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Another example. In the midst of a green and smiling plain there rises a naked and barren hillock, which hides from the sight a part of the view. Each one would wish that this hillock were removed which disfigures the beauty of all the landscape. Well, let us imagine this hillock rising, rising still, without indeed changing at all its shape, and preserving, although on a greater scale, the same proportions between its width and height. To begin with, our impression of displeasure will but increase with the hillock itself, which will the more strike the sight, and which will be the more repulsive. But continue; raise it up twice as high as a tower, and insensibly the displeasure will efface itself to make way for quite another feeling. The hill has at last become a mountain, so high a mountain that it is quite impossible for our eyes to take it in at one look. There is an object more precocious than all this smiling plain which surrounds it, and the impression that it makes on us is of such a nature that we should regret to exchange it for any other impression, however beautiful it might be. Now, suppose this mountain to be leaning, and of such an inclination that we could expect it every minute to crash down, the previous impression will be complicated with another impression: terror will be joined to it: the object itself will be but still more attractive. But suppose it were possible to prop up this leaning mountain with another mountain, the terror would disappear, and with it a good part of the pleasure we experienced. Suppose that there were beside this mountain four or five other mountains, of which each one was a fourth or a fifth part lower than the one which came immediately after; the first impression with which the height of one mountain inspired us will be notably weakened. Something somewhat analogous would take place if the mountain itself were cut into ten or twelve terraces, uniformly diminishing; or again if it were artificially decorated with plantations. We have at first subjected one mountain to no other operation than that of increasing its size, leaving it otherwise just as it was, and without altering its form; and this simple circumstance has sufficed to make an indifferent or even disagreeable object satisfying to the eyes. By the second operation, this enlarged object has become at the same time an object of terror; and the pleasure which we have found in contemplating it has but been the greater. Finally, by the last operation which we have made, we have diminished the terror which its sight occasioned, and the pleasure has diminished as much. We have diminished subjectively the idea of its height, whether by dividing the attention of the spectator between several objects, or in giving to the eyes, by means of these smaller mountains, placed near to the large one, a measure by which to master the height of the mountain all the more easily. The great and the terrible can therefore be of themselves in certain cases a source of aesthetic pleasure.

There is not in the Greek mythology a more terrible, and at the same time more hideous, picture than the Furies, or Erinyes, quitting the infernal regions to throw themselves in the pursuit of a criminal. Their faces frightfully contracted and grimacing, their fleshless bodies, their heads covered with serpents in the place of hair–revolt our senses as much as they offend our taste. However, when these monsters are represented to us in the pursuit of Orestes, the murderer of his mother, when they are shown to us brandishing the torches in their hands, and chasing their prey, without peace or truce, from country to country, until at last, the anger of justice being appeased, they engulf themselves in the abyss of the infernal regions; then we pause before the picture with a horror mixed with pleasure. But not only the remorse of a criminal which is personified by the Furies, even his unrighteous acts nay, the real perpetration of a crime, are able to please us in a work of art. Medea, in the Greek tragedy; Clytemnestra, who takes the life of her husband; Orestes, who kills his mother, fill our soul with horror and with pleasure. Even in real life, indifferent and even repulsive or frightful objects begin to interest us the moment that they approach the monstrous or the terrible. An altogether vulgar and insignificant man will begin to please us the moment that a violent passion, which indeed in no way upraises his personal value, makes him an object of fear and terror, in the same way that a vulgar, meaningless object becomes to us the source of aesthetic pleasure the instant we have enlarged it to the point where it threatens to overstep our comprehension. An ugly man is made still more ugly by passion, and nevertheless it is in bursts of this passion, provided that it turns to the terrible and not to the ridiculous, that this man will be to us of the most interest. This remark extends even to animals. An ox at the plow, a horse before a carriage, a dog, are common objects; but excite this bull to the combat, enrage this horse who is so peaceable, or represent to yourself this dog a prey to madness; instantly these animals are raised to the rank of aesthetic objects, and we begin to regard them with a feeling which borders on pleasure and esteem. The inclination to the pathetic–an inclination common to all men–the strength of the sympathetic sentiment–this force which in mature makes us wish to see suffering, terror, dismay, which has so many attractions for us in art, which makes us hurry to the theatre, which makes us take so much pleasure in the picturing of great misfortune,–all this bears testimony to a fourth source of aesthetic pleasure, which neither the agreeable, nor the good, nor the beautiful are in a state to produce.