FEELINGS OF THE SUBLIME 37 



are not to be expected in those to whom the 

 sight is familiar. As regards the depth and 

 nature of the effects produced by the experiences 

 here referred to, it would be very interesting to 

 compare the savage with the civilized man, the 

 uneducated with the educated mind. That the 

 results are intimately bound up with the psycho- 

 logical differences between individuals — in part 

 inherent, in part due to training and experience — 

 is well illustrated in a story told by the late 

 Charles Dudley Warner, who took two English 

 friends to see for the first time the Grand Canyon 

 of the Colorado. When they reached the point 

 where the whole prospect — boundless beyond 

 imagination — is revealed in a moment of time, 

 one of his friends burst into tears, while the 

 other relieved his feelings by unbridled blasphemy. 

 The remarkable psychological effects of a 

 grandeur far transcending and far removed from 

 ordinary experience may be compared to the 

 thrill ' so often felt on hearing majestic music — 

 a thrill we do not seek to explain as a faint, 

 far-off reminiscence of dread inspired by the 

 savage war-cry. I do not doubt that an ex- 

 planation of the sublime based on the terrors 

 of our primitive ancestors is an example of the 

 mistaken interpretations into which even Darwin 

 was led by. following the hypothesis of Lamarck. 



' Darwin spoke of his backbone shivering during the anthem in 

 King's College chapel. Life and Letters, i. 49 ; see also 170. 



