leness of the presentation is thus mixed with the horror
of the thing; and the result is that while we are saddened by the
truth we are delighted by the vehicle that conveys it to us. The
mixture of these emotions constitutes the peculiar flavour and
poignancy of pathos. But because unlovely objects and feelings are
often so familiar as to be indifferent or so momentous as to be
alone in the mind, we are led into the confusion of supposing that
beauty depends upon them for its aesthetic value; whereas the truth
is that only by the addition of positive beauties can these evil
experiences be made agreeable to contemplation.

There is, in reality, no such paradox in the tragic, comic, and
sublime, as has been sometimes supposed. We are not pleased by
virtue of the suggested evils, but in spite of them; and if ever the
charm of the beautiful presentation sinks so low, or the vividness
of the represented evil rises so high, that the balance is in favour of
pain, at that very moment the whole object becomes horrible,
passes out of the domain of art, and can be justified only by its
scientific or moral uses. As an aesthetic value it is destroyed; it
ceases to be a benefit; and the author of it, if he were not made
harmless by the neglect that must soon overtake him, would have
to be punished as a malefactor who adds to the burden of mortal
life. For the sad, the ridiculous, the grotesque, and the terrible,
unless they become aesthetic goods, remain moral evils.

We have, therefore, to study the various aesthetic, intellectual, and
moral compensations by which the mind can be brought to
contemplate with pleasure a thing which, if experienced alone,
would be the cause of pain. There is, to be sure, a way of avoiding
this inquiry. We might assert that since all moderate excitement is
pleasant, there is nothing strange in the fact that the representation
of evil should please; for the experience is evil by virtue of the
pain it gives; but it gives pain only when felt with great intensity.
Observed from afar, it is a pleasing impression; it is vivid enough
to interest, but not acute enough to wound. This simple explanation
is possible in all those cases where aesthetic effect is gained by the
inhibition of sympathy.

The term "evil" is often a conventional epithet; a conflagration
may be called an evil, because it usually involves loss and
suffering; but if, without caring for a loss and suffering we do not
share, we are deligh