376 GKANDEUR AND SUBLIMITY. 



found philosopher, because the one is supposed to take 

 flight to heaven, and the other to penetrate into the deep 

 and hidden laws of nature. It is common also to speak of 

 a profound, rather than a sublime, mystery, as the word 

 seems to apply to something that is buried. 



The marvellous is but a modification of the sublime. 

 It is this sentiment that causes the pleasure we feel on 

 beholding any unusual phenomenon in the heavens. The 

 pleasures of mystery are founded on the same instinct, 

 and are all interwoven with our ideas of sublimity. Even 

 the passion of love is heightened in its origin by cer- 

 tain mysterious incidents connected with the life and 

 habits of the object of the passion. All the pleasures 

 of life are enhanced by the mystery involved in the 

 future. That ignorance is the cause of the emotion of 

 sublimity, in many cases, will not be denied. A perfect 

 understanding of the proximate causes of certain natural 

 phenomena deprives them of that mystery which renders 

 them sublime. To the superstitious, the omen that is seen 

 in the clouds or heard in the wind, the spirit that walks in 

 darkness like a half-illumined shadow, and the goblin 

 that is seen to flit across the moor in the shape of a ball 

 of flame, are each a source of sublimity. The man of 

 science views these phenomena with very different sensa- 

 tions. His knowledge of their natural causes divests 

 them of their power over his mind. But what he has 

 lost on the one hand he has gained on the other. Though 

 for him Science has driven the elves from the unfrequented 

 wood, and the fairies from their moonlight haunts, she has 

 opened to his mental vision new heavens and new earths ; 

 and he finds new and more delightful sources of sublimity 

 in the dim region of distant worlds that lie beyond our 

 mortal ken. 



