at
this man will be to us of the most interest. This remark extends even to
animals. An ox at the plow, a horse before a carriage, a dog, are common
objects; but excite this bull to the combat, enrage this horse who is so
peaceable, or represent to yourself this dog a prey to madness; instantly
these animals are raised to the rank of aesthetic objects, and we begin
to regard them with a feeling which borders on pleasure and esteem. The
inclination to the pathetic--an inclination common to all men--the
strength of the sympathetic sentiment--this force which in mature makes
us wish to see suffering, terror, dismay, which has so many attractions
for us in art, which makes us hurry to the theatre, which makes us take
so much pleasure in the picturing of great misfortune,--all this bears
testimony to a fourth source of aesthetic pleasure, which neither the
agreeable, nor the good, nor the beautiful are in a state to produce.

All the examples that I have alleged up to the present have this in
common--that the feeling they excite in us rests on something objective.
In all these phenomena we receive the idea of something "which oversteps,
or which threatens to overstep, the power of comprehension of our senses,
or their power of resistance"; but not, however, going so far as to
paralyze these two powers, or so far as to render us incapable of
striving, either to know the object, or to resist the impression it makes
on us. There is in the phenomena a complexity which we cannot retrace to
unity without driving the intuitive faculty to its furthest limits.

We have the idea of a force in comparison with which our own vanishes,
and which we are nevertheless compelled to compare with our own. Either
it is an object which at the same time presents and hides itself from our
faculty of intuition, and which urges us to strive to represent it to
ourselves, without leaving room to hope that this aspiration will be
satisfied; or else it is an object which appears to upraise itself as an
enemy, even against our existence--which provokes us, so to say, to
combat, and makes us anxious as to the issue. In all the alleged
examples there is visible in the same way the same action on the faculty
of feeling. All throw our souls into an anxious agitation and strain its
springs. A certain gravity which can even raise itself to a solemn
rejoicing takes possession of our soul, and whilst our organs betray
evident signs of internal anxiety, our mind f