OUR IDEAS OF

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL

PART I.

SECTION I.

NOVELTY.

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind
is curiosity. By curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually
running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with
great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before
them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has,
in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as
those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us
for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the
affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which
is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its
nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest
part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the
occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be
incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of
loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the
mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other
passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall
be considered in their place. But, whatever these powers are, or upon
what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary
that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar
use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of
novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works
upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our
passions.

SECTION II.

PAIN AND PLEASURE.

It seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions of people advanced
in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed for that
purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should be capable of
exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are
simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be
mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the
names they give them,