace`s Art of Poetry, that seem to contradict
this opinion; for which reason I shall take a little more pains in clearing it
up. The verses are,
Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
Quam quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus.
On this the Abbe du Bos founds a criticism, wherein he gives painting the
preference to poetry in the article of moving the passions; principally on
account of the greater clearness of the ideas it represents. I believe this
excellent judge was led into this mistake (if it be a mistake) by his system;
to which he found it more conformable than I imagine it will be found by
experience. I know several who admire and love painting, and yet who regard
the objects of their admiration in that art with coolness enough in comparison
of that warmth with which they are animated by affecting pieces of poetry or
rhetoric. Among the common sort of people, I never could perceive that
painting had much influence on their passions. It is true, that the best sorts
of painting, as well as the best sorts of poetry, are not much understood in
that sphere. But it is most certain, that their passions are very strongly
roused by a fanatic preacher, or by the ballads of Chevy-chase, or the
Children in the Wood, and by other little popular poems and tales that are
current in that rank of life. I do not know of any paintings, bad or good,
that produce the same effect. So that poetry, with all its obscurity, has a
more general, as well as a more powerful, dominion over the passions, than the
other art. And I think there are reasons in nature, why the obscure idea, when
properly conveyed, should be more affecting than the clear. It is our
ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our
passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but
little. It is thus with the vulgar; and all men are as the vulgar in what they
do not understand. The ideas of eternity and infinity are among the most
affecting we have; and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really
understand so little, as of infinity and eternity. We do not anywhere meet a
more sublime description than this justly celebrated one of Milton, wherein he
gives the portrait of Satan with a dignity so suitable to the subject:
He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than archangel ruined, and th` excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.
Here is a very noble picture; and in what does this poetical picture
consist? In images of a tower, an archangel, the sun rising through mists,
or in an eclipse, the ruin of monarchs, and the revolutions of kingdoms. The
mind is hurried out of itself, by a crowd of great and confused images; which
affect because they are crowded and confused. For, separate them, and you lose
much of the greatness; and join them, and you infallibly lose the clearness.
The images raised by poetry are always of this obscure kind; though in general
the effects of poetry are by no means to be attributed to the images it
raises; which point we shall examine more at large hereafter.^1 But painting,
when we have allowed for the pleasure of imitation, can only affect simply by
the images it presents; and even in painting, a judicious obscurity in some
things contributes to the effect of the picture; because the images in
painting are exactly similar to those in nature; and in nature, dark,
confused, uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the
grander passions, than those have which are more clear and determinate. But
where and when this observation may be applied to practice, and how far it
shall be extended, will be better deduced from the nature of the subject, and
from the occasion, than from any rules that can be given.
[Footnote 1: Part V.]
I am sensible that this idea has met with opposition, and is likely still
to be rejected by several. But let it be considered, that hardly anything can
strike the mind with its greatness, which does not make some sort of approach
towards infinity; which nothing can do whilst we are able to perceive its
bounds; but to see an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one
and the same thing. A clear idea is therefore another name for a little idea.
There is a passage in the book of Job amazingly sublime, and this sublimity
is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described: In
thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear
came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit
passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I
could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was
silence, and I heard a voice, - Shall mortal man be more just than God? We are
first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are first
terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion; but
when this grand cause of terror makes it appearance, what is it? Is it not
wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more
striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest
painting, could possibly represent it? When painters have attempted to give us
clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I
think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all the
pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did not intend
something ludicrous. Several painters have handled a subject of this kind,
with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imagination could
suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptation of St.
Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild grotesques, than anything capable of
producing a serious passion. In all these subjects poetry is very happy. Its
apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and
affecting; and though Virgil`s Fame and Homer`s Discord are obscure, they are
magnificent figures. These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I
fear they might become ridiculous.
Sect. V.
Power
[Footnote 1: Part I. sect. 7.]
[Footnote 2: Vide Part III. sect. 21]
Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those
which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing
sublime, which is not some modification of power. And this branch rises, as
naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the common stock of
everything that is sublime. The idea of power, at first view, seems of the
class of those indifferent ones, which may equally belong to pain or to
pleasure. But in reality, the affection, arising from the idea of vast power,
is extremely remote from that neutral character. For first, we must
remember,^1 that the idea of pain, in its highest degree, is much stronger
than the highest degree of pleasure; and that it preserves the same
superiority through all the subordinate gradations. From hence it is, that
where the chances for equal degrees of suffering or enjoyment are in any sort
equal, the idea of the suffering must always be prevalent. And indeed the
ideas of pain, and, above all, of death, are so very affecting, that whilst we
remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the power of inflicting
either, it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror. Again, we know by
experience, that, for the enjoyment of pleasure, no great efforts of power are
at all necessary; nay, we know, that such efforts would go a great way towards
destroying our satisfaction: for pleasure must be stolen, and not forced upon
us; pleasure follows the will; and therefore we are generally affected with
it by many things of a force greatly inferior to our own. But pain is always
inflicted by a power in some way superior, because we never submit to pain
willingly. So that strength, violence, pain, and terror, are ideas that rush
in upon the mind together. Look at a man, or any other animal of prodigious
strength, and what is your idea before reflection? Is it that this strength
will be subservient to you, to your ease, to your pleasure, to your interest
in any sense? No; the emotion you feel is, lest this enormous strength should
be employed to the purposes of rapine^2 and destruction. That power derives
all its sublimity from the terror with which it is generally accompanied, will
appear evidently from its effect in the very few cases, in which it may be
possible to strip a considerable degree of strength of its ability to hurt.
When you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, and it immediately
becomes contemptible. An ox is a creature of vast strength; but he is an
innocent creature, extremely serviceable, and not at all dangerous; for which
reason the idea of an ox is by no means grand. A bull is strong too: but his
strength is of another kind; often very destructive, seldom (at least amongst
us) of any use in our business; the idea of a bull is therefore great, and it
has frequently a place in sublime descriptions, and elevating comparisons.
Let us look at another strong animal, in the two distinct lights in which we
may consider him. The horse in the light of a useful beast, fit for the
plough, the road, the draft; in every social, useful light, the horse has
nothing sublime: but is it thus that we are affected with him, whose neck is
clothed with thunder, the glory of whose nostrils is terrible, who swalloweth
the ground with fierceness and rage, neither believeth that it is the sound
of the trumpet? In this description, the useful character of the horse
entirely disappears, and the terrible and sublime blaze out together. We have
continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not
pernicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime; it comes upon us in
the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion,
the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros. Whenever strength is only useful, and
employed for our benefit or our pleasure, then it is never sublime: for
nothing can act agreeably to us, that does not act in conformity to our will;
but to act agreeably to our will, it must be subject to us, and therefore
can never be the cause of a grand and commanding conception. The description
of the wild ass, in Job, is worked up into no small sublimity, merely by
insisting on his freedom, and his setting mankind at defiance; otherwise the
description of such an animal could have had nothing noble in it. Who hath
loosed (says he) the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the
wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of
the city, neither regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range of the
mountains is his pasture. The magnificent description of the unicorn and of
leviathan, in the same book, is full of the same heightening circumstances:
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee? canst thou bind the unicorn with
his band in the furrow? wilt thou trust him because his strength is
great?-Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?-will he make a covenant
with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? shall not one be cast
down even at the sight of him? In short, wheresoever we find strength, and
in what light soever we look upon power we shall all along observe the
sublime the concomitant of terror, and contempt the attendant on a strength
that is subservient and innoxious. The race of dogs, in many of their kinds,
have generally a competent degree of strength and swiftness; and they exert
these and other valuable qualities which they possess, greatly to our
convenience and pleasure. Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate,
and amiable animals of the whole brute creation; but love approaches much
nearer to contempt than is commonly imagined; and accordingly, though we
caress dogs, we borrow from them an appellation of the most despicable kind,
when we employ terms of reproach; and this appellation is the common mark of
the last vileness and contempt in every language. Wolves have not more
strength than several species of dogs; but, on account of their unmanageable
fierceness, the idea of a wolf is not despicable; it is not excluded from
grand descriptions and similitudes. Thus we are affected by strength, which
is natural power. The power which arises from institution in kings and
commanders, has the same connexion with terror. Sovereigns are frequently
addressed with the title of dread majesty. And it may be observed, that
young persons, little acquainted with the world, and who have not been used
to approach men in power, are commonly struck with an awe which takes away
the free use of their faculties. When I prepared my seat in the street,
(says Job,) the young men saw me, and hid themselves. Indeed, so natural is
this timidity with regard to power, and so strongly does it inhere in our
constitution, that very few are able to conquer it, but by mixing much in
the business of the great world, or by using no small violence to their
natural dispositions. I know some people are of opinion, that no awe, no
degree of terror, accompanies the idea of power; and have hazarded to affirm,
that we can contemplate the idea of God himself without any such emotion.
I purposely avoided, when I first considered this subject, to introduce
the idea of that great and tremendous Being, as an example in an argument
so light as this; though it frequently occurred to me, not as an objection
to, but as a strong confirmation of, my notions in this matter. I hope, in
what I am going to say, I shall avoid presumption, where it is almost
impossible for any mortal to speak with strict propriety. I say then that
whilst we consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding,
which forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched
to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider
the Divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and
passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by the
condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas,
through the medium of sensible images, and to judge of these divine qualities
by their evident acts and exertions, it becomes extremely hard to disentangle
our idea of the cause from the effect by which we are led to know it. Thus
when we contemplate the Deity, his attributes and their operation, coming
united on the mind, form a sort of sensible image, and as such are capable of
affecting the imagination. Now, though in a just idea of the Deity perhaps
none of his attributes are predominant, yet, to our imagination, his power is
by far the most striking. Some reflection, some comparing, is necessary to
satisfy us of his wisdom, his justice, and his goodness. To be struck with his
power, it is only necessary that we should open our eyes. But whilst we
contemplate so vast an object, under the arm, as it were, of almighty power,
and invested upon every side with omnipresence, we shrink into the minuteness
of our own nature, and are, in a manner, annihilated before him. And though a
consideration of his other attributes may relieve, in some measure, our
apprehensions; yet no conviction of the justice with which it is exercised,
nor the mercy with which it is tempered, can wholly remove the terror that
naturally arises from a force which nothing can withstand. If we rejoice, we
rejoice with trembling: and even whilst we are receiving benefits, we cannot
but shudder at a power which can confer benefits of such mighty importance.
When the prophet David contemplated the wonders of wisdom and power which are
displayed in the economy of man, he seems to be struck with a sort of divine
horror, and cries out, Fearfully and wonderfully am I made! An heathen poet
has a sentiment of a similar nature; Horace looks upon it as the last effort
of philosophical fortitude, to behold without terror and amazement, this
immense and glorious fabric of the universe:
Hunc solem, et stellas, et decedentia certis
Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nulla
Imbuti spectent.
Lucretius is a poet not to be suspected of giving way to superstitious
terrors; yet when he supposes the whole mechanism of nature laid open by the
master of his philosophy, his transport on this magnificent view, which he
has represented in the colours of such bold and lively poetry, is overcast
with a shade of secret dread and horror:
His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit, atque horror; quod sic Natura, tua vi
Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.
But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of
this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing or
speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up to heighten the awe and
solemnity of the Divine presence. The Psalms, and the prophetical books, are
crowded with instances of this kind. The earth shook, (says the psalmist), the
heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord. And, what is remarkable, the
painting preserves the same character, not only when he is supposed descending
to take vengeance upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude
of power in acts of beneficence to mankind. Tremble, thou earth! at the
presence of the Lord; at the presence of God of Jacob; which turned the rock
into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters! It were endless to
enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane writers, which
establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union
of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the Divinity. Hence the
common maxim, Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. This maxim may be, as I believe
it is, false with regard to the origin of religion. The maker of the maxim saw
how inseparable these ideas were, without considering that the notion of some
great power must be always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must
necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the
mind. It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large
a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally nothing
else but fear to support them. Before the Christian religion had, as it were,
humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us,
there was very little said of the love of God. The followers of Plato have
something of it, and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity,
whether poets or philosophers, nothing at all. And they who consider with
what infinite attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object,
through what long habits of piety and contemplation, it is that any man is
able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive,
that it is not the first, the most natural and the most striking, effect which
proceeds from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several
gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost;
and we find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion,
and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now as power
is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evidently
from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to
unite it.
Sect. VI.
Privation
All general privations are great, because they are all terrible;
Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence. With what a fire of imagination, yet
with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all these circumstances,
where he knows that all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be
united, at the mouth of hell! where, before he unlocks the secrets of the
great deep, he seems to be seized with a religious horror, and to retire
astonished at the boldness of his own designs:
Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque-silentes!
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte silentia late,
Sit mihi fas audita loqui; sit, numine vestro,
Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas.
Ibant obscuri, sola sub nocte, per umbram,
Perque domos Ditis vacuas, et inania regna.
Ye subterraneous gods, whose awful sway
The gliding ghosts and silent shades obey;
O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!
Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;
Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell
Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell:
Give me your mighty secrets to display
From those black realms of darkness to the day. - Pitt
Obscure they went through dreary shades that led
Along the waste dominions of the dead. - Dryden.
Sect. VII.
Vastness
[Footnote 1: Part IV. sect. 9.]
Greatness^1 of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This is too
evident, and the observation too common, to need any illustration: it is not
so common to consider in what ways greatness of dimension, vastness of extent
or quantity, has the most striking effect. For certainly, there are ways and
modes, wherein the same quantity of extension shall produce greater effects
than it is found to do in others. Extension is either in length, height, or
depth. Of these the length strikes least; an hundred yards of even ground will
never work such an effect as a tower an hundred yards high, or a rock or
mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine likewise, that height is less
grand than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a
precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not
very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an
inclined plane; and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger
than where it is smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our way to
enter in this place into the cause of these appearances; but certain it is
they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation. However, it may not be
amiss to add to these remarks upon magnitude, that, as the great extreme of
dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in some measure
sublime likewise: when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when
we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings,
that escape the nicest inquisition of the sense; when we push our discoveries
yet downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller, and
the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is
lost as well as the sense; we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of
minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its effects this extreme of littleness
from the vast itself. For division must be infinite as well as addition;
because the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a
complete whole, to which nothing may be added.
Sect. VIII.
Infinity
Another source of the sublime is infinity; if it does not rather belong
to the last. Infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of
delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect and truest test of the
sublime. There are scarce any things which can become the objects of our
senses, that are really and in their own nature infinite. But the eye not
being able to perceive the bounds of many things, they seem to be infinite,
and they produce the same effects as if they were really so. We are deceived
in the like manner, if the parts of some large object are so continued to any
indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check which may hinder its
extending them at pleasure.
[Footnote 1: Part IV. sect. 12.]
[Footnote 2: Part IV. sect. 14.]
Whenever we repeat any idea frequently, the mind, by a sort of mechanism,
repeats it long after the first cause has ceased to operate.^1 After whirling
about, when we sit down, the objects about us still seem to whirl. After a
long succession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of
forge-hammers, the hammers beat and the water roars in the imagination long
after the first sounds have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by
gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a straight pole,
with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost
incredible.^2 Place a number of uniform and equi-distant marks on this pole,
they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without end. The
senses, strongly affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their
tenor, or adapt themselves to other things; but they continue in their old
channel until the strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an
appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain whole days and nights,
sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of some remark, some
complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their disordered
imagination in the beginning of their phrensy, every repetition reinforces it
with new strength; and the hurry of their spirits, unrestrained by the curb of
reason, continues it to the end of their lives.
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