Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion

Edinburgh

Printed by R. Fleming

1751

"Grand objects make a deep impression upon the mind, and give force to that passion which occupies it at the time."

AGAIN, where the new and unknown objects have any thing dreadful in appearance, this circumstance, joined with our natural propensity to dread unknown objects, will raise terror even in the most resolute. If the evils, dreaded from such objects, are known neither in quality nor degree; the imagination, being under no restraint, figures the greatest evils, both in kind and magnitude, that can be conceived. Where no immediate harm ensues, the mind, by the impulse it has received, transports itself into futurity, and imagines the strange forms to be presages of direful calamities. Hence it is, that the uncommon phaenomena of nature, such as comets, eclipses, earthquakes, and the like, are, by the vulgar, held as forerunners of uncommon events. Grand objects make a deep impression upon the mind, and give force to that passion which occupies it at the time. The above appearances being uncommon, if not altogether new, dispose the mind to terror; which, aided by the emotion arising from the grandeur of the objects, produces great agitation, and a violent apprehension of danger.
(pp. 311-312)

Impressions

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At least 3 entries in ESTC (1751, 1758, 1779).

Lord Kames, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion: in Two Parts. (Edinburgh: Printed by R. Fleming, for A. Kincaid and A. Donaldson, 1751). <Link to ECCO-TCP>

09/16/2013