Before entering politics, Burke made his living by writing works of historical and philosophical criticism. It was during this time that he wrote his influential treatise A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, a sustained meditation on human aesthetic responses. For the purpose of his argument, Burke divided aesthetic objects into two kinds: the beautiful, which give us emotional pleasure by evoking positive feelings; and the sublime, which overwhelm our consciousness with their largeness, power, and capacity for destruction.
For Burke, sublime objects have a greater potential to move us emotionally because they are based on our primal instinct to fear what can kill us. When such fear-inspiring phenomena are contained at a safe distance, they retain their power to overwhelm our emotions even though we know intellectually that they pose no real danger. This is why we derive such pleasure from things like roller coasters, horror movies, and dangerous animals at the zoo.
Burke's idea of the sublime had a tremendous influence on English literature of the Romantic period, and especially on writers such as William Blake (p. 262), Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and Lord Byron. The works of these writers are full of things that Burke would consider sublime: expansive landscapes, wild animals, terrifying monsters, immense spaces, and supernatural evil. Governed largely by Burke's theories, the Romantics believed that it was better to overwhelm readers with immensity and terror than merely entertain them with pleasing images and well-constructed verses.
A major rhetorical device that Burke uses in this selection is proof by example. His argument consists of organizing and explaining a phenomenon that most people are already familiar with, providing relatable examples in the belief that his audience will have already felt the emotions that he describes as "sublime." Evidence of Burke's influence can still be observed today in the huge market for scary books and horror movies designed to frighten their audiences from the relative safety of living rooms and movie theaters.
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. 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.
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. 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.
To make anything very terrible, obscurity 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 Druids1 performed all their ceremonies in the bosom of the darkest woods, and in the shade of the oldest and most spreading oaks. . . .
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. . . .
Besides those things which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which 5 produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause,2 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, 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.