36 FIFTY YEARS OF DARWINISM 



waste. In the midst of life he was in death in 

 every solitary place that could afford cover to an 

 enemy ; on the mountain-top probably least of all. 



The feelings inspired by the interior of a 

 cathedral are especially instructive in seeking 

 the explanation of the psychological effect. We 

 may be sure that the result is here produced by 

 the unaccustomed scale of the aesthetic impres- 

 sion. A cathedral the size of an ordinary church 

 would not produce it. However intensely we 

 may admire, the sense of the sublime is not 

 excited or but feebly excited by the exterior of 

 a cathedral, nor does it accompany the profound 

 intellectual interest aroused by the sight of the 

 Pyramids. The thrill of the sublime, in the 

 sense in which the term is here used, is, I do 

 not doubt, the result of surprise and wonder 

 raised to their highest power a psychological 

 shock at the reception of an aesthetic visual 

 experience on an unwonted scale vast, as if 

 belonging to a larger world in which the insignifi- 

 cance of man is forced upon him. It is not 

 excited by the Pyramids, which are in form but 

 symmetrical hills of stone, nor does the exterior 

 of any building afford an experience sufficiently 

 remote to produce the feeling in any high degree. 



W. J. Burchell, in one of his letters 1 to Sir 

 William Hooker, points out that the feelings of 

 awe and wonder aroused in a Brazilian forest 



1 Preserved in the Library at Kew, but, I believe, as yet un- 

 published. 



