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D. Stewart on the Sublime

The literal meaning of Sublimity is height & wit the idea of ascension we associate something extraordinary & of great power.—

2 From there & other reasons we apply to God the notion of living in lofty regions.

3 Infinity eternity darkness, power, being associated with God. these phenomena we (feel &?) call sublime.—

4 From the association of power &c with height we often apply the term sublime where there is no real sublimity

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The emotions of terror & wonder so often concomtant with sublime. adds not a little to the effect, as when we look at the vast ocean from any height.—

That the superiority & inward glorying, which height, by its accompanying & associated sensations so often gives, when excited by other means, as moral excellence, bring to our recollection the original cause of these feelings & thus we apply to them the metaphorical term sublime

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So that in this Essay, D. Stewart does not attempt by one common principle to explain the various causes of those sensations which we call metaphorically sublime, but that it is through a complicated series of associations that we apply to such emotions the same term.—

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Hence it appears, that when certain causes as great height, eternity &c &c. produce an inward pride & glory. (often however accompanied with terror & wonderment) this emotion from the associations before mentioned we call sublime. —

It appears to me that we may often trace the source of this "inward glorying" to the greatness of the object itself or to the ideas excited & associated with it, as the idea of Deity with vastness of Eternity which superiority we transfer to ourselves in the same manner as we are acted on by sympathy.

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D. Stewart on taste

The object of this essay is to show how taste is gained how it originates, & by what means it become an almost instantaneous perception.—

Taste has been supposed by some to consist of "an exquisite susceptibility from receiving pleasures from beautyes of nature & art." But as we often see people who are susceptible if pleasure from these causes who are not men of taste & the reverse of this taste

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evidently does not consist of this, but rather in the power of discriminating & rejecting good from bad. And it is manifestly from this fact & the instantaneousness of the result that the [illeg] taste is metaphorically applied to this mental power. Although that must necessarily be acquired by a long series of experiments & observations & yet like in vision, it becomes

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so instantaneous that we cannot ever perceive the various operations which the mind undergoes in gaining the result.