is also both pure and pleasurable; and it has just been shown, that we have in ourselves but one principle by which to recognize any corresponding emotion,—­namely, the principle of Harmony.  May we not then infer a similar Principle without us, an Infinite Harmony, to which our own is attracted? and may we not further,—­if we may so speak without irreverence,—­suppose our own to have emanated thence when “man became a living soul”?  And though this relation may not be consciously acknowledged in every instance, or even in one, by the mass of men, does it therefore follow that it does not exist?  How many things act upon us of which we have no knowledge?  If we find, as in the case of the Beautiful, the same, or a similar, effect to follow from a great variety of objects which have no resemblance or agreement with one another, is it not a necessary inference, that for their common effect they must all refer to something without and distinct from themselves?  Now in the case of the Sublime, the something referred to is not in man:  for the emotion excited has an outward tendency; the mind cannot contain it; and the effort to follow it towards its mysterious object, if long continued, becomes, in the excess of interest, positively painful.

Could any finite object account for this?  But, supposing the Infinite, we have an adequate cause.  If these emotions, then, from whatever object or circumstance, be to prompt the mind beyond its prescribed limits, whether carrying it back to the primitive past, the incomprehensible beginning, or sending it into the future, to the unknown end, the ever-present Idea of the mighty Author of all these mysteries must still be implied, though we think not of it.  It is this Idea, or rather its influence, whether we be conscious of it or not, which we hold to be the source of every sublime emotion.  To make our meaning plainer, we should say, that that which has the power of possessing the mind, to the exclusion, for the time, of all other thought, and which presents no comprehensible sense of a whole, though still impressing us with a full apprehension of such as a reality,—­in other words, which cannot be circumscribed by the forms of the understanding while it strains them to the utmost,—­that we should term a sublime object.  But whether this effect be occasioned directly by the object itself, or be indirectly suggested by its relations to some other object, its unknown cause, it matters not; since the apparent power of calling forth the emotion, by whatever means, is, quoad ourselves, its sublime condition.  Hence, if a minute insect, an ant, for instance, through its marvellous instinct, lift the mind of the amazed spectator to the still more inscrutable Creator, it must possess, as to him, the same power.  This is, indeed, an extreme case, and may be objected to as depending on the individual mind; on a mind prepared by cultivation and previous reflection for the effect in question.  But to