It is (I admit) a puzzling book, though quite clear in argument and language:  pellucidly clear, but here and there strangely modern, even hauntingly modern, if the phrase may be allowed.  You find yourself rubbing your eyes over a passage more like Matthew Arnold than something of the 3rd century:  or you come without warning on a few lines of ‘comparative criticism,’ as we call it —­an illustration from Genesis—­’God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light’ used for a specimen of the exalted way of saying things.  Generally, you have a sense that this author’s lineage is mysterious after the fashion of Melchisedek’s.

Well, to our point—­Longinus finds that the conditions of lofty utterance are five:  of which the first is by far the most important.  And this foremost condition is innate:  you either have it or you have not.  Here it is: 

‘Elsewhere,’ says Longinus, ’I have written as follows:  "Sublimity is the echo of a great soul." Hence even a bare idea sometimes, by itself and without a spoken word will excite admiration, just because of the greatness of soul implied.  Thus the silence of Ajax in the underworld is great and more sublime than words.’

You remember the passage, how Odysseus meets that great spirit among the shades and would placate it, would ‘make up’ their quarrel on earth now, with carneying words: 

’Ajax, son of noble Telamon, wilt thou not then, even in death forget thine anger against me over that cursed armour....  Nay, there is none other to blame but Zeus:  he laid thy doom on thee.  Nay, come hither, O my lord, and hear me and master thine indignation: 

  So I spake, but he answered me not a word, but strode from
  me into the Darkness, following the others of the dead that
  be departed.

Longinus goes on: 

It is by all means necessary to point this out—­that the truly eloquent must be free from base and ignoble (or ill-bred) thoughts.  For it is not possible that men who live their lives with mean and servile aims and ideas should produce what is admirable and worthy of immortality.  Great accents we expect to fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are dignified.

Believe this and it surely follows, as concave implies convex, that by daily converse and association with these great ones we take their breeding, their manners, earn their magnanimity, make ours their gifts of courtesy, unselfishness, mansuetude, high seated pride, scorn of pettiness, wholesome plentiful jovial laughter.

  He that of such a height hath built his mind,
  And rear’d the dwelling of his soul so strong
  As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
  Of his resolved powers, nor all the wind
  Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
  His settled peace, or to disturb the same;
     What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
     The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!