especially, his political writings have unduly overshadowed his contributions to the theory of the beautiful.
His “Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste” was published in its first form in 1756, and in its enlarged form in 1757; but it is understood that it was composed some years earlier. “It was a vigorous enlargement of the principle,” says Morley, “which Addison had not long before timidly illustrated, that critics of art seek its principles in the wrong place, so long as they limit their search to poems, pictures, engravings, statues, and buildings, instead of first arranging the sentiments and faculties in man to which art makes its appeal. Addison’s treatment was slight and merely literary; Burke dealt boldly with his subject on the basis of the most scientific psychology that was then within his reach. To approach it on the psychological side at all, was to make a distinct and remarkable advance in the method of the inquiry which he had taken in hand.”
The influence of the treatise outside of England was considerable and important. Lessing undertook to translate it, and many instances have been pointed out in which his “Laocoön” is indebted to Burke; so that Burke ranks among the sources of that fertilising contribution to the mind of the great German thinker which he was always eager to acknowledge.
Part I
Chapter 1: Novelty
Chapter 2: Pain and Pleasure
Chapter 3: The Difference Between the Removal of Pain, and Positive Pleasure
Chapter 4: Of Delight and Pleasure as Opposed to Each Other
Chapter 5: Joy and Grief
Chapter 6: Of the Passions Which Belong to Self-Preservation
Chapter 7: Of the Sublime
Chapter 8: Of the Passions Which Belong to Society
Chapter 9: The Final Cause of the Difference Between the Passions Belonging to Self-Preservation and Those Which Regard the Society of the Sexes
Chapter 10: Of Beauty
Chapter 11: Society and Solitude
Chapter 12: Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition
Chapter 13: Sympathy
Chapter 14: The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others
Chapter 15: Of the Effects of Tragedy
Chapter 16: Imitation
Chapter 17: Ambition
Chapter 18: The Recapitulation
Chapter 19: The Conclusion
Chapter 1
THE FIRST and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has, in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the affections; it changes its object perpetually, it has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall be considered in their place. But whatever these powers are, or upon what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our passions.
Chapter 2
IT seems then necessary towards moving the passions of people advanced in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed for that purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should be capable of exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the names they give them, and in their reasonings about them. Many are of the opinion, that pain arises necessarily from the removal of some pleasure; as they think pleasure does from the ceasing or diminution of some pain. For my part, I am rather inclined to imagine, that pain and pleasure, in their most simple and natural manner of affecting, are each of a positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for their existence. The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference. When I am carried from this state into a state of actual pleasure, it does not appear necessary that I should pass through the medium of any sort of pain. If in such a state of indifference, or ease, or tranquillity, or call it what you please, you were to be suddenly entertained with a concert of music; or suppose
