The Sublime

Along with the Beautiful, the Sublime is a major focus of this work. The Sublime derives ultimately from pain, one of the basic states of the body. Up from pain is terror or fear, the apprehension of pain and death, and it is from terror that the Sublime principally stems from. The Sublime is essentially the quality of an object which inspires in a human being horror. However, the horror must not be so great as to be real physical pain, or a true danger to physical well-being. Whereas being in a great earthquake would not be sublime, surveying the wreckage of the ruins from an earthquake after the fact would be. Several qualities of an object combine to contribute to Sublimity.

Obscurity is how clear or knowable an object is; the less knowable or "sense"able an object is, the more apprehension and uncertainty it instills...